The following featured is sponsored by Millennium administrators in memory of Mark Picard. (Photos provided by PW girls’ basketball)
By Mary Jane Souder
They’ve made winning look oh so easy.
Twenty-nine times, the Plymouth Whitemarsh girls’ basketball team has taken the court. Twenty-nine times, they’ve walked off winners. Their most recent win capped a trifecta for this special group that now owns the SOL Liberty Division title, the SOL Tournament crown and the District One 6A championship. All of this without a loss, a feat that is believed to have never before been accomplished by an SOL squad.
They’ve done the work on the court, and perhaps even more importantly, they’ve done the work off the court. While they’ve always been friends, they took their relationships to the next level during a ‘retreat’ at the lake house of Abby Sharpe’s grandparents in Deer Park, Md., during a President’s Day weekend getaway.
The retreat included some bare-your-soul activities during a day dedicated to team building activities.
“I think I’m speaking for a lot of us – I don’t think we have ever had an experience like this where we can be together not in a basketball setting,” Sharpe said. “Especially with the team building activities, I think we got to see multiple sides of each other that a lot of us really didn’t know.
“Coming back, the biggest thing for me is I just feel so much closer with this team than I did before. I feel a lot more confident around them, and I think that affects us on the court 100 percent. I think it’s been showing throughout districts and now we’re really excited going into states.”
A very Sharpe idea
The idea of teams going away together is hardly a new one. Teams regularly plan trips to tournaments with the intent of using those trips to not only play different teams but to use the time together to bond. The Colonials’ getaway was unique since it didn’t include any basketball except for one brief shooting competition (more on that later).
“I’ve been wanting to take the team (to the lake house) because I thought it would be fun, but with COVID and everything shutting us down, we haven’t had a chance to get together like that,” Sharpe said. “We had a long weekend coming up, and my mom said, ‘Why don’t we go to the lake?’ I’m like ‘Oh, that’s a fun idea.’ I thought this was a good opportunity to do it before districts started.”
Sharpe’s mother, Jessica Sharpe, was joined by two other moms, Courtney Daley and Christyn Thomas, and they made the weekend getaway a reality.
“It honestly all came together really quickly,” junior Erin Daley said. “We had this four-day weekend, and we were coming off our really long stretch of seven games in nine days. Coach D (Dan Dougherty) had already told us he was going to give us some rest days, so I think Abby’s mom saw the opportunity and she wanted to jump at it.
“She reached out to coach D to plan around it. Obviously, if it wasn’t ideal for us or coach D, we weren’t going to be able to have it. Jessica was nice enough to plan everything out for coach D, sent him a schedule and asked if it would work, and it did, and we got to have one of the best weekends.”
Seven players – Sharpe, Daley, Kaitlyn Flanagan, Jordyn Thomas, Lainey Allen, Fiona Gooneratne and Angelina Balcer met at Sharpe’s house on Saturday morning and – in cars driven by Jessica Sharpe and Courtney Daley – embarked on the four-hour trip to Deer Park.
Day one began with a lunch of pasta, chicken cutlets and salad prepared by Jessica Sharpe, and then they got down to the business of making sweatshirts as a team.
“We bought plain black crewnecks, bleach dyed them,” Sharpe said. “We let them dry and after dinner that night, we put letters on them.”
All seven players wore their sweatshirts on Sunday for a day of team building.
Getting to know you
The first team building activity was appropriately called I’ve Got Your Back that began with each player taping a piece of paper to their back.
“There were three questions,” Sharpe said. “The first one was – what does that person bring to the team, the second one was – why are you thankful for this teammate, and the third one was – one word you would use to describe that person.
“My mom organized the whole activity, so she kind of ran it, told us the questions. She had it all preplanned.”
The activity gave players a window into how their teammates saw them and also provided affirmation. The second activity was a bit more complex. Sharpe explains.
“We had a ball of yarn – it was red, white and blue, so it matched our team colors,” she said. “You sit in a circle, and you hold onto a piece so that it makes a web when you pass it around.
“Basically, you would pass it to a person, and you would say any positive thing about that person – it could be something funny that happened in a game or something they helped you through, just anything positive. It created this big web of yarn. It was really cool, and it got a little emotional, which I think was nice for us. It was just nice to be vulnerable and in a different type of setting with a team.
“At the end, we did a big group hug, and we cut a piece of the yarn web. Some of us have it as bracelets, some of have it as anklets to wear during games or we put them on our bags or in our locker. It’s just a little piece to take away from the weekend and the activity and to remember it by.”
‘Friendly’ competitors
While they didn’t play basketball, the weekend would not have been complete without some sort of competition. Sharpe’s aunt, who also joined them for the weekend, organized a scavenger hunt and competition pitting the four seniors versus the three juniors. It began with a scavenger hunt.
“That did consist of basketball shooting – you had to make a certain number of shots, you had to come back in and do a crossword and make a Tic Toc, and then we moved to different competition activities - wrapping someone up with streamers or different things like that,” Sharpe said.
The juniors led by one event entering the final competition. Erin Daley shares her memories of that final event.
“It was a relay race where you had to put an orange between your knees and hobble down a hallway, pass it off to your teammate, and then the other teammate had to come back down and pass it off to the last teammate, and that teammate had to finish and win the race,” Daley said. “Obviously, the first team that was done won.”
