Lowell to host annual basketball tournament – Post

By Anthony Alonzo
Post-Tribune correspondent

March 7, 2012 11:14PM

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The Boone Grove eighth-grade girls basketball team won the Hobart Tournament last month. The champs consisted of (from left) Jacey Snapp, Lizzy Rager, Courtney Casbon, Sarah Brown, Ruby Mioduski, Sara Martinez, Rachel Cantwell and Brooke Jabo. Not pictured: coach Jennifer Marshall.

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Updated: March 8, 2012 2:06AM

Students from third grade to high school and adults of all ages are invited to share a bit of March Madness by participating in the DB 3-on-3 basketball tournament at the Lowell High School fieldhouse on Saturday.

The second annual LABC event will begin with 10 a.m. registration and 10:30 a.m. games set for grades 3-4 and 5-6. Registration for grades 7-8 and high school groups will begin at 12:30 p.m., with games slated for 1 p.m. Adult teams are divided into three groups: 19- to 30-year-olds, 31- to 45-year-olds and 46-plus. Registration for these teams is set for 3 p.m., to be followed by games at 3:30 p.m.

A 3-point contest will run the length of the event with $1 purchasing 1 minute and 20 seconds to shoot. Awards will be given to the top team in each age class. Prizes will also be awarded to the top three 3-point shooters.

A $75 fee per team applies through Friday, with $85 charged on the day of the tournament. The maximum team size is four players, and is limited to three playing at once. Teams may wear personalized shirts.

For more details, call Joe at 306-5495 or visit register.thtiming.com/register/?event=7879.

Umpires clinic: An NSA softball umpires clinic will be conducted in cooperation with the Portage Parks and Recreation department at Woodland Park (2100 Willowcreek Road) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. The cost of the class is $50, which includes the sanctioning fee and a lunch. For more details, call Jim Kimmel at (765) 730-0891.

March Madness Shootout: Hanover Central will host its Wildcats March Madness boys basketball shootout for grades 5-8 on March 18. The team entry fee of $185 guarantees three games.

For more details, contact head basketball coach Rod Bollenbacher at 201-9834 or centralcatsbball@aol.com.

Taltree 10-mile run: Calumet Region Striders officials expect their annual 10-mile charitable run to be as popular as ever as they, for the first time, begin and end the event among the towering woods of the Taltree Arboretum Gardens. Registration for the 10-mile run set for April 28 is open on www.thtiming.com. Mail-in forms will be accepted through March 20 and no race day registration is planned.

Due to limited parking, registration is limited to 375 participants. The run is not recommended for youth under age 13.

Along with competitive awards to be presented, custom 3-D medals will be provided to all finishers instead of custom t-shirts. Race proceeds will benefit the Calumet Region Striders Youth Running Programs and scholarships. For more details, contact Sue Brown at coachsue@calstrider.org.

Portage adult softball: In the it’s-never-too-early-to-plan-warm-weather-activities file, Portage Parks and Recreation is hosting a 10-week adult summer softball league with rosters forming through March 30.

Culminating in a single-elimination tournament, co-ed, men’s and women’s teams will play doubleheaders every night with the 20-game season kicking off on April 15. The games will be played at 6 p.m., at Portage’s Imagination Glen Park (2275 McCool Road).

Team fees for the 18-and-older squads are $500, due by March 30. Late fees apply after this date. Rosters can be picked up at the Portage Parks office in exchange for a $100 deposit. For more details, call 762-1675.

Prep spotlight: Kinnard, Schmelzer make every minute count

Haley Kinnard and Mikki Schmelzer play their best basketball in transition.

But neither of the senior guards sees this season as being a transitional year for the Luxemburg-Casco girls basketball team.

Instead, the veteran duo is viewing it as an opportunity to leave an impression.

After finishing as the WIAA Division 2 state runner-ups last year, the Spartans entered the season with heavy graduation losses and a new head coach in Jeff Jodar.

Given all the changes, Kinnard and Schmelzer knew their varsity experience would be invaluable to the team.

