The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
United nations: AOA bonds, wins along way
It is often said teams “come together” for a successful season.
If that is the case, it’s difficult to imagine a team having to come together as much as the Andrews Osborne girls basketball team has had to come to formulate its current 16-2 record.
Heading into a Feb. 20 game against state-ranked Cornerstone Christian — a late addition to the schedule as a major tuneup for its upcoming postseason run — Andrews has won 13 straight games.
The winning streak has come despite a few major obstacles many teams have not had to concern themselves with, such as:
• Andrews’ starting lineup includes players from three different countries — the United
States, Ukraine and Spain.
• Andrews’ head coach Brittany Zele didn’t take over the team until the third game of the season.
That the Phoenix are 16-2 with a 13-0 game winning streak appears to be the epitome of a team “coming together.”
“It means a lot,” senior Gabby Culotta said. “We’ve worked really hard to have the record we have, especially with all the different changes we’ve gone through. It’s a reflection of how hard we work at practice and how much of a family we are together.”
The season took a unique turn early on when the team’s original coach Jay Valadez had to step aside for personal reasons.
Enter Zele, a former multisport athlete at Geneva who played basketball at Lake Erie College.
Brought on this year as an assistant coach at Andrews, Zele was thrust into her first job as a head coach of a team where language barrier was a legitimate concern.
Zele and the girls soon found out the universal language of basketball makes for a smooth transition.
“It’s something I never thought I’d experience again,” Zele said of the thrill of basketball as a player. “Making that transition from player to coach, you don’t think you’ll ever feel the same as when you were a player. But I’m reliving it all over again as a coach. This is definitely my calling. The success we’ve had says a lot
about the girls. They had to switch coaches at the beginning of the season and adjust to different styles. Our record says a lot about them.”
Said Culotta, “Coach Brittany has been awesome. The girls absolutely adore her. She came into the season new to the program when our other coach had to leave. She took over the position really well. She clicked with us pretty fast.”
Zele teaches special education at Pinnacle Academy, a charter school in Euclid, so she is not in the Andrews building all day. But when she does arrive at Andrews, she is greeted by a team of players who have come from all corners of the world to formulate the girls basketball squad. Included in that group are point guard Andrea Miguel from
Spain and forward Nika Humeniuk from Ukraine.
“It’s harder because of the language barrier,” said Humeniuk, the team’s leading scorer (16.1 ppg) and rebounder (7.2 rpg). “But the girls are really friendly. They are my friends. It was hard at the beginning (coming from Ukraine), but I got used to it.”
Another highlight to the season was Culotta scoring her 1,000th career point. The milestone has come in a decorated season in which she has averaged 11.5 points, 7.1 rebounds and 2.7 steals per game. Zele said Culotta is the team’s glue and that she does an “amazing” job leading the team.
“She’s truly something special,” Zele said.
The Phoenix recently accomplished a major goal when it defeated St. Martin
de Porres in the championship game of the Lake Effect Conference tournament. In the days after, Zele was voted as the LEC’s coach of the year by her peers.
“It’s not just me. Bob Cecil, who is the assistant, has been an amazing mentor,” Zele said. “We work so well together, and if I am recognized for it, there is no way he can’t get credit.”
As rewarding as the LEC title is, there is a bigger goal the team has in mind — the NCSAA tournament March 1-3 at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.
“We play in the NCSAA, which allows Christian schools from all over the United States to come and compete against quality competition,” Zele said.
And the Phoenix are going with high expectations.
“We want to win the conference and then head to Mount Vernon in March,” Humeniuk said. “That’s a tournament we really want to win.”
The season might have started with multiple question marks — such has how a multi-national team would jell together and how the team would respond to a new coach in mid-stream. But it’s safe to say the Andrews Osborne girls team has answered those questions and every other challenge they’ve faced rather well.
“Our goal is to finish off the season strong,” Zele said. “They lost their first game in Mount Vernon last year, so I’d love to see us go 3-0 there so we can say, ‘We busted our butts and we can compete with any of these programs.’ ”