After loss, Souderton team sticks together
Indians make it about the team after season-ending loss
“It’s so motivating and inspiring to know we had all these people behind us and there cheering us on. Knowing the season is over this year but we have the same team coming back next year, we’ll be back here again.” – Souderton’s Tori Dowd
Tori Dowd was in the midst of discussing her team’s loss in the PIAA semifinals when a few feet away, Kate Connolly’s family pulled up the deciding play on their tablet.
“Hold on,” Dowd said. “I need to see this.”
There it was, a clean angle of Megan Bealer not fouling a North Allegheny player with 0.9 seconds left in NA’s 32-31 win over the Indians Monday night. Except Bealer was called for a foul on the play, one that gave the Tigers the eventual winning foul shot.
Having confirmed what she already knew, Dowd took the chance to say something. What she said was the same things she had been saying before seeing the play, pumping up her teammates’ fight and heart and thanking the school for getting behind the team during its state run.
Despite feeling like they played an uphill battle against North Allegheny and the whistles all night long, the Indians made their focus
postgame only about what they had done in getting to Chambersburg for the semifinals.
“It’s so motivating and inspiring to know we had all these people behind us and there cheering us on,” Dowd said. “Knowing the season is over this year but we have the same team coming back next year, we’ll be back here again.”
Deflect credit to your teammates. Pick up your teammates. Win together. Lose together.
It’s what the Indians have done all season. It’s what had coach Lynn Carroll saying after the game what’s most impressive about this group is how much they all like each other.
Take junior forward Alana Cardona, after scoring a team-best 16 points, glossing over her second half efforts to tout the contributions of Sami Falencki and Megan O’Donnell off the bench.
“Megan stepped up in a role she doesn’t usually have to deal with and she held her composure,” Cardona
said. “They did a great job at it.”
With whistles tweeting against them seemingly at every turn in the first half, the Indians had an easy road to get caught up in the emotions of the moment and lose their cool. Instead, they just kept playing defense and kept attacking the basket, hoping that
at some point, their efforts would pay off.
Officials are human, they make mistakes and aren’t always going to make the correct call. It’s often a thankless job and even the right call still brings plenty of jeers.
Maybe it’s fitting then that a high school junior could summarize it.
“You never have officials that necessarily you like, because they’re calling fouls and calling things you don’t necessarily want to have happen during a game,” Cardona said. “Our main thing was play through it, find the open teammate and if they’re not going to call a foul, then find another way to score, another way to get to the basket and just be there for your teammates. It’s hard when half your team has three or four fouls.”
Bealer’s teammates were most certainly there for her. The sophomore guard was despondent at the final horn, only to have Connolly tell her the outcome wasn’t her fault. Plenty of others followed suit as Souderton made its way back to its locker room.
“It was no one’s fault,” Dowd said. “I could have
made a foul shot that I missed. It’s everything, there’s no way you can blame it on one person. It’s a team game and all five of us are out there together.”
Souderton isn’t going anywhere. If anything, the Indians will be better next year with a summer of seasoning.
“I would have never expected to be in a final four state game and knowing that I’m here with my best friends, we’re so close and everyone is in it together,” Dowd said. “We have the student section behind us, traveling everywhere. Knowing we have that support behind us, it’s so inspiring and encouraging.”
“It’s hard now because everybody’s upset and it’s going to put a damper on it knowing other teams are going to the state championship and you’re not,” Cardona said. “The important thing again is to be there for your teammates. People are upset. You just have to give them a hug and say we have another season of games to play. Take the time,get better and come out next year and be the team we want to be.”