John Kaercher is the Freedom High School girls basketball coach, and he was the Freedom girls soccer team’s biggest fan during its run to the PIAA Class 1A championship match in November.
“They were all rooting for us last year [in basketball] and wanting us to go out and win a championship, and it’s the same thing for me,” Kaercher said. “I cheered them on because their success is my success. To have that success in two consecutive seasons for the girls programs is just a tribute to their desire, effort and will to be the best that they can be.”
He also knew something else. The minute that soccer game ended, he was getting two-fifths of his starting lineup back in the gym to get ready for the season.
“My thing is that I tell them that we’ve got to get in basketball shape. We just line them up and run, run, run. Everything is drill-related and skill-related, getting them to give 100% effort the entire time to get that court feel back,” Kaercher said. “These ladies are in great soccer shape for those 10-, 15-yard bursts, and then, they can walk back. But they need to be in basketball shape, and that’s what we concentrate on for the first three-and-a-half weeks of the season.”
Now that senior Julia Mohrbacher and 2022 all-state junior Shaye Bailey are back in the fold, they have the Bulldogs (6-1, 1-0) operating in high gear in the early part of the season. The Bulldogs are the Post-Gazette’s No. 1-ranked WPIAL Class 2A team.
Bailey has already increased her scoring average from 16.5 points per game last year to 20.5 and put up 35 in a game against South Side last week. Mohrbacher has also elevated her game this season, as she is shooting nearly 48% from the floor and had a 32-point night against Keystone Oaks on Monday in the team’s first loss.
Considering how dominant they both were on the soccer pitch — Bailey was a 50-goal scorer and Mohrbacher had over 30; both were named to the Class 1A all-WPIAL team — it would be easy to say soccer is their best sport.
But not so fast.
“I guess they’re athletes is where we start,” Kaercher said. “In my view, they’re better basketball players. I look at them overall — and I may be partial and I may be biased — but if I had to look at it, I would say that basketball is both of their top sports.”
Maybe. But whether they are soccer players who play basketball or vice versa, one thing is certain: Coming into the season, they were the team’s only two returning starters from a Bulldogs squad that lost a 55-49 heartbreaker to Neumann-Goretti in the state championship game.
“I’m basically in a rebuilding year because we graduated five seniors that all contributed last year,” Kaercher said. “But we knew the work ethic of the girls coming up, and we said that we needed to find a combination of girls that could replicate what Renae Morhbacher [Julia’s sister] did in getting up 14 points and 15 rebounds a game.”
So far, Freedom has been able to make up that production from its other three starters this season, junior forward Cassidy Harris and sophomore guards Olivia Henderson and Riley Tokar.
“We’re getting balanced scoring from the rest of the team,” Kaercher said. “We’re just building off that mentality from last year that it’s a family from top to bottom. If we can stay together as a family, good things will happen.”
Wade all in for Bears
Iyanna Wade showed everyone how good she was last season when, as a freshman, she averaged 23.9 points per game at Clairton and was chosen Class 1A third-team all-state. Even with a move up to Class 2A this season, she may be even better.
On Monday, Wade had a “season-low” 36 points in a 50-9 win over Ellis School. She had 42 in a loss to Allderdice and 49 in a season-opening win over Westinghouse.
Those are eye-opening numbers, to be sure. But what makes them stand out even more is how valuable she is to the Bears offense.
In those three games, Clairton scored a total of 149 points. Wade scored 127 of them. That means she is responsible for 85.2% of the team’s offensive output so far this season.
To put into perspective just how disproportionate that is, consider this: Last season, when she averaged 23.9, she only accounted for 44.8% of the team’s average of 53.4 per night.
Even Aquinas Academy’s Vinnie Cugini, who led the entire WPIAL in scoring last year at 36.2 ppg, only accounted for 53.4% of his team’s overall scoring.
Lions roaring
Greensburg Salem isn’t an unknown commodity after making the Class 5A playoffs last season, losing to eventual champion South Fayette, then dropping down in classification. Even so, coach Rick Klimchock has done a stellar job getting the most out of his Golden Lions in the early part of the season.
It helps that the team has a solid frontcourt, headed by junior Kait Mankins, who is coming into her own and averaging around 17 ppg in the early part of the year.
Greensburg Salem (5-1, 1-0) will play Connellsville on Thursday and has a couple of weeks left before it faces off with North Catholic at home Jan. 5 for the early claim of first place in Class 4A Section 1.
Show with Dacia Lewandowski
North Catholic senior Dacia Lewandowski is one of the WPIAL’s top players and is getting into the media. She will host a weekly video feature on the KDKA radio web site called “One-on-One with Dacia.” It will feature interviews with some of the top girls basketball players in the WPIAL.
First Published: December 21, 2022, 5:34 p.m.
