Backcourt duo makes North Catholic tough
North Catholic girls basketball players got a firsthand look at history last season.
The Trojanettes watched from the stands as Peters Township and Chartiers Valley capped off undefeated seasons at the Giant Center in Hershey by winning PIAA championships. Sandwiched in between those two games, North Catholic dropped its PIAA Class 4A championship game to Bethlehem Catholic, 60-49.
Lost in the shuffle of the Colts and Indians hugging, screaming, crying and celebrating with each other at center court, the Trojanettes have been making a little history of their own. North Catholic won its third consecutive WPIAL championship last season, giving the Trojanettes 19 titles all-time and extending their WPIAL record.
With 1,000-point scorers Tess Myers and Kylee Lewandowski each coming back for their senior seasons, North Catholic is an overwhelming favorite to win its fourth WPIAL title in a row. Still, the Trojanettes’ star duo knows they have unfinished business to attend to before their high school careers wrap up.
“That state game, it still hurts today, right now thinking about it,” Lewandowski said. “We made it so far, and just the thought of coming up short just by one game, it motivates you for the next season. No doubt about it.”
Lewandowski, a 6-foot-1 guard, transferred to North Catholic from Butler after her freshman season and immediately became one of the Trojanettes’ go-to scorers. Myers, though, has been at North Catholic since her freshman season, and the 510 guard will have a chance to join an exclusive club of four-time WPIAL champions this season.
“We have big goals, obviously,” Myers said. “It is a lot of pressure that we’re expected not to lose, but I think that just gives us a chip on our shoulder and we go into every game knowing that we have to perform our best.”
Although Lewandowski lives in Butler and Myers in Lower Burrell, the two played AAU ball together as freshmen, which helped them immensely once they became high school teammates as sophomores.
“For the past, I want to say, four years, we’ve always been together,” Lewandowski said. “Whether it was during the high school season, and right after high school we’d go to AAU practice and we’d be together all summer at AAU. So it was really cool to have another person who’s going through the same exact process as you at times like that.”
It also didn’t hurt that both come from basketball families.
Lewandowski’s father, Joe, played collegiately at Slippery Rock before playing professionally in Denmark for a few years, and is now the men’s basketball coach at Point Park. Myers’ father, also named Joe, was a 1979 Post-Gazette Fab 5 selection at Burrell and scored more than 1,000 career points in his college career at Duquesne.
“Our dads love talking basketball to each other,” Myers said. “It is really awesome, just because Mr. Lewandowski has been a big influence on me as well, just because he’s been my coach the last 2-3 years [in AAU]. He’s a great guy. He really helped me with my recruiting process. His practices really pushed me.
“And my dad’s obviously been a big influence on me, and he’s my biggest supporter.”
Myers will follow in her dad’s footsteps at Duquesne next year, while Lewandowski will also play in the Atlantic 10 at Richmond. But first, the dynamic duo will have one more season together as teammates before they become conference rivals, and winning a fourth consecutive WPIAL title is their first order of business.
And while they won’t talk too much about going 30-0, they did express their desire to match Peters Township and Chartiers Valley’s incredible accomplishment from last season — though they’ll need to beat both the Indians and the Colts this season in order to go undefeated.
“Those memories are something that you’ll never be able to forget,” Lewandowski said. “Seeing Peters celebrate that game, it almost gave you chills watching them, because it was just pure joy that they were able to do it.”
By now, the rest of the teams in Class 4A are probably counting down the days until Myers and Lewandowski graduate. Surely they must be getting sick of going up against them year after year.
“Yeah, they probably are, but they can wait another year,” Myers said.