Volleyball, Basketball, Track & Field
Favorite athlete: A’ja Wilson
Favorite team: Lakers
Favorite memory competing in sports: The summers during AAU travel basketball.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Trying to grab a rebound, but the ball bounced right off my head.
Music on mobile device: A bunch of old school R&B
Future plans: Continue my basketball career for the next four years at Bloomsburg University. I plan on majoring in child psychology and working my way to being a therapist, preferably a child therapist.
Words to live by: “If you walk into a room like you own the place, people will assume you do.”
One goal by turning 30: Travel somewhere out of the country.
One thing people don’t know about me: I love doing different pieces of artwork.
By Mary Jane Souder
Val McGriff was that kid that wanted to try everything.
Gymnastics? Sure, why not. Track and field? Definitely. Volleyball? Sounds like fun. Basketball? A definite yes.
Basketball felt like a natural fit for the North Penn senior. After all, McGriff was tall and athletic.
“Basketball was always there, but I never did it seriously until middle school,” she said. “I would do basketball classes at the Y, and I tried out in seventh grade for the school team.
“I’d always been a tall kid, so I found it easy to do certain things. Basketball was always something that was fun for me, and it was basically my fun sport.”
When McGriff reached high school, that fun sport became a whole lot more serious, and following her was the burdensome label of potential, unrealized potential to that point.
“Val came in as a ninth grader very, very raw, and her freshman year did not get any varsity time,” Knights’ coach Jen Carangi said. “She was strictly a jayvee player.
“There were times we wondered – would she live up to what we thought her potential was. Would she be able to come into that?”
McGriff knew she was behind her peers who’d been playing competitively most of their lives, and the idea of playing collegiate basketball was the furthest thing from her mind.
“My dad had always told me that if I did choose that path it would almost be a catch-up game because I started serious basketball so late,” McGriff said. “He said – you either need to catch up or surpass the players on your team or you’re not going to find yourself in a comfortable situation where you’re getting college looks. I kept that in consideration.”
McGriff did more than keep it in consideration. She worked hard at a sport that was her passion, and last fall, the Knights’ senior forward – who recently earned first team All-SOL Continental Conference honors - inked her name on a letter of intent to continue her basketball career at Bloomsburg University.
She led her Knights’ squad in both scoring and rebounding, emphatically answering any questions about potential that may have arisen when she entered the program.
“Val has come so far,” Carangi said. “If you would have told me as a freshman she’d be the player she is now – obviously, going into our games, teams are keying on her all game long.
“Val, as a freshman, would never have been able to handle that. It’s really a credit to her and the way she was able to control herself and focus her energy on the appropriate thing. If someone is going to take away one thing, she’s going to find another thing to do. She’s a pleasure to coach.”
*******
McGriff’s basketball story doesn’t read like a typical Division II recruit. She spent her first several years of AAU playing for the Lady Bucks.
“It was just two dads that got together and made the team,” she said. “My teammates were younger, and they kept going up through the grade levels.
“They picked me up when I was terrible at basketball. They taught me a lot of things, and they helped me grow as a player during the offseason. We played together as long as possible but didn’t go to major tournaments. I was like, ‘I need exposure.’
“Dad sprinkled his magic a little bit, and I actually found a spot on the Comets because they needed another post. I played for the Comets Regional team for the last couple of months.”
McGriff caught the eye of Bloomsburg’s coach while she was playing for the Lady Bucks.
“That was kind of huge because the Lady Bucks wasn’t an exposure team,” she said. “I had a lot more DIII schools looking at me, but Bloomsburg had been there through basically everything. Once I joined the Comets, the other DII’s followed.”
McGriff chose Bloomsburg from a final list that also included West Chester, East Stroudsburg and Lycoming.
“My dad (Detrick McGriff) has probably been the number one person behind me when it comes to basketball and my college recruitment and everything like that,” McGriff said. “He’s basically my mentor and my dad at the same time. He’s been really helpful, been there for my training, paperwork, keeping myself together. He’s just a really big part of my athletic career.”
Listening to Carangi tell it, McGriff returned to the Knights a different player as a senior.
“Val is her biggest critic – I think one of the biggest barriers in coaching Val was getting her to be a little bit easier on herself because she holds herself to such a high standard,” Carangi said. “She had a tough time as a sophomore and as a junior – when she would make mistakes, she would get so down on herself and so frustrated that it would take her out of the game completely.
“We have talked a lot about that, just keeping composure, it’s – next play, and she has come so far.”
McGriff – a 6-0 forward - can hurt teams in close and also connect from beyond the arc.