“It’s definitely different than last year,” Schmelzer said. “It’s fun being that leader that people look up to. Our record isn’t where Haley and me want it to be yet, but we’re improving every day and would like to get back at some of the teams we lost to early in the season.”

Despite having to replace 77 percent of the team’s scoring from a year ago, L-C still finds itself on the top half of the standings in the Bay Conference.

The younger Spartans are also battle-tested, having already played the likes of New London, Brillion and Algoma, who are all ranked No. 1 or 2 in their respective divisions.

“We’re just trying to stay positive and keep everybody’s head up,” Kinnard said. “I think starting off the season with a lot of difficult teams really showed us that we had a lot of work to do. We are getting better at those things and it should help us for the tournament.”

Jodar said Kinnard and Schmelzer have been crucial to shortening the learning curve for the younger players on his team.

“I can talk about things as a coach to the younger kids, but they can actually do it by example and share their experiences,” Jodar said. “They’re kind of carrying on that tradition of L-C basketball.

“Our goal is to continue some of the things that have been done in the past. L-C has always been known as a pressure kind of a team, getting up and down the floor and doing a lot out of transition.”

That philosophy showcases the strengths of both Kinnard and Schmelzer, who have been running the court together since 3-on-3 basketball in third grade.

“We don’t have to tell each other what to do on the court, we just know,” Schmelzer said. “It’s fun playing with somebody like that.”

It’s something the tandem isn’t taking for granted in what could be their final season together, as Kinnard plans to continue playing at St. Norbert College, while Schmelzer may do the same if she decides to attend there to become a physician assistant.

“We don’t want to see it end, so we’re going to make every minute out there count,” Kinnard said.

Youth sports results, registrations and tryouts

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Youth sports results, registrations and tryouts
Compiled from submitted reports

Send youth sports items to youthsports@gazette.net. The weekly deadline is noon each Monday. Space is limited and we are not able to run all items in the paper. All items received by the deadline will appear online at www.gazette.net/pgsports.

St. Mary of the Mills basketball roundup
The St. Mary of the Mills JV boys basketball team earned an 8-7 win against Holy Redeemer in its season opener. Sal Paratore had four points and Conor Justice and Jared Rodgers each had two points for the Stallions. Point guard Kenny LePore helped lead the offense, and Anthony Alessandrini and Matt Early led the defense.
The St. Mary of the Mills girls basketball team was a 32-10 win against St. Jane DeChantal in its season opener. Gabby Castro and Michelle Rogers each had eight points. Chrissy Alessandrini and Megan Waller each had six points, and Emily Barbour had four. Nabila Moubarack and Alessandra Paratore led the defense.

Maryland City U-10 team loses
The Maryland City U-10 girls basketball team lost 30-5 to Cape Fitzgerald on Saturday. Jazmine Washington had four points and Carley Wilson had one point for Maryland City. Mia Larkin had two steals.

South Bowie basketball roundup
The South Bowie Boys and Girls Club U-10 AA basketball Team 2 lost to Kettering-Largo-Mitchellville Team 2 on Saturday, 20-10. Amari Thompson and Mikey Johnson were the leading scorers for South Bowie.
The South Bowie U-18 boys basketball team was a 43-24 winner against District Heights. Myles Maness had 11 points and 12 rebounds to lead South Bowie, and Marcello Dean had four points and 25 rebounds. Davaughn Potts had 10 points, and Rosheim Lewis added nine points. Joshua Mason hit two 3-pointers, and Giovanni Frost-Conway and Dalonte Taylor each had five steals.

