By Joseph Staszewski
Senior Night is always an emotional one under normal circumstances, but it wasn’t normal for Rayne Connell.
The Christ the King senior guard had a special guest for her last regular season game in Middle Village: former Royals star Clare Droesch was in attendance.
She and Connell’s mother Angela walked her down during the Senior Night ceremony following a 65-55 win over visiting Archbishop Molloy in a CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens Division I basketball game Friday night. Droesch, her former Liberty Belles AAU coach, is battling Stage 4 breast cancer.
“It means the world just because I love her like she is my mother,” Connell said. “She is like part of my family, my blood.”
The UPenn-bound guard, who tweaked her knee Feb. 14 at practice, continued her strong finish to the season with 20 points and sophomore star Sierra Calhoun tallied a game-high 28. Taylor Butigian added eight. Amani Tatum paced Molloy with 18 of her 24 points in the second half. Kamille Ejerta scored 10 and Nyasha Irizarry eight.
“She was like, ‘You killed it girl, you killed it,’” Connell said of Droesch’s praise after the game. “I was like, ‘That’s for you, Clare.’”
The game also had plenty of meaning in the standings for Christ the King. A loss would have relegated the storied program to fourth place in the division after a defeat to Bishop Loughlin spoiled its chances at claiming second outright. CK Coach Bob Mackey showed his players the scenarios and felt it motivated their performance.
“This was a must-win,” Mackey said.
His team can now place as high as second if Nazareth loses the final two games of the regular season. Christ the King can also fall as low as fourth with a loss to Nazareth and defeat to Molloy in a potential third-place tiebreaker.
“That loss to Loughlin was just motivation,” Calhoun said.
Molloy (15-8, 7-5) led 19-13 early in the second quarter before the Royals (12-11, 7-4) ripped off an 18-2 run, including 10 points from Calhoun, to grab a 31-21 lead with 1:17 left in the half. The Stanners got within four, but Lauren Nuss buried a huge three-pointer at the buzzer. Connell started the second half with a three-point play and the CK lead was back up to 37-27.
It was never seriously threatened again.
“We couldn’t get a stop at all,” Tatum said. “That was our biggest thing. That would have put us back in the game.”
The night, though, belonged to Connell and the Royals seniors. The win and the walk after made it more memorable than she could have imagined because of Droesch’s presence. She shed tears after being hugged by her classmates and teammates before finally heading to the locker room.
“I’m going to miss this, the whole high school scene,” Connell said. “When you get to college it’s going to be [different].”
