WEEKEND SPORTS
Spadafora, DiMichele lead Chargers to title over Philadelphia foe
HERSHEY, Pa. — After the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart players doused their coach with water in a victorious locker room, after they danced and jumped on each other in jubilation, one of those players yelled out to coach Mike Rodriguez, “Coach, do we get rings for this?”
Rodriguez calmly answered, “Yes, some people want to buy rings for you guys.”
Nice. They should fit perfectly.
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart joined a most special, er, perfect group of WPIAL teams Friday. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, a small Catholic school in Coraopolis, won the PIAA Class 2A championship at Giant Center with a 62-49 victory against Constitution of Philadelphia.
OLSH finished the season with a 24-0 record and became only the 14th team from the WPIAL to win a state title with a perfect record. The first was McKeesport 100 years ago when points were at a premium in basketball. McKeesport won that 1921 title game, 24-21.
One-hundred years later, OLSH put four players in double figures and turned back a Constitution team that had defeated the Chargers in the title game three years earlier. This time, OLSH also had an excellent defensive effort. The Chargers’ 2-3 zone bothered Constitution and OLSH blocked 10 shots.
Truth be told, this Constitution wasn’t as good as the 2018 squad, and this OLSH team knew it. OLSH’s two leading scorers this time were junior guard Jake DiMichele and senior guard Dante Spadafora, who have to go down as one of the best one-two scoring tandems in WPIAL history. DiMichele had 21 points, pulled down 16 rebounds and blocked 5 shots. Spadafora, a senior guard and West Liberty University recruit, had 15 points and 3 steals. DiMichele, who still has one year left at OLSH, has 1,813 career points while Spadafora finished his career with 1,792.
Spadafora played despite being bothered by plantar fasciitis in his right foot. The ailment flared up earlier this week. Before the game, Rodriguez said the foot problem would probably keep most
players out of the game. But there was no keeping Spadafora off the court even though he said after the game the pain was intense.
“To be honest, the first thing I did when I came off the court was I started crying, because I’ve worked my whole life for this,” said Spadafora, who was the starting point guard in the loss three years ago. “It was kind of more than basketball today. It shows hard work pays off. To
accomplish something like this kind of feels surreal.”
After the game, DiMichele climbed into the stands and hugged his father and mother.
“This is probably the best day of my life, to be honest,” DiMichele said.
His father knows the feeling. How coincidental that 38 years ago, a stone’s throw away in Hersheypark Arena, Daren DiMichele was the leading scorer for Sto-Rox when the Vikings also won a PIAA Class 2A championship. And that 1983 Sto-Rox team is one of the 14 WPIAL boys squads that finished with a perfect record.
And Jake’s statistics in this title game were comparable to his father’s 38 years ago. Daren had 23 points and 5 of 5 free throws. Jake made 4 of 5 free throws and had only two fewer points.
“To put it in perspective, this was an amazing year,” Rodriguez said. “To stay undefeated the entire year, to try and keep focused, not look at records and take one game at a time, these kids did a great job. I attribute that success to Dante and Jake, and the seniors and the captains, and how they managed to keep everyone really focused.”
But against Constitution, OLSH also got key contributions from junior forward Dawson Summers, who scored 13 points, and sophomore guard B.J. Vaughn, who came off the bench to score 11. Vaughn was 4 of 6 from the field.
Constitution was led by senior guard Quadir Miller, who hit his average with 19 points. But Miller scored 11 points in the first quarter and was shut out in the second and third when OLSH took control of the game. OLSH outrebounded Constitution, 33-26.
“We wanted to make sure we limited the number of dunks they got in transition,” Rodriguez said with a laugh. “Our game plan was if we could take away their transition baskets and limit their baseline penetration, we could win this game. … We also knew they were going to pressure us, but pressure doesn’t bother us.”
The score was tied, 19-19, in the second quarter, but OLSH went on a 15-4 run to take a 34-23 lead late in the first half.
OLSH led by 11 points a few times in the third quarter, only to have Constitution come back to cut the deficit to 42-37 early in the fourth. But Vaughn hit a big 3-pointer from the left wing to put the Chargers ahead by eight and they eventually upped the advantage to 13. After that Constitution got no closer than eight.
“I mean this in the most humble way,” Spadafora said. “Jake and me believed we couldn’t lose a game this year. Coming into this game, we knew we weren’t going to lose. We worked too hard for this and wanted it more than them.”
So, order those rings.