Sportsplex Gymnastics has strong weekend
The Landover-based Sportsplex Boys Gymnastics club competed in the Jerrell Steele Winter Blast Invitational in Richmond, Va., last weekend, and the Level 6 team finished first in the standings. Khoi Young of Bowie led the way by winning the all-around title. William Walker of Upper Marlboro was third in the all-around, followed by Brandon Baskin of Largo in fourth place.
In the Level 8 competition, Christian Manning of Clinton won the floor exercise and took fourth in the all-around standings.
In Level 5, Jack Davis of Washington, D.C., won the all-around title and his older brother John Davis took second place.
Amari Sewell of Largo won the Level 5 all-around title for the 10-11 age group, and Anthony Waterman of Bowie also had a strong performance.
The Sportsplex Girls Gymnastics club competed at the United Winterfest Invitational in Owings Mills last weekend. The Level 4 team won its division with Kya Pierre-Dawkins, Zakira Moody and Tilay Martin won all-around titles. Sage Ward won her age group on the balance beam and the floor and took second in the all-around. Skyy Henson was second in her age group in the vault, bars and beam.
Ashley Anderson won the all-around title in her age group, leading the Level 5 team to a third-place finish. Seraiah Bruno and Miya Allen won the floor exercise in their age groups. Kaia Russell and Briana Lester won the bars in their age groups. Yilaina Nichols was second on the floor and Neomie Prinston was second on the bars.
The Level 6 team took second place, led by Jordan Bridges, who won an all-around title. Navah Marierose and Trinity Brown won vault titles, and Jordan Bridges and Tyla Evans were winners on the beam. Azairah Reid was second on the floor, and Destiny Colon was third on the vault.

Registrations/tryouts/camps
The Langley Park Boys and Girls Club is running a youth basketball league starting Jan. 20 for non AAU/YBOA teams. The team fee is $350 and teams are guaranteed 10 games. Call 301-434-7500.
The Metro Celtics and Lady Celtics AAU basketball club is looking for boys and girls in fourth through eighth grades. Tryouts will be held Monday and Wednesday at 6701 Clinton Manor Drive in Clinton. Call 301-254-1214.
Power Hoops and the Maryland Youth Athletic Association will hold a 3-on-3 basketball league with divisions for ages 7 to adult starting Feb. 18. Visit www.PowerHoops.net or call 301-292-3688.
Riverdale Baptist baseball coach Terry Terrill will hold a winter baseball camp for ages 6 to 15 from 9 a.m. to noon on Feb. 4, 11, 18 and 25 at the Riverdale Baptist School gym in Upper Marlboro. The camp fee is $150. Call 301-249-1717.
Laurel Soccer Club is looking for boys and girls to try out for teams in the U-8 through U-14 age groups. Send an email to laurelacademysoccer@gmail.com.

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Forty years of progress

Dianne Nolan and several of her fifth-grade friends stormed into the monsignor’s rectory at St. Mary’s Grammar School in Gloucester City, N.J., and demanded they be allowed to form a girls basketball team — something almost unheard of 50 years ago.

The monsignor relented, but said the practices would be at 6 a.m. Sunday mornings in the basement on a tile floor area used for bingo and musical performances.

Sleeved tunics and wool kilts with belts were the standard girls uniforms of that time.

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The rules of the game in the early 1960s were different from the boys game. It was 6-on-6, with two rovers, two stationary guards who couldn’t move past half court and two stationary forwards who could just shoot and rebound. Players were allowed to take only three dribbles at a time.

“That was really good for fast breaks,” Nolan recalled with a chuckle.

Amazing how far basketball has come for females during the last five decades.

Uniforms and most of the major rules now are the same as the males. Title IX, introduced nearly 40 years ago, has assured females of equal athletic opportunity and enabled female college basketball coaches, such as Nolan, to enjoy a good living.

Nolan, Moravian’s Mary Beth Spirk and Lehigh’s Sue Troyan represent three generations of experience. They have been part of the changing culture in women’s athletics and are proud to see how basketball has grown.

“I still think this is the best job in the world,” Troyan said.

As many colleges and universities are celebrating 40 years of women’s athletics, it is amazing how far the sport of basketball has come for females.

Family ties

Nolan, Spirk and Troyan developed a passion for the sport at a young age and had familial influences. Nolan, 60, has an older brother, Drew, who had a standout career at Temple. Her mother, Bert, was an All-American field hockey player and a nationally known basketball coach with a plaque of her accomplishments in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

Spirk, 52, played in the backyard with her five brothers.