“I remember talking to some of the other league coaches last year, and she comes across as so intimidating on the court that there were girls that were literally afraid of her,” Carangi said. “Then something would happen during a game – a girl would fall or she’d knock someone over, and she’d help them up. It’s almost like she has two personalities – Val the player who’s focused and committed and Val off the court. She’s a fantastic kid.”
This winter, McGriff helped lead the Knights to the state tournament for the first time in three years.
“It was great because I think we all surprised ourselves,” she said. “Going from losing in the first round of district playoffs to losing in the first round of states is just a huge difference. It just set an expectation for our team that we didn’t really have before.”
********
Despite her commitment to basketball, McGriff – a rare three-sport athlete - found time to compete in a fall and spring sport at North Penn and contribute immensely to both.
McGriff tried out for volleyball team as a junior, earning a spot on the jayvee.
“She had never played the game,” said North Penn coach Scott Coles. “She started jayvee and fell in love with the sport.”
The following year, McGriff earned the starting nod as a middle blocker.
“Her game performance had risen to the level of being able to compete at the varsity level,” Coles said. “On the court, she did some good things for us, especially on the defensive end.
“In fact, at the end of the season with our team awards, we awarded her the defensive player of the year award, and that speaks volumes for her – just one season at the varsity level, and it’s not her primary sport.”
The three-sport senior also brought intangibles that coaches covet.
“She is just full of life,” Coles said. “She was definitely the energy of our team, the girl who yells in the huddles, cheers for her team on the sidelines.
“In volleyball, they force us to sit down on the bench, so when girls come off the court or when they’re substituting, you do the typical high five to everybody on the bench. She comes and screams and emphatically gives everybody a high five – just an energy bolt throughout the game, which I really loved.”
Although a newcomer to the sport, McGriff proved to be a leader in her first and only season on the varsity.
“You expect the seniors to show something from the leadership standpoint,” Coles said. “There were too many times when she was the one who was working out extra at practice, asking us to do different things as a coaching staff, helping out the other girls whether it was volleyball related or not. I really have appreciated that.”
It was McGriff who encouraged Coles to ignore his usual policy of not playing music on bus rides to games.
“We gave her control of the tunes,” the Knights’ coach said. “Just pumping the team up, just all around the person you want on your team to help the camaraderie and those extra things. I loved having her on the team and wished I could have had her for more than two years.
“I was the fourth head coach in four years, and now that I’m in my fourth year I finally have some consistency in the program. You don’t just build a program because of a coach, you build it because of the players, the student-athletes. When I look back at 2019, she’s one of the players that I will absolutely say – she helped change the culture of North Penn volleyball and our program.”
Track coach Brandon Turner was equally effusive when asked about McGriff, who showed up for practice the very next day after her basketball season ended in the opening round of the PIAA 6A Tournament.
“She did the same thing last year,” the Knights’ coach said. “I always tell them – ‘Hey, take a week, enjoy a little time, reset,’ but she comes out, gets right to work.”
McGriff excels in high jump and the discus, scoring in both events for multiple years.
“Really, she’s probably my best high jumper right now, and she was last year,” Turner said. “She was the only one I had go over 5-0 and 5-1. She actually got hurt last year towards the end of the year and missed our league meet.
“I thought she could win the high jump or she would definitely place. I also think she would have placed in the discus. I think she was ninth or 10th her sophomore year after just picking it up. I’m totally excited to have her around. I think she could make a run at a league championship in both and really help our team in doing that.”
Again, McGriff’s skills are just a part of what sets the senior apart.
“She is fun to have around,” Turner said. “She’s a great athlete, but better than that, she’s just a great person. She helps the other kids.
“She’s a leader even though everybody knows basketball is her main sport, but she comes in and she does everything we ask. I’ve been just happy to work with her even a little bit because she is one of those personalities as a kid – you can see they’re going to be successful. She does a lot of things the right way.”
*********
McGriff is active in school life away from the athletic arena. She is a member of the African-American Advocacy Club (AAAC).
“It brings awareness to African-American history and concepts that schools may not be willing to talk about because it’s too controversial so we have a group to open up about that kind of stuff,” she said.
McGriff, who is active in her church, is a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the school chorus.
At Bloomsburg, McGriff will major in psychology.
“People always look at me kind of crazy, but I want to be a child therapist,” she said. “I’m definitely a people person, and I think I’m good working with children, especially because I have an autistic brother, so working with kids that struggle with different types of things – I’m able to connect with them pretty easily.”
The runner-up in North Penn’s homecoming court, McGriff is the consummate student-athlete.
“She’s a hard worker, and she’s just a super, super kid,” Carangi said. “She’s a great leader. Everything you’d hope for in a student-athlete is what she is.”
All SuburbanOneSports.com articles (or portion of articles) can be turned into keepsakes. For information, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/article/content/turn-online-features-keepsake-posters-0086874
