Basketball, Soccer
Favorite athlete: Chris Paul
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning the District 1 Championship
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: My teammate forgetting her shoes to an away basketball game
Music on playlist: Everything
Future plans: Play basketball at the College of the Holy Cross
Words to live by: “Win the Day” -Jason Taylor
One goal before turning 30: Travel to all 50 states
One thing people don’t know about me: My favorite food is cucumbers
By Mary Jane Souder
It’s been overused and become something of a cliché. This concept in sports that players are a ‘coach’ on the court or field.
In the case of Kaitlyn Flanagan, it’s anything but cliché. It’s a reality. Listening to her coaches tell it, the Plymouth Whitemarsh senior has already done her share of coaching – albeit unofficially - in both soccer and basketball.
PW soccer coach TJ DeLucia recounts a conversation he had last fall with Dr. Jason Bacani, principal at PW. Keep in mind Flanagan – voted a captain by her teammates - was sidelined with an injury and didn’t play a minute of soccer last season.
“Our principal is a big-time supporter of our athletes and came to a bunch of games, and he grabbed me in the cafeteria one day and said, ‘You’re always going up to Flanagan during games. What are you talking about with her?’” recalled DeLucia. “I said, ‘I trust her eye on defense during games more than mine. I want to know what she’s seeing, or I’m sending her to go talk to a kid who we just pulled because I know how much respect that player had for her, so instead of me going over to this sophomore defender who has never played in a varsity game before – let Flanagan go talk to the kid, and I know it’s going to have a great effect.’”
DeLucia, an assistant for PW’s varsity basketball team, also has had a front row seat to watch Flanagan on the basketball court where she is a four-year starter at point guard.
“Her basketball IQ is absurd,” DeLucia said. “If I’m still doing this in four years and if she has a day job where she can get out at three o’clock, she needs to be a coach. Her basketball IQ is on a different level.”
And apparently impossible to miss.
“When she was in eighth grade, the thing that jumped out for such a young player was her basketball IQ and not just basketball IQ but how quickly she picked things up,” PW coach Dan Dougherty said. “When you have a point guard, that’s what you want. You want a coach on the floor
“Even as a freshman, she just immediately picked up the system that we run, not only knew what she was supposed to do but what everybody else was supposed to do, so her basketball IQ is through the roof.”
Flanagan is the undeniable engine on a PW squad that is just one win away from capturing the PIAA 6A state title, and there is simply no overstating her value to her team.
“If she’s not a first team all-state kid, I don’t know who’s beating her out,” Dougherty said after PW’s recent state semifinal win over Cedar Cliff. “She just dominates the game as a point guard. You want to overplay her, (she’ll) dish to Lainey (Allen), she’ll dish to Erin (Daley). It’s fun to watch.”
Not only were the Colonials without senior and four-year varsity starter Jordyn Thomas in their win over Cedar Cliff, both Erin Daley and Lainey Allen were saddled with foul trouble. While Flanagan’s points are always secondary to the senior captain’s leadership on the court, the Colonials needed her to score that night. She finished with 15 points – seven in the final two minutes to seal the win.
“What you need in a game like (that) – it gets loud out there, and you need a coach on the floor,” Dougherty said. “She knows what everyone is supposed to do. She tells everyone what to do, and it won us the game in the second half.”
It was vintage Kaitlyn Flanagan.
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Flanagan grew up in a family that loved its sports. Both of her parents played basketball in high school, and her mother also competed in soccer and track. Her father also played football and continued his career at Ursinus College.
“I was the type of person who tried it all,” she said. “I was doing t-ball, peewee soccer, basketball.
“Since first grade, I was doing everything. I always loved to be active, and also having two younger brothers – that’s where a lot of my competitiveness comes from, competing with them. It comes from my parents too, they’re competitive people, so it runs in the family.”
Flanagan got her start in the Whitemarsh Girls Basketball League (WBGL) and played both club soccer and AAU basketball. She gave up club soccer freshman year to focus on basketball and continued playing for the Comets on the AAU circuit until her final season this past year.
“It was the type of thing where I was like – I love them both,” she said. “I knew eventually I was going to have to pick. I think in my gut I kind of always knew it was basketball, but I tried to hold onto both as long as I could.
“Basketball has always been my love. I kind of knew I was going to gravitate towards it, but it’s nice to have the opportunity to play soccer in high school because it is something I really enjoyed.”
A starter on the soccer pitch since she was a freshman, Flanagan was a standout defender. She played outside back as a freshman and anchored the back line at center back as a sophomore for a PW squad that posted 12 shutouts in 20 games, earning first team all-league honors.
“She’s the best pure defender I’ve seen in my six years,” DeLucia said. “She played deep, as a sweeper almost, and she was just the best pure one-on-one defender that I’ve seen in our time doing this in soccer.”