Troyan, 45, tagged along with her older brother as his rebounder. She also had an influential mother [Gail], who, like Nolan’s mom, was ahead of her time.

“My mom’s favorite day was New Year’s Day,” Troyan recalled. “She’d sit on the couch with the clicker and watch football games from morning until night on three channels.”

Troyan’s mom, who swam in college and played 3-on-3 basketball as a child, also rounded up the neighborhood kids each summer Sunday afternoon in the family station wagon and took them to Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia to watch the Phillies. They’d buy ‘nose-bleed’ seats for 50 cents and sneak down to the lower levels during the games.

Gail sat in a chair overnight in the Veterans Stadium parking lot to get tickets to the clinching game in the 1980 World Series.

Basketball was a Nolan family staple. She spent her Tuesdays and Saturdays at The Palestra in Philadelphia watching college basketball games.

By the time she reached high school, the three-dribble rule disappeared. Girls games were played in the afternoons, but because Nolan grew up playing in a basketball-rich area, she played in front of large crowds.

“We only lost three games my whole high school career and my mom had one of the winningest records in the country,” Nolan boasted.

BSHS senior’s passion for b-ball inspires senior project

Photo by Melissa Treolo

Erica Wilson

On some level, Erica Wilson, 18, has known what she wanted to do as her senior project since she was a student at Clark Middle School.

“Well, I have an older brother, and so I’ve always thought about the senior project and I knew I always wanted to do something with basketball, because I really like basketball,” Wilson, who is now a senior at Bonner Springs High School, said.

Wilson plays on the BSHS girls basketball team. She played on the CMS team, as well.

But it wasn’t just a passion for basketball that led to her project choice of a 3-on-3 basketball tournament. It was also a condition she has dealt with since she was 8 years old.

Wilson has type 1 juvenile diabetes, an incurable disease she was diagnosed with at age 8. Her pancreas is unable to produce insulin, so every day she has to take regular and frequent doses of insulin to regulate her blood sugar when it goes too high or too low. These are administered through an insulin pump she must carry with her wherever she goes. At mealtimes, she has to be more conscientious than most, counting the carbohydrates of everything on her plate so that she can plug in the correct amounts into her insulin pump.

That’s why Wilson will donate all the proceeds from the basketball tournament she is organizing to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The international organization works to find a cure for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. She says the added work and oftentimes monotonous routine diabetes has brought to her life is something she is used to dealing with after 10 years. Still, she knows diabetes is no walk in the park and she wants to do what she can to help.

“I know it’s hard to live with diabetes, so, like, I want to find a cure,” Wilson said. “There’s hard times, like, you just want to stop; don’t want to do anymore. But you have to.”

The tournament, which will be bracket-style, will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday in the BSHS gym. Teams of 3 will play against each other in games of half-court basketball until there is a final winner. Buy-in is $15 per team.

Wilson said she only has two teams lined up to compete in the tournament thus far, but is hoping to have from seven to 10 teams. She says she’ll also have a donation bucket at the event.

“Maybe close to $100. That would be nice,” Wilson said of how much she is hoping to raise through her tournament. The money will “help in some way.”

Wilson, who says “basketball’s, like, my life,” will carry her passion for the sport on to college next year. She and her twin sister, Emily Wilson, both received scholarships to play basketball at Friends University in Wichita. They sign with the university next week. Wilson said she’s not sure yet whether she will try to play professionally for the WNBA, but “if the opportunity comes up, that would be awesome. I would probably do that but if not, than whatever happens happens.”

Buy-in to the tournament can be done at the door or prior to the event by calling Wilson at 913-549-6343.

South Sports: Dance classes offered for ages 3-8 at Boca Raton’s Rutherford …

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A delegation representing the Levis Jewish Community Center participated in the JCC Maccabi Games and ArtsFest in Israel held July 24-Aug. 5. The group competed in basketball, soccer, swimming, volleyball and baseball. The Levis JCC baseball team also competed in the JCC Maccabi Games held in Philadelphia July 14-19. In the event in Israel, the girls basketball team took gold; boys basketball 15U took silver; girls soccer took silver; and boys basketball 17U won bronze. In the swimming events, Daniel Schneiderman won six golds; Shawn Zylberberg won six golds, one silver and one bronze; Joshua Moscovitch won a bronze; Sydney McAullife won a silver and a bronze; and Hana Suesenguth won a silver. The baseball team took silver in Philadelphia.

