City of Basketball Love

By Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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EAST FALLS — During a team meeting in their weight room early this season, the Barrack Hebrew Academy girls basketball team talked about cutting down the nets.

As the first game of a Penn-Jersey Athletic Association championship doubleheader at Jefferson, the Cougars didn’t get an opportunity to climb the ladder Thursday. They were needed for the boys games to follow.

Instead, Barrack will celebrate the 51-35 championship victory over New Foundations with a net cutting on its home court next week to add one last memory to a season that’s been full of them.

“We talked about making those memories, and having those moments where you’re going to remember that,” Barrack coach Sean Rochester recalled. “You’re not going to remember how many points you had against a random team in the league. You’re going to remember being together in these moments, cutting down the nets, the bus trips, we went to New York City and we won a tournament there, stuff like that. I’m definitely proud of what they did.”

The Barrack Hebrew Academy girls basketball team poses with its Penn-Jersey championship trophy on Thursday at Jefferson University. (Photo: Owen McCue/CoBL)

Senior Eden Singer paced Barrack with 20 points in the win, followed by 16 from freshman Sami Neff. New Foundations got 15 points apiece from senior Angel Morris and sophomore Keniyah Moody.

Barrack won the three previous meetings against New Foundations this season by an average of 27 points per game, but the Bulldogs were the one that got out to the strong start Thursday. After an 8-8 tie at the end of the first quarter, Moody helped her team jump out to a 15-10 advantage in the second quarter. 

A deep triple from freshman Mikayla Trajtenberg (eight points) swung momentum Barrack’s way and put the Cougars ahead 17-15 midway through the second. Trajtenberg had six points in the period as Barrack closed the half with 12 straight to go into halftime with a 22-15 lead. Singer also had five in the second, scoring 12 of her team's first-half points.

“We have such a young team, and along with the seniors we all bring so much energy and there’s so much cohesion,” Singer said. “It’s just really nice to be such a family, to play together and hype each other up.”

Neff, who had just one point in the first half, got hot in the third quarter. She drained a triple 15 seconds into the second half to extend the lead to double digits. The freshman had 12 points in the third as Barrack sailed into a the final period with a 38-19 lead that grew past 20 points early in the fourth.

Led by its senior Morris, who was emotional as she exited the game, New Foundations tried to rally late in the fourth, stringing together a few buckets and cutting the Barrack lead back down to 46-32 with 3:30 to go. That's when Neff quelled all hope with her third three of the second half.

“I think Mikayla Trajtenberg took a charge and it fired me up, then I hit a couple threes and I was just ready to play,” Neff said.

“It started out a little rough, but throughout the game we just had high energy, and it was amazing.”

Rochester pointed at his seniors — Singer, Talia Erlbaum, Jenna Ufberg and Becca Miller — for helping his team wade through the rough start to the game. Though Singer was the big scorer, Ufberg, a 5-8 forward, grabbed 10 boards and tallied four assists and a steal to go along with her two points.

“They were the leaders,” Rochester said. “They were the ones who set the tone in practice and games. It didn’t go our way right away, and they were the ones who were like, ‘Calm down. We got this. Keep your composure and keep playing hard.’ It started to turn as the game went on. We’ve got good young players, but without (the seniors), we don’t have a season like this.”

Neff said Singer tied the team together this season, making them feel like a family. Singer went to elementary school at Barrack’s feeder school before continuing with middle school and high school in Bryn Mawr.

Her older sister Jessie was on the team with her last season and her younger sister Noa is a freshman who had four points Thursday. Singer joined her mother as one of the few 1,000-point girls scorers at Barrack earlier this season.

“It was really an amazing experience, but my team helped me so much to get there," Singer said. "So it feels weird just celebrating myself because I feel like my team had such a big influence on me getting to 1,000. It’s a really cool thing, especially at a school where it doesn’t happen that often.”

Singer played in her first Penn-Jersey title game as an eighth grader. She and her classmates won their first league championship as freshmen in 2019-20. COVID all but cancelled their sophomore campaigns in 2020-21, Rochester's first season.

They lost in the league title game last season before coming back as seniors and running the table in the league and capping their careers with a championship.

“Barrack basketball has just been an amazing experience throughout the whole thing,” Singer said. “To go out with a bang, and win senior year is so amazing. I’m just so sad to be leaving this family and this team because it just brings so much happiness and so many amazing things that I’m going to miss so much.”

By Quarter

New Foundations 8 | 7 | 4 | 16 || 35

Barrack Hebrew 8 | 14 | 16 | 13 || 51

Scoring

New Foundations: Angel Morris 15, Keniyah Moody 15, Tian Thompson 4, Jada Drummond 1.

Barrack Hebrew: Eden Singer 20, Sami Neff 16, Mikayla Trajtenberg 8, Noa Singer 4, Jenna Ufberg 2, Talia Erlbaum 1.