City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADrobinson3)
—

WARMINSTER – The Jaida Helm experience covers a lot of ground.

Tuesday, the Lansdale Catholic senior ended the first quarter going down in a heap and clutching her left knee and in the fourth quarter, lost a shoe midway through an offensive possession. In between, she managed to jam a lot of winning basketball plays between scoring, rebounding, passing and defending.

The Jaida Helm experience is never pre-determined but Tuesday night, it was invaluable as the Crusaders knocked off Archbishop Wood 49-31 to force a three-team logjam atop the PCL table.

“I was playing against my AAU coach and a few of my teammates, they were No. 1 and we were No. 2, so tonight was a battle for No. 1, I’ve thought we were No. 1 and we played like it,” Helm, in her first season at LC, said. “We kept our intensity, we never got down on ourselves, we just got onto the next play if we messed up.”

Helm, who came to Lansdale Catholic this summer after three years at Abington, has given the Crusaders a lot of what they needed between her energy, competitiveness and scoring ability. She’s had to take on a bit of a different role, asked to give up some of her scoring in order to be a screener or facilitator for her teammates, but that hasn’t curtailed the 5-foot-11 forward’s energy.

The only reason Helm ended up on the floor holding her knee at the first quarter buzzer was due to that aggression, the senior grabbing a rebound and pushing the ball up the floor trying to score before the clock expired. Helm, who got up quickly after going down and played through some pain the rest of the night, had been a nonfactor in LC’s loss to Cardinal O’Hara last Thursday due to foul issues and wasn’t going to let it happen to league games in a row.

“I had a lot of fun, it’s been a lot of fun playing with them, it’s a really great group and I’m just excited for the rest of the season,” Helm said. “I’m getting used to the offense, getting used to playing with everybody, especially Gabby (Casey). Gabby’s a great player, I’m trying to make sure she gets her shots because if we’re going to win, she has to score.”

Helm finished with a game-high 17 points, adding 10 rebounds, three assists and a block to her line while also matching up with Wood senior Deja Evans on defense. Evans had destroyed LC on the glass in both of the team’s meetings last yea,  including the PIAA 4A title game where the Vikings forward had a state title game record for rebounds. 

Tuesday, anything the Albany recruit got was going to come hard-earned and Helm said her mentality was if she got scored on, give props to a good player and move on to the next possession. Her first score didn’t come until the 1:40 mark of the opening quarter, but it gave the Crusaders a 7-6 lead and her 3-pointer with 23 seconds left and that crash to the floor that allowed Casey a putback at the buzzer staked LC to a 12-9 lead after eight minutes.

The Jaida Helm experience is nothing new for Wood coach Mike McDonald, who coached Helm on his Mid-Atlantic Magic AAU team alongside a few Vikings including Allie Fleming and Kara Meredith with a few other players from their roster among the full house crowd. McDonald, who complimented LC as a whole, isn’t surprised that Helm has been a factor in LC’s now 8-1 PCL record.

“She’s just a competitor,” McDonald said. “She just wants to win and she’ll do anything for her team. She’ll sacrifice her body, she brings energy and tonight, she made shots and got to the basket. She was really, really good tonight and part of me’s proud of her, but every night you know she’s going to compete and bring her best.”

Helm said she didn’t try to look over at Wood’s bench or gauge McDonald’s reactions, she just had a game to win.

“I just wanted to beat him,” the senior said.

Helm had her best offensive quarter in the second, scoring six points as Lansdale Catholic took control with a 14-4 edge in the frame. Casey, who finished with 13 points distributed pretty evenly across the four frames, had two buckets in the fourth but LC coach Eric Gidney pointed to the pair of scores by Saniyah Littlejohn that opened things up.

Casey, who was AAU teammates on the Philly Belles with Wood’s Evans and Delaney Finnegan — who guarded the Crusaders’ all-time leading scorer — was again well-covered by the Vikings but unlike last March in Hershey, had some help with scoring. 

“It certainly is a difference, she allows us to do a lot of things defensively and offensively that we can’t do when she’s not out there,” Gidney said. “It puts a lot of pressure on teams because they know we have a little bit of size to counter some of theirs. I thought she did a great job on Deja and a great job of helping out on everybody else, so she was a difference-maker in a team win.”

Wood was led by eight points from Meredith, the Holy Family recruit adding seven rebounds, an assist and four blocks in front of her future coaches and a couple teammates in attendance including Wood alum Lindsay Tretter. Ava Renninger had seven points, all in the third, for a Vikings team that never seemed to settle into a rhythm offensively.

Aside from various AAU and future college teammates, the stands were packed to give a proper feel for a game between two of the top teams in the Catholic League. By the end of the night, it was Lansdale Catholic’s student section going crazy while receiving the players at the final horn and drowning out Helm mid-answer as they cheered her filing out of the building.

“Everything she brings for us helps,” Casey said. “She’s always on the floor, the energy she brings on defense radiates to everybody and I think that was the key to our win today. She had an amazing game and I’m just happy for her.”

Helm is uncommitted but seemingly has new interest coming in by the week. She has a group of Division II programs she’s been in contact with and most recently has been hearing from Winthrop at the Division I level.

Guard Olivia Boccella, who hit a near-back-breaker of a three off an assist by Helm to end the third quarter, said the senior has helped the team in another area as well. After finishing two interviews, the first person Helm found was Boccella, grabbing the guard’s shoulders and propping her up for her efforts in the game.

“She’s always picking me up,” Boccella said. “If I miss a three, anything, she’s the best person to be on the court with.”

Wood finishes the regular season at home against St. Hubert’s while LC travels down to Archbishop Carroll on Thursday. The teams, along with O’Hara, remain locked atop the PCL table with 8-1 records so the place-setting is yet to be done.

Gearing up for the grinder that is the postseason, the Crusaders are glad they have the Jaida Helm experience on their side, even if they’re not always sure what comes with it.

“She usually ends up in the medical ward and the (locker room) every single game, either a piece of apparel is falling off or a piece of her body is falling off,” Gidney said. “To roll back in and keep battling, toward the end she was pretty wiped out, she just kept helping us get boards and protect the basketball.”

By Quarter
Lansdale Catholic: 12  |  14  |  15  |   8   ||  49
Archbishop Wood:  9   |   4   |   9   |   9   ||  31

Scoring
LC: Jaida Helm 17, Gabby Casey 13, Olivia Boccella 9, Nadia Yemola 6, Saniyah Littlejohn 4

AW: Kara Meredith 8, Ava Renninger 7, Deja Evans 6, Delaney Finnegan 5, Emily Knouse 5