Boca Raton will offer dance classes for children ages 3-8 at the James A. Rutherford Communtiy Center. The first session begins today and continues through Nov. 3 and costs $92 for residents and $115 for nonresidents. The recital session runs Nov. 10-Jan. 19 and costs $80.50 for residents and $101 for nonresidents. Registration for recital session begins Oct. 20. To participate in the recital session, students must participate in the first session. For more information, call (561) 367-7035.

The DeVos-Blum Family YMCA of Boynton Beach will be offering basketball, T-ball, cheerleading, volleyball and Brazilian jiu-jitsu this winter. Registration deadline for basketball, T-ball, cheerleading and volleyball is Oct. 9. The seasons run Oct. 15-Dec. 17. Jiu jitsu classes are held October through December. . Call (561) 536-1437 or email ahood@ymcaspbc.org.

The Rosarian Academy Athletic Boosters will host a boys 3-on-3 basketball tournament Sept. 25 from 1-5:30 p.m. at Rosarian Academy, 807 N. Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach. The tournament is open to seventh- and eighth-grade teams (ages 12-14). Teams are composed of four players. Players can be from any school. There is no coaching. Each team must have an adult sponsor who will attend the entire tournament. The schedule includes three games plus playoffs. Entry fee is $75 per team. To obtain entry forms, contact Jon Payne at (561) 832-5131 or jon@rosarian.org. Registration deadline is Sept. 15.

The Boynton Beach Recreation and Parks Department’s Tennis Center is hosting the NTRP Championship USTA Adult NTRP Singles Tournament Oct. 8-10. The tournament offers NTRP categories for men 3.0-5.0 and women 2.5-4.5. All players are guaranteed a minimum of two matches. Entries open Sept. 19. Tournament registration fee is $38. For more information and to register go to www.florida.usta.com. For tennis center information, call (561) 742-6575.

The Boynton Beach Recreation and Parks Department is offering several programs:

• The Carolyn Sims Center will offer beginners and intermediate Taekwondo for ages 5 to adult. Class times are 6-6:45 p.m. for beginners and 6:45-7:30 p.m. for intermediate students. The remaining session runs Oct. 21 to Dec. 2. For more information contact Franklin Ireland at (561)742-6641.
• QuickStart Tennis – a new play format for kids ages 4-12 that allows them to start playing almost immediately. The next session will be held at the Hester Center on Oct. 4, 11, 18 and 25. The classes are by age groups and begin at 4:30 p.m. For more information, call (561) 742-6550.
• Adult Fit for Women will take place Wednesdays from 6:30-7:30 p.m. This activity is designed especially for women who want to enjoy outdoor exercises. The cost is $60 for residents and $75 for nonresidents. The session runs until Oct. 12.
• Kid Fit for kids ages 5-11 will take place on Tuesdays from 3-4 p.m. The cost of registration is $2 per day and participants can pay upon arrival. The final session begins Oct. 4.
• Tot Tumbling will take place Wednesdays. The class teaches children age-appropriate gymnastic skills. Tumbling, motor skills, balance, coordination and group socialization will be developed throughout. Registration is underway for residents and nonresidents.
• Register online at www.boynton-beach.org or in person at Intracoastal Park Clubhouse at 2240 N. Federal Highway. Those interested in any of the aquatic programs can also call the Denson Pool at (561) 742-6645.

The Boynton Beach Civic Center, 128 E. Ocean Ave., is offering Jazzercise for all ages and skill levels. Classes will be held Monday through Saturday from 9-10 a.m. Fee is $38 per month. New participants must register at the Intracoastal Park Clubhouse, 2240 N. Federal Highway. Registration also is available at www.boynton-beach.org. Call (561) 742-6240.