The atmosphere was different and she didn’t know much about her opponent. Still, Ami Rivera had been on this stage before, and the Bishop Brady senior knew her team was ready to shine.
“Ami was in great spirits before we left for the game,” Brady coach Sal Alosa said, referring to Thursday night’s Division II semifinals. “She said, ‘Coach, this is ours tonight,’ and I said, ‘That’s what I need to hear because you’re the floor general.’”
The general knew what she was talking about. After losing in the semis in 2020 and 2018, Rivera and the Giants finally cleared the hurdle on Thursday with a 58-50 win against Pelham at Bedford High School. Now, they get to play in the program’s first ever final on Sunday against Kennett (15-2).
“We had been there before, we had experience with the crowd, even though it wasn’t the same with COVID, we still experienced it and we were ready for it,” said Rivera, who had a team-high 16 points and five assists and drew three charges against the Pythons (13-3). “We were all just excited. We could not wait to get out there and play.”
The Giants (16-2) had been displaying that eager excitement and confidence during practice on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Alosa began to wonder if it was too much. So, he turned to Kelly Owen, the Bishop Brady field hockey coach. Three of Brady’s basketball starters – Libbey Hicks, Halle Laramie and Riley Marsh – play field hockey for Owen and won titles in 2019 and 2020. That 2019 final, coincidentally, marked the first time the Giants had played in a field hockey championship and it was held at Bedford High, where Sunday’s basketball final will also be held.
Owen eased Alosa’s concerns and told her the field hockey team had the same kind of energy as it prepared for the biggest games of the season.
“That’s how it was the last two days, they were energetic, confident, poised, and their goal was to get to March 14 (date of the final), and they weren’t accepting anything but that,” Alosa said.
Laramie showed her big-game mojo by draining four 3-pointers in the first quarter. She made the first one just eight seconds into the contest and hit back-to-back from NBA range (at least) to give Brady a 16-4 lead with 2:42 left in the quarter. Pelham responded with an 8-0 run capped by a 3 from Jordan Galgay (12 points) with a minute left in the first, but Laramie (14 points) immediately responded with her fourth 3 of the quarter.
Pelham kept clawing back in the second quarter, but the Giants never surrendered the lead and were up 29-24 at halftime.
After not scoring in the first half, Brady junior Isabella Rivera went off for 11 points in the third. She scored on drives, jump shots, fast breaks and at the line, and by the end of the quarter the Giants had a 48-37 advantage.
“The third quarter was hers and the first quarter was Halle’s,” Alosa said.
Hicks was also a force in the third quarter, coming up with three of her seven steals and scoring four of her 15 points. Time and again Hicks picked the pockets of Pelham guards bringing the ball up the court and then beat them to the loose ball for easy transition opportunities.
“She has the confidence to go for those steals. This has been coming for about six weeks now and she’s telling me, ‘I can get it, I can get it,’ so I told her, ‘Go get it, but you’ve only got two (fouls) to play with.’ But she’s really good at it,” Alosa said. “We’ve been working with her on it and she has those instincts and that quick first step.”
Hicks scored the only goal of Brady’s 2019 field hockey championship on a second-half penalty stroke, and she showed the same clutch poise to start the fourth quarter on Thursday. The Pythons opened the frame with a 6-0 run to cut the Giants’ lead to 48-43, but Hicks answered with back-to-back 3-pointers. Ami Rivera followed that up with a coast-to-coast drive through the Pelham full-court press that ended with an old-fashioned 3-point play and a 57-44 cushion with 4:13 on the clock.
Freshman Jasmine Becotte scored nine of her game-high 19 points in the fourth quarter, but the hole was too big for the Pythons to escape.
Marsh had eight rebounds and two blocks for the Giants and Meg Pellerin added two points in some quality minutes off the bench. After Becotte and Galgay, Pelham’s next highest scorer was Tallie Carney with six points.
In the second semifinal at Bedford, Kennett’s Maddie Stewart scored with six seconds left in overtime to give the Eagles a 51-50 win against Hanover (15-1) in a rematch of the 2019 D-II final (the Marauders won that one). Stewart finished with 18 points for Kennett, which last won a title in 2010.