Sounds simple enough, right? Daley proved otherwise.
“For us (juniors), Angelina started the race, and she jumped in front of Jordyn, who went really slow, so we got the lead,” Daley said. “Basically, at this point, when Abby was coming towards me to finish off the race, we were like, ‘Oh, we got this. We won.’ Abby hands me the orange, and I put it between my knees, and right when I put it between my knees I knew – ‘This doesn’t feel right. I am not going to be able to do this.’
“So I start hopping, and all of a sudden I could feel the orange sliding down my legs. I fell to the ground trying to hold the orange with my legs. Everyone thought I was getting a cramp or something because I just said, ‘Oh no’ and fell to the ground. Then Fiona came behind me and passed me, and they won the race and then continued to scream in my face that I threw the competition for my team. I threw the orange on the ground, and it exploded. I said, ‘You know what, Fiona – shut up,’ and I ran away because I was really upset with my team.”
But not for long, although the loss meant the competition ended with the juniors and seniors tied.
“That was nice, but it got really competitive, but afterwards, we were all best friends again,” Sharpe said.
Not so much during the competitions, however, but it’s safe to say Daley’s disaster in the relay still evokes laughter from everyone involved.
The day culminated with the movie Countdown, a thriller/horror movie.
“I personally do not like scary movies, but I got outnumbered in that,” Sharpe said. “We were all watching, and I was probably under the blanket half the movie. But we were laughing during it, which made it kind of funny.”
Although not Sharpe’s first choice for movie night, it added plenty of laughter, something that was in good supply all weekend.
The very best memories
The weekend created memories that will last a lifetime. Some amusing, some warm fuzzies, but all good (even the orange relay).
“Honestly, one of my favorite memories – during our meals, dinnertime, breakfast or lunch - we would have a really deep talk about a lot of different stuff,” Balcer said. “Abby’s grandfather used to play basketball, he was a coach, and his experiences helped all of us have a different perspective because he was in the Army. It was just really nice, and I felt we all became closer and bonded a lot better, and that meant a lot to me.”
Sharpe’s grandfather, George Joulwan, had plenty of experiences to draw on as a former four-star general in the United States Army and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.
“He obviously had a lot of experiences – he played football at West Point, played basketball throughout high school,” Sharpe said. “At our dinners, he would talk about team and what we’re doing right now and how important it is.”
The weekend in the idyllic setting would not have been complete without enjoying the winter scenery.
“They have a really nice outdoor area in their backyard, and it goes right onto the lake,” Gooneratne said. “We just walked around out there, and it was just really nice and peaceful.
“The lake was solid ice, and we saw a bunch of people ice fishing and on it. It was just really nice to be outside with everybody, taking a breath away from all the intense basketball we play. It was a nice way to reset and still be with everyone and just enjoy everyone’s company but also have a moment to ourselves.”
For Allen, just being together was one of her favorite memories.
“The last night we were staying there, and we all just circled up as a group, and we were all talking about random stuff, and we were just bonding and sharing things we didn’t know about each other, and it was just a really cool bonding experience getting to know my teammates’ lives outside of basketball better,” Allen said. “It was definitely an experience to have as a team and I loved it so much.”
Even the four-hour car rides to and from Deer Park were fun, according to Flanagan.
“Honestly, overall, it was such a great experience,” the senior point guard said. “With the whole COVID situation, we’ve been wanting to get away, so having this opportunity to be together for such a long time right before playoffs, it really did bring us so close. We’re definitely so thankful to our coaches for letting us go and the parents for putting it together and how it worked out so well.”
“It was really amazing,” Gooneratne said. “We’re really thankful for Abby’s grandparents letting us come up, and the parents that came with us. They were so amazing planning a bunch of activities.
“They kept us really well fed. Jessica is an amazing cook. She made us Chipotle from scratch. She made us little chicken potpies with our numbers on them. They really cared about us and really took care of us. It was a great time, and we really appreciate everything they went through to put that together for us.”
This past Saturday, the Colonials won the program’s first district title since 1983, and when the final horn sounded on their win over Spring-Ford, they could celebrate at last, and there was no mistaking their genuine joy.
Still, it’s unlikely the memories of that game will trump those created during their ‘retreat’ in Feburary.
“At the end of every year, I tell the girls – it doesn’t matter what we accomplish on the basketball court, what means the most is the relationships you build with one another,” coach Dan Dougherty said. “I graduated from high school over 25 years ago, and my closest friends are still the guys I played sports with in high school.
“Yes, sometimes we tell war stories of a game here and there, but it’s more just our friendships. It’s those relationships that last, not the scores and the records. I thought that weekend after everything they’ve been through this season and in years past just reminded them of that because it’s easy to get caught up in – I’m trying to achieve this, and I’m going here for college and things like that. They have done a good job of not having that be the story about them and their parents too.
“They did a good job of – ‘We’re going away for a weekend, and we’re not going to be on Instagram and we’re not going to be on social media. We’re going to spend time and foster these relationships so we all realize what a special group we are to each other and how important that is.’ You see the tragic story of the Stanford goalie who was quietly suffering mental illness. It’s good for kids to check on each other, tell their teammates they love them, things like that.”
- Log in to post comments
