PW senior Abby Sharpe signed to continue her basketball career at the University of Pennsylvania and recently surpassed the 1,000-point plateau. (Signing photos courtesy of Jessica Lester/PW HIgh School. Action photo courtesy of Larry Small, 1,000-point photos courtesy of PW basketball, and 1,000-point collage courtesy of Kim Supko.)
Roll back the calendar two years.
Plymouth Whitemarsh is four minutes into its game (any game) when – almost like clockwork - number 20 enters the contest. Twenty is a sophomore named Abby Sharpe who on most teams would be in the starting lineup, but PW wasn’t most teams.
The Colonials returned all their starters from the 2020 squad that was in the state quarterfinals when the season was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic.
“Freshman and sophomore year I was the role player that they needed,” Sharpe said. “Obviously, being able to play with those girls and those leaders – Anna (McTamney), Coop (Gabby Cooper) and all of them – it was just great to be able to be part of that team and that culture. I was fine to wait my turn.”
An unusual sentiment, especially for an athlete of Sharpe’s caliber.
“It’s a testament to her as a person,” said PW coach Dan Dougherty, noting that Sharpe logged the third most minutes on the team as a sophomore reserve. “In this day and age, there’s a thousand people who are going to get in your ear and say, ‘If you’d go to this school, you’d be a starter.’
“At that point in time, she’s starting to get college interest, and college coaches say to me all the time – ‘Everybody who comes to me is the best player on their team - we need kids who know how to share the ball.’ I think that’s what made Abby so attractive to so many colleges. They’d take a look at her and say, ‘This is a kid that can do more than just shoot, she knows what it means to run a system and does so willingly.’ She’s not doing it against her will, she didn’t transfer out, and all that kind of stuff. Ultimately, that’s one of the things Penn loves about her.”
Sharpe, now a senior, is signed, sealed and soon-to-be-delivered to the University of Pennsylvania. Last year, she earned first team all-state honors and was a major player on PW’s District 1 6A and PIAA 6A state title squad. She recently surpassed the 1,000-point mark. Quite a resume by any standard.
“Our program wouldn’t be the same without her,” Dougherty said. “When you have someone that can stretch the floor like she can – her freshman and sophomore year, we scored almost all of our points within 10 feet of the basket except for her. By Abby’s junior year, everyone on the team could now shoot the 3.”
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Sharpe, a 6-0 shooting guard, entered her senior year with 745 points, averaging 6.3 points a game as a freshman and 6.4 as a sophomore during the COVID-shortened season. Last year, she averaged 14.3 for a 34-0 Colonials squad and entered her final high school season 255 points away from a thousand.
“It was hard not to think about it coming in,” Sharpe said. “I look at that banner all the time. The beginning of high school I thought how cool it would be to be on that one day.
“Honestly, it became a reality not even during my junior year but after my junior year because that’s when I was able to have that bigger role on the team. We joke about it – that was my breakout year. Coming into senior year, I was like, ‘Wow, this is something I could actually do,’ but I wasn’t thinking about it during games. I wanted to see if it could happen naturally.”
Sharpe, who is averaging 19.1 points a game, needed just five points to reach the 1,000-point plateau entering PW’s game against Springfield on Jan. 12.
“When I went out there, I wasn’t really tense – it was more I was just excited,” she said. “I was just playing my game. I wasn’t trying to force anything to get it right away. I just let it come. It was just a really exciting moment.”
Sharpe was fouled on a pull-up three and buried all three foul shots – the third vaulted her to the coveted milestone, the 11th female basketball player at PW to attain that honor.
According to her coach, the senior standout - who has coached youth basketball camps in the summer - has developed quite a following.
“She’s beloved in the school,” said Dougherty. “Abby is beloved by her teammates, and she’s also beloved by the community. All the little kids that followed us to the state championship last year come to the basketball camp in the summer – they probably have her autograph five times, and they still stand in line asking for her picture and an autograph.”
This year, Sharpe and fellow senior Erin Daley anchor a young and inexperienced squad that graduated three starters and the first player off the bench from last year’s state title squad.
“The dynamic is definitely different,” Sharpe said. “Last year, our starting five and even our sixth and seventh player – we all grew up playing together. We played CYO together, we played Whitemarsh travel together. We were together in middle school, then we came together in high school. We just had that built-in chemistry, and that showed on the court.
“This year, we’re building that chemistry. We’re going out to lunches, texting, doing what we can, just creating a new type of culture this year. We’re a young team this year with definitely some new varsity players, but they all want to be here.
“The younger players want to be here, they’re giving it 100 percent in practice. We don’t have to push the effort. We lead by example, and they follow with no questions. That’s really been key in helping build our chemistry and our team this year.”
Sharpe, according to Dougherty, has found her voice.
“She’s a very quiet kid,” the PW coach said. “It’s easy to be quiet when you have kids like Anna McTamney and Gabby Cooper and Kaitlyn Flanigan running the program. This year she had to try and find her voice a little bit more and be a vocal leader on both ends of the floor.”
Basketball is a family affair for the Sharpe family. Abby's twin brother Lincoln – a key member of PW’s baseball team - is contributing to the success of this year’s PW boys’ basketball squad.
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Sharpe’s resume off the basketball court is as impressive as her resume on it. She is the president of her senior class and a member of the National Business Honors Society as well as the distinguished honor roll.
She is uncertain of a major next fall and will enroll in Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences. Sharpe committed to the Ivy League school shortly after her junior basketball season ended.
“With the interest I had and the new interest I was getting, I ended up comparing everything to Penn without really realizing it to the point where I was talking about it,” she said. “I kind of realized – ‘Wow, I’m comparing everything to Penn.’
“I was talking with my parents, and they asked me – ‘If you could go to any school in the country with what you know now, what school would you want to go to that would beat out Penn?’ Honestly, I hesitated because I couldn’t think of one, and that’s when I knew. I committed a week after that moment with my parents.”
Penn felt right for many reasons.
“I love the city, I love Philly,” Sharpe said. “It’s local, which I like. The basketball program – I really liked the coaches.
“I was able to visit Penn more because it’s local. I was able to spend time with the girls, play pickup with them a little bit. On my official, it really felt like family. They just embraced me and welcomed me. It was a program that I wanted to be part of. Obviously, you can’t go wrong with the education and the opportunities that I’ll get. It just really checked all my boxes.”
Dougherty is thrilled to see yet another of his players taking their talents close to home.
“She had over 10 offers, close to 15, but once Penn offered, that was it,” the PW coach said. “I’m really excited to have Abby go to Penn – I’ve never been to a game at the Palestra.
“Abby is such an elite athlete, just elite, and that’s what you need to be as a freshman to be able to play at the Division 1 level. Her skill set – not just her shooting but just the athleticism, the length she has – it will lend itself nicely to her playing at that level.”
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