Unbeaten Spartans chasing history, along with second straight District 3 title
2024 Berks basketball coverage presented by
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The Wyomissing Spartans take the court Thursday at Giant Center with a chance to become the first Berks girls basketball team to carry an unbeaten record into the PIAA Tournament.
A heavy burden, no doubt, but if their perfect record or their place in history is on their minds you would never know. This veteran team stocked with multi-sport athletes – and multi-sport winners – has managed to stay razor-focused, with its eye on the prize.
They’ll take the same business-like approach into their Class 4A championship against Delone Catholic that they have for each of their first 27 games.
“We just take it one game at a time,” said Annie McCaffrey, an All-Berks forward and the only senior on the roster. “We try not to get too far ahead of ourselves. We know we have to show up every single day, every single game. Even at practice we have to put in the work.”
That’s the approach the Spartans have taken for the past three months as they sought back-to-back Berks League and now District 3 championships.
Repeating a championship is not an easy thing to do in any sport, at any level. And to do it with a perfect record, knowing you’re getting everyone’s best shot, is even tougher.
Everyone knew that with 6-1 All-State center Amaya Stewart returning, along with three other starters, the Spartans would be the team to beat again this season, in Berks and in District 3.
Nothing in life is automatic. You still have to go out and put in the work. You have to stay together. You have to keep egos in check. You have to practice and play at a consistent level.
The Spartans have checked all of those boxes.
“We stayed together through the whole season,” said Stewart, the two-time Berks Player of the Year. “We checked up on each other, on and off the court. It’s a long season. Nobody really realizes that. It took a toll on everybody. It’s (a matter of) just staying together and staying positive throughout all the adversity.”
(Tim Macrina photo)
To be honest the Spartans haven’t faced a whole lot of adversity. They’ve been vastly superior to most of the teams on their schedule: They’ve held eight of them below 20 points. Their key players have stayed healthy and on the court. They’ve only trailed a few times, most recently in the Berks title game, against Wilson. They were down five at half.
McCaffrey scored the first eight points of the second half and Wyo outscored Wilson 29-15 in the second half, rising to the occasion like a true champ.
The Spartans will have to rise to the occasion again Thursday when they meet top seed Delone Catholic at Giant Center at 4:30. The Squirettes are District 3 royalty. They’ve won seven district titles and had back-to-back titles before the Spartans beat them last year in the title game, 35-30.
Four starters returned this season for Delone, which went through the regular season without a loss to a PIAA team (they lost at Westtown, a private academy, in January).
Delone is 22-2 and has torn through districts with 27- and 29-point victories. The second-seeded Spartans have done likewise, winning by 22 and 30. They held Northern Lebanon to 15 points — for the whole game– in the semifinal round. Vikings coach Ken Battistelli was duly impressed.
‘They’re long, they’re fast, and (Stewart) is one of the best players I’ve ever seen,” he said. “In 17 years I can’t think of a post player that good. If she wasn’t dunking it on our heads, I would root for her. You’re not gonna stop that team.”
The team includes more than just Stewart, a Division I prosect, or McCaffrey, committed to play soccer at the University of Massachusetts. There’s defensive stopper Audrey Hurleman, committed to play lacrosse at North Carolina, and guard Alexis Hardy a district sprint champ who has collected gold medals in three sports (including soccer).
Stewart, Hurleman and Hardy are juniors. . . the first two players Aaron Anders brought off his bench in Monday’s semifinal were a freshman and a sophomore . . . can you say Three Peat?
Of course the Spartans aren’t thinking that; they haven’t won No. 2 yet. Besides, Anders wouldn’t dare let them look that far ahead.
“We’ve been so locked in (all season) that every time we were playing somebody, they didn’t look ahead,” he said. “They didn’t look over anybody. They just continued to play, and prepared for the team that was in their way.”
