The Lightning girls fought through a grueling seven games in three days and…
By The TimesLedger
The Long Island Lightning Girls 11 and under AAU Basketball Team won the U.S. Junior National Championship at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. Sunday night.
The Lightning girls fought through a grueling seven games in three days and persevered, winning all of their games by a minimum of 14 points.
The tournament started Friday afternoon with the Lightning defeating teams from Pittsburgh, 56-42, and New Hampshire, 58-37. On Saturday, they played and defeated teams from New Jersey 59-9 and the Lady Jokers from Queens, 63-47.
On Sunday the Lightning defeated a team from Rhode Island, 49-29, moving into the semifinals and blowing out the Staten Island Rebels, 52-26.
In the finals they played on Sacred Heart University’s main court at 7 p.m. against the host team, the Connecticut Warriors. The Lightning came out and looked like the ’69 Knicks. The girls were clicking on all cylinders, using a suffocating press, good ball movement and deadly outside shooting to take a commanding 43 -17 lead at halftime and coasted home from there to win the championship game 56-28.
Coaches Steve Meichione and Henry lervolino were proud of not only how their lightning team played, but the sportsmanship displayed and the resulting complements the team received from spectators on their style of play.
All the girls contributed in different ways to the success of the games. Angelina Waterman was the leading rebounder and had 25 points against the Jokers. Whitney Quakenbush was the second leading rebounder and played tough defense against opposing centers. Molly Dryer was an important player who rebounded, played good defense and scored when needed.
Erin McCutchan was a hard-nosed defender who was up near the top in steals. Megan Galvin also played tough defense and was one of our best outside shooters. Kern Morrison was sparkling for the team throughout the tournament, contributing defense, rebounding and scoring to the Lightning effort. Dani Iervolino was the team’s point guard whose ball handling made it almost impossible to press and shot 72 percent from the foul line for the tournament. Erica Meichione was the team’s best shooter, hitting three point shots from far out and scoring 15 points against Pittsburgh and the Jokers. Jasmine Pitts was the team’s best player, leading in scoring and steals and being almost impossible to defend. Her last 3 games She scored 21, 23, 28 points in the last three games.