Flanagan was sidelined with an injury her junior year but returned for PW’s final game against an Abington squad that had clinched the SOL Liberty Division title and had not lost in league play.
“They were the two seed in District One, and we beat them 2-1 in the last game of the regular season when we finally got her back,” DeLucia said of Flanagan. “That’s how much she means. We struggled during that COVID season, and she comes back and we beat Abington, and they were district semifinalists.”
This past fall, Flanagan was sidelined the entire season with a high ankle sprain, but she played a vital role on the young squad, serving as a captain along with Fiona Gooneratne.
“She was invaluable,” DeLucia said. “We do so much offense/defense in soccer, and we split the offense and defense.
“I would go down to the defense, and coach (Ryan) Kirby would take the offense. Flanagan is with me coaching the defense, and I’m letting her go. Letting her talk to the team, letting her run the drills, and once she found her coach’s voice in soccer, she was unbelievable.”
For Flanagan, watching from the sidelines was not easy.
“Even though it isn’t my main sport, it’s so hard to sit out of everything,” she said. “It definitely was a challenge, but I tried to be a leader more vocally versus by example type of thing and being able to be out there with them.
“It was definitely a new challenge that I had never really experienced, so it was definitely hard. It was also a learning experience, so I tried to take it in that way.”
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Flanagan was thrust into the starting lineup of the varsity basketball team the moment she stepped onto the court as freshman. The starting five that year included three freshmen and two sophomores.
“It was a very cool experience because we came in after Taylor (O’Brien), Fort (Lauren Fortescue) and Ali Diamond,” Flanagan said. “We had been watching them for so long and the legacy they left.
“It was interesting because we came in and people had no expectations for what it was going to look like. It could have gone well, it could have gone not well. There were no expectations, so no pressure.
“We tried to take it in stride. It was definitely cool that first year playing without any expectations, coming in and being able to step into that role that was left by those seniors who had graduated. No one knew what to expect, and we could be what we were.”
What they were was pretty impressive, winning 21 games and advancing to the state tournament. A key to that smooth transition was the relationship Flanagan developed with O’Brien, a senior when she was in eighth grade.
“I was able to come for a few practices once my middle school season ended,” Flanagan said. “They would put me on Taylor to defend her in practice. It was crazy to try and guard her. She’s insanely athletic, she is so good, but it was a cool experience, just being around them and seeing the relationship that team had.
“Little things I remember – we have a free throw conditioning drill and the way they would all cheer each other on during sprints and communicate with each other – that’s the type of stuff that we still do now. Thanks to my coaches for bringing me and Jordyn up. Having that experience was really, really cool.”
Flanagan has been a three-year captain, getting her first taste of that role as a sophomore.
“Some people just have a natural leadership quality to them, and she has that to where she’s not bossy or arrogant or anything like that, but she doesn’t have a problem letting people know – ‘Hey, this is what you’re supposed to do,’” Dougherty said. “To me, what was rare is that while we were young, the teams we were going against were not young. She was never one to back down from a challenge.”
Flanagan has never averaged more than eight points a game, although she has over 900 career points. This season, she’s averaging over five assists a game and surpassed the 500-assist mark for her career, which is believed to be a program record.
The Colonials – with Flanagan at the helm – are 97-13 over the past four years and have won three straight SOL conference titles as well as this year’s SOL Tournament crown and the District One 6A championship.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to be around her for eight seasons,” DeLucia said. “She’s the most focused, driven, goal-oriented player I’ve ever been around. She is so singularly focused on winning championships this year – it’s rubbed off on the entire team.”
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Flanagan also excels in the classroom and is part of the first class in the school’s new IB (International Baccalaureate) program, the equivalent of an AP college prep program for the top students.
Early in her junior year, she committed to continue her basketball and academic career at the College of the Holy Cross.
“Going up and visiting – it just had such a good feeling,” Flanagan said. “I always heard people say, ‘Oh, when you get there, you’re going to know,’ and I was like ‘No way, there’s no way.’
“Then I went to Holy Cross, and I was like ‘Oh well, I was wrong, this is definitely the place.’ I felt so comfortable with the team and the coaches. It’s a great place, and I’m super excited.”
Flanagan is vice president of her senior class, and she is also part of the UNICEF Club, which raises money for needy children around the world and right now is donating funds to children in the Ukraine.
Flanagan’s high school basketball career has come down to its final game, and it’s a safe bet that even adding a state title to her resume won’t change what Flanagan will treasure most about her PW basketball experience.
“The relationships I have with my teammates – 100 percent,” she said. “It sounds – not necessarily cheesy, but the people are what make it, 100 percent.
“Obviously, we’re going to remember games and plays, but it’s the people. I’m going to remember the relationship I had with my coaches and my teammates on and off the court. The support we have for each other – that kind of stuff really is what makes it.”
