‘Silent general’ helping Daniel Boone girls make a little noise
By Sean McBryan — MikeDragoSports.com correspondent
Matt Bowe said he wanted to make basketball fun again when he took the head coaching job for Daniel Boone before the start of last season.
The Blazers’ girls had lost 48 straight games and were in a rut. The losing streak quickly ended with a win over Antietam in the season opener last season and, although Boone picked up only one additional win the rest of the way, the joy of playing basketball started to return to Birdsboro.
Winning certainly makes basketball more fun and the Blazers (5-4) have been doing so at a rate unseen in the program in five years. The five wins are already the most for Daniel Boone in a season since it went 7-15 in 2018-19. The five wins equal the total of the previous four seasons.
“More people have been wanting to come play for the team,” sophomore and leading scorer Liv Welker said. “Girls are enjoying it now, before it was hard to get people to want to play.”
Welker has been the primary catalyst, scoring 22, 13, 16, 12, and nine points in the five victories. The do-it-all sophomore was initially a revelation for Bowe, who admittedly didn’t know she was in the program at first. That changed fast.
“She has already come a long way,” Bowe said. “Last year she was the team leader and leading scorer. That’s hard for anyone to deal with, let alone someone at that age. She’s handled the pressure well.”
Welker, a versatile wing, was an all-division pick after averaging a team-high 8.9 points as a freshman. She has boosted her scoring average to 10.7 this season. She can handle the ball, has the height and length to produce both on the glass and defensively, and continues to improve her shooting.
Last season she made five 3-pointers and shot 54 percent from the foul line; this year she has hit nine 3’s and is making free throws at a 74 percent clip. Most importantly, her teammates look to her for guidance and put the ball in her hands in high-leverage situations.
“I call her my silent general on the court,” Bowe said. “Without her, this wouldn’t be anything. It’s not that she’s better than anyone else. I truly believe she’s the glue that holds the team together. She knows how to make people laugh. She knows how to hold people accountable. And she knows how to put people in their place.
“That leadership hasn’t been here in a long time. Having that responsibility usually falls on a senior, so the fact I have someone who can do that for four years is truly a blessing.”
Bowe has experience revamping a struggling program. He previously rebuilt Upper Perkiomen, which was coming off a 1-21 season and 19-111 record in the six seasons before he arrived.
Upper Perk saw steady progression, going 0-21, 2-13, and then 15-9 with a district appearance under Bowe. He coached a transcendent freshman in Grace Galbavy, who has since transferred to Perkiomen Valley, scored 1,000 points, and picked up a medley of Division I offers.
While a player of Galbavy’s caliber might not be walking through the Daniel Boone gymnasium doors anytime soon the same goals remain. The Blazers haven’t played in either the BCIAA or District 3 playoffs since 2015, but they are making their own steady progress toward those goals.
“I truly believe it comes down to the girls,” Bowe said of the turnaround. “The objective was having girls come out that thoroughly liked the game, wanted to play, and honestly enjoyed it. Then they told their friends. Somehow between that and now we’ve developed into a basketball team.”
Bowe’s first objectives were to regenerate interest from multi-sport athletes and develop talent at the rec and middle school levels. All of the starters from his first season returned: Senior Marlee Fetrow, junior Aayla Hofer, sophomore Jessica Parrott, junior Mckenzie Tritz, and Welker. The continuity has built chemistry both on and off the court.
“We’re playing more as a team and not as individual players,” Welker said. “We’re running the plays and not just running around.”
Fetrow (field hockey, lacrosse), Grace Glass (track), Jules Hall (field hockey, lacrosse), Hofer (lacrosse), Erin Okuniewski (lacrosse), Tritz (soccer) and Welker (field hockey) each play other sports. Welker, Hofer, and Parrott consider basketball their primary sport. Having committed athletes improves everyone.
Bowe said the team has shown dedication through open gyms and offseason workouts, not only in scheduled practices during the season. The days of not touching a basketball from February through November are over.
“I think that’s the biggest thing,” Bowe said. “The commitment outside of just practice. These girls are playing throughout the year now. It’s not just them and not just me, it’s a team together.
“It’s just the ability to have a friendship and be successful. I always believed that when you do something you love, success follows. It’s the same way with high school sports. The girls have been coming out and battling.”
The Blazers are headed down the right track and can continue building into next season with only one senior starter to replace.
They play at the Upper Merion Holiday Tournament Thursday with the goal of adding more to the win column. They won a championship at the Antietam Tip-Off Tournament, something that would’ve been unthinkable the last few years.
It might be tough to compete against the mighty Berks I teams in crossover games, but the Blazers are looking to be a contender in the Berks II race.
Boone beat Conrad Weiser — its first league victory since 2020 — and will play the Scouts again Jan. 25. They’ll get another crack at division favorite Exeter and two games against Twin Valley.
“We actually talked about (getting to the next level) after the game,” Bowe said after the Blazers’ loss to Gov. Mifflin last week. “The hardest part for us is we tried to simulate great defense and offense in a practice setting, but didn’t have enough girls on the team.
“Now the gym is full so we can run situationals, full-court press, and other stuff. Then we look at games, watch film, and decide as a team what’s strong or weak and fix it together. There’s more accountability this year. Girls are taking responsibility for the good and the bad and it’s benefiting everyone.”