Full-ride scholarship
Basketball standout bound for Georgia
KITCHENER — When one door closes, the saying goes, another one opens.
The adage rings especially true for basketball standout Summer Pahl, a Grade 12 student who signed a full-ride athletic scholarship Wednesday to play NCAA Division 1 hoops at Mercer University in Macon, Ga.
The signing ceremony, which took place in front of a hundred or so cheering students at St. Mary’s High School, came 14 months after Pahl and the University of Vermont agreed to put the kibosh on a handshake arrangement that had been in place since May 2015.
A change in the coaching staff, said Pahl, prompted the amicable split. “I’ve been through the scholarship process twice now and I really believe Mercer is where I am supposed to be,” said Pahl, after she and her mother, Tara, signed the national letter of intent.
“It was tough last year because I had my heart set on going to Vermont, but everything happens for a reason and I’m happy with how it all worked out.”
The five-foot-10 guard, who plays club ball for the Tri-County Thunder, came to the attention of Mercer head coach Susie Gardner in April of this year, during a showcase tournament in North Carolina.
An unofficial campus visit followed in June and Pahl felt an immediate connection. She competed in a camp to get a feeling for the program and decided then and there it would be a good fit.
There were other options out there, but as far as Pahl was concerned, her search for a new home was over.
“Education means a lot to them at Mercer and it means a lot to me, as well,” she said. “Macon is beautiful, the campus is gorgeous and they don’t have snow there … that’s something I won’t miss.”
Mercer is the state’s oldest private university, with a student population of about 8,500, and has campuses in Macon, Atlanta and Savannah. The school has an NCAA Division 1 athletic program that fields 10 women’s teams and eight men’s teams.
Mercer’s women’s basketball team, known as the Bears, competes in the 10-school Southern Conference against universities from Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Alabama. Mercer’s basketball teams play in the 3,500-seat Hawkins Arena that opened in 2004.
Gardner, who last year guided the Bears to a first-place finish in the Southern Conference with a 25-7 overall record, said Pahl brings several qualities to the table that will make her an asset in the years to come. “The more I watched her, the more I realized that she was always around the basketball with hustle plays. She would get a tip, dive on the floor, get the offensive rebound,” Gardner wrote in an email.
“I think she is a glue type player that has a great love for the game and will do the little things that the average fan does not see, but coaches love. She is also a great student, and at Mercer, you need to be a serious student as well as an athlete.”
Pahl will be the second member of her family to compete in the Southern Conference after her father, Steve, who was a defensive lineman at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.
She thanks Thunder coaches Allan Bush and Bancroft Wright for playing major roles in her development. She is also grateful to Wright’s daughters, Courtney and Candice, for helping her keep the faith when the Vermont deal fell through.
The Wright twins, who played for the Thunder while attending Jacob Hespeler Secondary School, are currently in their third years at Vermont and were supportive of Pahl during her period of uncertainty.
“Sometimes people don’t come back from losing a scholarship but they contacted me, picked me up and made sure I was OK,” said Pahl. “I’m grateful to them for that.”
Pahl, who played four years of high school basketball at St. Mary’s, will serve as captain in her fifth year with the Tri-County Thunder and also plans on competing for the volleyball and track and field teams at high school.