School: Wissahickon
Basketball
Favorite athlete: Shane Victorino
Favorite team: Phillies
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: When my dad was coaching, he didn’t have a towel to wipe off his whiteboard, so he used his hand. As the game got more and more suspenseful, he was touching his face. By the end of the game, I noticed he had a green complexion. Everyone thought he was getting sick, but it turned out it was just the marker!
Music on iPod: Chris Brown, Rihanna and Taylor Swift
Future plans: Go to college and hopefully have a career in marketing
Words to live by: Go with the flow.
One goal before turning 30: Study abroad and drive across the United State with my friends.
One thing people don’t know about me: I can’t wink my right eye!
Casey Bill measures in at just 5-4, but don’t be fooled by her size.
The Wissahickon senior is one tough competitor, which is hardly a surprise since she grew up playing organized basketball with the boys. As a matter of fact, she was the only girl – and the starting point guard – on the Plymouth Junior ABA team that captured the 2005 International Biddy championship in Wichita, Kan.
Yes, Bill admits, she heard the whispers.
“When we were in Kansas, everyone was like, ‘Oh, you have a girl on your team. Is she the coach’s daughter?’ and that kind of thing,” Bill recalled. “I would just play tough defense and prove myself.”
If she wasn’t intimidated in that arena, don’t expect Bill to back down to her opponents in high school.
“It made me more aggressive and I don’t get pushed around so much,” Bill said. “Some people get pushed down and stay down instead of getting pushed down and getting right back up.”
Bill is the point guard and undisputed leader of this year’s young Trojan squad.
“She’s not the most prolific scorer out there, but if we don’t have her, we would never get the ball up the court,” coach Jerry Hartman said. “She sets up our offense and runs the team on defense.”
Hartman expected to have three seniors in his regular lineup this season, but one of those seniors – Jess Scannipieco – went down with a torn ACL during soccer season last fall and was sidelined for the season. A month ago, Alex Schaefer underwent surgery for a cyst on her back and also was lost for the remainder of the season.
That left Bill as the lone senior standing.
“When Scannapieco got hurt in soccer – she was done from the get-go, and that was hard too because she’s such a scrappy player,” Bill said. “When we lost Alex, that was really hard. I cried. I was like ‘What’s going to happen to this season?’
“With Alex out, everyone else tried to step up more. It kind of pushed everyone harder.”
Leading the way for the Trojans is their diminutive point guard, who has been a four-year varsity starter.
“This year, especially with the other seniors going down, it was enormous to have someone who has been there for four years and knows our offensive sets and knows what we’re looking for on defense and knows what we’re trying to do as a program,” Hartman said. “She’s so positive.
“She takes things very personally, and she’s going to try to be the best she can at whatever she does. She works well with the kids.”
Bill grew up with a basketball in her hand and began playing competitively when she was in kindergarten and joined the Plymouth Biddy Junior ABA. Even back then, she was a pioneer and one of only two girls in the whole league. She continued to play on the boys’ teams until she was in eighth grade.
“Teams would put their weakest player on the girls,” Bill said. “It was kind of degrading, but it made me work harder.
“Starting from the bottom you always had to strive to get to where you wanted to be. A lot of the girls that were in the actual league were girly girls and just wanted to do a sport. I actually did it to play and get better.”
Bill seized every opportunity that came her way to play basketball.
She also played for WRA, Whitpain travel and Plymouth travel. Bill played for Fencor AAU from fourth to sixth grades before switching to the Philadelphia Belles. She played for the Belles until her junior year.
Bill didn’t play basketball in middle school, opting instead to play CYO basketball for Epiphany.
“I played CYO because they had 30 games compared to school where it was only like 12,” she said. “It was a lot better competition if you played CYO.”
Although she has tried other sports, basketball has always been her passion.
“It’s always been basketball,” she said. “I did field hockey in seventh and eighth grades at the middle school, but I did it because it was a sport to play. I played in ninth grade, but I didn’t really like it. It was too slow.
“I played soccer in 10th grade just because my friends were playing it, but after that, I just stuck to basketball.”
A point guard her whole life, Bill followed in the footsteps of her father, Jeff Bill, as well as her older brother, Wes. Both also were point guards.
“It kind of runs in the family,” Bill said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be very tall growing up with my mom (Marie Bill) standing at 5’2”, so I never expected to be a post player.
“Being one of the smallest on the court helped me perfect by ball handling because I knew that was my advantage over the bigger girls. If they were taller than me, I could just dribble around them.
“My Belles AAU coach (Rick Leeman) would always compliment me after games because I would wiggle my way under the basket and come out from the mob of huge girls with the rebound despite being the smallest one on the court. I know nothing different than being the smallest girl on the court, so it’s not really that big of a deal to me.”
The Trojans’ senior point guard - an adept ball handler - is averaging 5.5 assists and close to four steals a game.
“It was almost better when I had more assists than points,” she said. “I liked when other people scored before myself.
“Now I realize that points are what get you recognition, but I always like having other people score and making them look good.”
Bill has been making her teammates look good since she set foot on the hardwood at Wissahickon.
“She started ever since the first preseason game of her freshman year,” Hartman said. “She has started every game since then – she hasn’t missed a game. She probably hasn’t missed that many minutes of a game either.
“She’s one of those kids I really can’t take out of the game. She doesn’t score a lot, but she dishes it to the right people. She does a lot of good things for us.”
Bill adjusted effortlessly to starting for the varsity as a freshman.
“Playing with the boys my whole life trained me to play with the girls because the girls weren’t as strong, and they weren’t as fast,” she said. “Playing AAU also prepared me too because everyone is a good player.”
Last year, the Trojans rolled to a 12-2 record in league play and pulled off a regular season upset of eventual district runner-up Cheltenham. The Trojans qualified for districts for districts for the third consecutive season.
“The year before that we were just getting into summer workouts,” Bill said. “We would lift, shoot and work on individual skills.
“We had a good core of seniors last year – Colleen Hinde, Kristy Ragbir, Jess Keller, so I wasn’t really expecting that much this year because I knew we were a young team.”
The Trojans ‘ roster includes three freshmen and eight sophomores.
“My younger sister (Maddy) is on the team, so I’m always with her,” Bill said. “I kind of see everyone on the team as my younger sisters.
“I try to be a role model for them. When practices are hard, I try to make it fun for everyone. I think we all play better when we’re having fun.”
A two-year captain, Bill is a natural leader. She is the president of Student Council, Wissahickon’s student governing body. Under Bill’s leadership, several changes have been implemented, including test policy that limits testing for each subject to certain days, thereby eliminating the possibility of too many tests in one day.
An iPod proposal also was enacted that allows students to listen to their iPods in study hall. The student council is currently working on homework policies.
Bill also is a member of Interact Club, SAADD, Health Careers club and the newly organized Fans Club.
An honors student who excels in the classroom, Bill has a heavy course load that includes AP Calculus, AP Stat, Honors Physics, Honors Social Studies and Honors Language Arts.
With her sights set on a career that could include advertising and marketing with art thrown in, Bill plans to major in business, and she hopes to play basketball at the collegiate level.
Where she’s going to play is a question that has yet to be answered.
“It’s a stressful situation,” Bill said. “I’m thinking Division III because I want to have my social life, but at the same time, I want to play. There’s no way I could stop playing.”
