South Shore’s Jasmine Odom is arguably the best player in the PSAL. (Denis Gostev)
When the horn sounds, the dust settles and the handshake line tapers off Sunday at the Garden, there will be a new PSAL Class AA girls basketball champion. Yes, top-seed Murry Bergtraum has won 12 in a row, more than any other team in the history of the league. But these aren’t your older sister’s Lady Blazers.
This team doesn’t press teams to death. This team doesn’t blow everyone out by 30. This team doesn’t stand a chance at a mythical national championship.
This Bergtraum team is mortal. And that’s what makes the 2010-11 Lady Blazers so special.
“None of us ever came in with the hype that Epiphanny Prince did, Doris Ortega, CeCe Dixon,” senior guard Cori Coleman said. “No one had that kind of hype. We had to work from the bottom up. We had to take the backseat to all those players. We all came a long way.”
Just getting here was a struggle for Bergtraum, which was in fourth-quarter wars with rivals Manhattan Center and John F. Kennedy just to earn the right to return. Grezinsky always says that just getting here is difficult – but how many other years did he actually mean it? Many people wrote this group off before it even took the floor, what with losing four outstanding seniors.
“We surprised some people and disappointed some people,” Grezinsky said with a glint in his eye.
South Shore coach Anwar Gladden was not surprised at all. He knows all about the Bergtraum dynasty. Prince is a close friend and his travel team, Team Prince, is named after the former Lady Blazers superstar. Gladden knew the path to the top went through Grezinsky’s group no matter what the roster looked like.
“I don’t see the old Bergtraum team, but they’re still winning,” Gladden said. … “They’re winners and they’re gonna play until the end.”
The Lady Blazers don’t just want to extend their legacy, they want to carve out their own slice of the pie. They were underdogs during points of the season. They’re gutty and gritty, not flashy and high scoring.
“Nobody was really looking at Bergtraum, people said we’re gonna lose because we don’t have certain players,” senior leader Ashley Gomez said. “But we worked really hard to get there.”
South Shore has worked equally hard to take that chance away from them. All the talented, deep Vikings see is a chance to take the torch from the perennial powerhouse.
“It would be an honor to stop their streak,” South Shore senior forward Jenice Winter said. “It would be historic, because everyone knows Bergtraum has the team in New York girls basketball. If we beat them, our name will be up there.”
Names like Gomez, Monae Abrams, Shequana Harris and Shaniqua Reese have never led Bergtraum to a championship, though. That’s what these Lady Blazers are fixated on. They waited their turn and they have seized that chance with multiple exciting finishes in the fourth quarter.
South Shore doesn’t gut games out, it usually runs teams over. Francis Lewis was the victim in the semis. St. Anthony’s and Mary Louis struggled against the Vikings. None of those games meant anything compared to this one, though. None of those games were at the Garden. None had these stakes.
“History,” Gladden said. “That’s all we keep saying is history. We’re trying to make history.”
That goes for both teams.
