Ever since a loss few who play at for Mary Klinger at Rutgers Prep ever get to experience – a blowout at the hands of the No. 1 team in New Jersey, St. John Vianney – the Lady Argonauts have been working harder.
Not that they weren’t working hard before, just not hard enough.
That was the lesson Klinger and her fairly young team took from that difficult defeat on Super Bowl Sunday up at Kean. And the coach says she’d still sign up to play them every week, just to make her team get better.
Since then, in the Somerset County Tournament, her team has won two games by more than 40 points each over Immaculata and Bound Brook, and isn’t about to let opportunity slip through it’s hands when the top-seeded Argos (22-2) take on 2nd-seed Gill St. Bernard’s (17-4) Saturday at 1 pm in the SCT Final at Montgomery High School.
You can hear the game – along with the boys’ final at 3:00 between the same schools – live on Central Jersey Sports Radio, with Justin Sontupe and Chris Tsakonas calling the play-by-play. Click here to listen.
While Rutgers Prep has a newly-minted 1,000-point scorer in Rutgers-bound Antonia Bates, Mikayla Blakes is a force to be reckoned with, and just a sophomore, while Katie Ledden has grown into a sgnificant contributor as a junior.
Gill St. Bernard’s is also a young team, led in its semifinal game by 5′ 11″ freshman Maya Abramson, who scored ten points in the win over Hillsborough. She’s just a freshman. Leading scorer Brooke Baisley is a sophomore, as is hard-driving guard Jenna Johnson.
In fact, there’s only one senior – the coach’s daughter Anna Gnapp – on the entire team.
Click below for a preview interviews with Rutgers Prep head coach Mary Coyle-Klinger: