City of Basketball Love

By Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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HORSHAM — Miranda Liebtag found out like everyone else did.

Liebtag, an Abington graduate, was expecting to use her fifth year of eligibility to complete her basketball career at Cabrini, score her 1,000th point and captain a young team that reached the Atlantic East Conference title game a year ago. That was until Friday morning when a shock announcement that Villanova was buying Cabrini and the university would cease operations at the end of the 2023-24 academic year.

Now, Liebtag and her teammates are trying to figure out what’s next and nobody has the right answers at this point.

“As a team, we’re upset because at Cabrini, we’re a family,” Liebtag said. “To hear this news, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Everyone has to make decisions for themselves and as a family, we’re kind of broken because we’re sisters at the end of the day.”

A handful of Cabrini’s players are taking part in the Philadelphia/Suburban Women’s Summer Basketball League running through August, with Tuesday night their first time together since the announcement broke over the weekend. They expected to use the league, which runs to early August, as a chance to get some extra experience to build on a 14-14 (8-4 AEC) season with last year’s top six scorers slated to return.

Now, there’s a chance that their last game this summer will be their last time ever playing together.

Rising senior Brielle Fitzpatrick said ideally, the Cavs will play out their final season but realistically, that might not be possible. 

“I woke up (Friday) and that was the first thing I saw, everyone talking about it,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s crazy, you think going into your freshman year that you’re going to finish out at one school, but then you get news like this and it’s heartbreaking.”

Liebtag, who sits about 150 points from 1,000, has put her name in the transfer portal but she’d love nothing more than to take it out and finish what she started where she started it. The grad student, who already lost the 2020-21 season to the Covid-19 pandemic, already has options to play elsewhere and she was instead thinking of her younger teammates.

Rising sophomores Ava Possenti (Garnet Valley), Emma Pyne (Pennridge) and Ella Gordon (Ursuline Academy) — the AEC Rookie of the Year — are all playing in summer league and passed on commenting but shared they were as shocked as everyone else hearing the news. Liebtag, who has taken on a leadership role she never anticipated the last few days, explained it’s the uncertainty that has the younger girls shaken.

It’s not just that they won’t get to keep playing at Cabrini, they’ll have to find somewhere else to finish their education. 

“It’s still up in the air. We heard about it Friday and we’re still trying to figure it all out,” Liebtag said. “It depends how it works for everybody academically.”

“Everyone has a different path, different majors, different dreams,” Fitzpatrick added. “We all understand you have to do what’s best for you at the end of the day. Everyone is still working through it because it’s so fresh and so new.”

As Liebtag pointed out, this isn’t a scenario that just affects athletics. Every student will need to find somewhere else to go by the end of the upcoming academic year and the same goes for staff, faculty and potentially coaches.

It affects everyone in some way and especially at a small university like Cabrini, the athletic programs all feel it hard. Should Liebtag, Fitzpatrick or Katie Rodriguez — the team’s other rising senior playing with the summer league team — end up having to transfer if they want to keep playing, they’d be behind in joining a new program with most college rosters being pretty much set at this point.

“Cabrini’s a small school, but most of our students are athletes, so everyone talks to everyone,” Fitzpatrick said. “Everyone feels the same way.”

Liebtag put her name in the transfer portal at the recommendation of Cavs coach Kate Pearson, the team captain adding her coach told every player on the roster to do the same. As of now, the players don’t know what it would take for them to play this coming season, so they couldn’t offer specifics other than a desire to see it happen.

The team’s youth, which was expected to be an asset, is now a question mark. With an older team, it may have been easier for enough players to stay for the final year, but Liebtag and Fitzpatrick noted that might not be as easy for underclassmen. With several other area universities including St. Joe’s, Immaculata and Gwynedd Mercy, opening their doors and lining up ways to transfer credits or financial aid packages to Cabrini students, it may be an opportunity they can’t let go by.

“We’re leaving our sisters,” Liebtag said. “It’s how it came about, how we found out. You go ending the year thinking we lost in the championship, let’s go back and now we don’t even know if we can. That’s the most upsetting part.

“Where do you go for help? I feel for the girls, you go to a program wanting to change it and now we’ve kind of had that taken away from us.”

The sale hasn’t been finalized yet, but Cabrini has seen falling enrollment and financial challenges in recent years that left the university no path forward to continue operating. 

“This is something you can’t write up,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s something you can’t ever plan for or ever expect. It’s heartbreaking, hopefully it just ends up for the best in everyone’s favor.”

There’s no perfect ending in this, even if the Cavs are able to play, Liebtag reaches a milestone and Cabrini gets back to then wins an AEC title, it still all ends next spring. Still, they’d at least like a shot at it.

“Hopefully, we can have one more ride,” Liebtag said. “If we can’t, then I just want what’s best for everybody.”