City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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HATBORO >> It’s the 30th anniversary for the Philadelphia/Suburban Women’s Summer Basketball League, the long-running league offering current non-Division I college players and alumni of any level a competitive setting to fill the summer.

This year’s league features 10 teams, six of them composed mainly of a D-II or D-III roster (Arcadia, Chestnut Hill College, Goldey-Beacom, Holy Family, Jefferson and West Chester), two alumni teams and the final two squads drafted together from the remaining players. The league runs with games on Tuesday and Thursdays at Kelly Bolish Gym (save for a bye week for the 4th of July holiday), all teams then qualifying for a league playoff.

From incoming freshmen getting a first look at their new teams to some local legends still lacing up the sneakers for the fun of it, the league lives by its mantra that all players should be given the opportunity to hone their skills for the upcoming collegiate season, have fun and stay fit.

Here are a few notes from the week of July 11:

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Skyler Searfoss (Jr | Holy Family)

Skyler Searfoss is starting to feel like Skyler Searfoss again, but she’s not rushing it either.

The rising junior guard at Holy Family is working on getting her game legs back this summer, following six months sidelined by a knee injury. What seemed like an innocuous collision in a game on New Year’s Eve would end Searfoss’ season early and be sure, she’s very glad to be back playing.

The flashes are there and for now, that’s plenty.

“I’m feeling pretty good, I take it day by day and some days are better than others but right now I’m working to get my quickness back,” Searfoss said after Holy Family’s group won Thursday night. “Playing at the college level, that’s a big thing being an undersized guard, so I’m going day-by-day, working out, getting my quickness back and adding some basketball on top of that.”

That game on Jan. 31, 2023 ran Holy Family’s win streak to 12 in a row and Searfoss went to bed that night full of anticipation for what CACC play would bring for her and her teammates. She’d been in a collision during the second quarter of that game, banging her left knee, but hopped on a stationary bike and finished it out feeling fine. By the next morning, the knee had swollen and everything changed in a hurry.

“I woke up the next morning and my knee was huge,” Searfoss said. “I got an MRI and it turned out I had a dislocation then they had to go in and do surgery. It was my last game and I didn’t even know it.”

At the time, the 5-foot-8 Searfoss was Holy Family’s leading scorer and coming off a freshman year where she’d been the CACC Rookie of the Year, seemed poised to keep that up as a deep Tigers team went into conference play. Instead, she’d spend the rest of the season on the bench with Lindsay Tretter soon joining her after the Archbishop Wood alum lost the rest of her senior season to an injury.

While Holy Family would finish 21-9 while reaching the CACC semifinals and Taylor Hinkle was named the progam’s first All-CACC First Team selection since 2019-20, the Tigers never had their full deck in 2024.

“This was my first real big injury and the timing couldn’t have been any worse,” Searfoss said. “We had a big chip on our shoulder heading into CACC play and I never saw the court after that. I still learned a lot from the injury, I’ve always wanted to be a coach so I got to see a different perspective from the sideline. Then Tretter going down, it was like a domino effect but I think we all learned and grew from it.”

Searfoss understandably would rather be 100 percent in October at the start of the season than the middle of July for a summer league, so she’s not overdoing it. She’s more than willing to play a few less minutes in the league and let the team’s three incoming freshmen guards Amy Ngo, Lola Ibarrondo and Cam Gregory play a bit more instead of trying to gut out a game where she’s not feeling her best.

“I’m glad to have those quick, little guards come in and give me a rest,” Searfoss said. “We can switch roles a little bit, last year I was mainly our only ball-handler but now I have confidence in my freshmen that they can bring the ball up and we can all switch. I tell them ‘you’re supposed to be here, so have confidence.’” 

Searfoss explained she opted for a less invasive surgery after the injury instead of a much more involved procedure that she said carried a recovery time that would have been similar to an ACL repair. It still had a cost, Searfoss adding she lost a lot of strength in her leg – especially in the quad muscle – so she’s been working diligently to not only regain that but fortify all the muscles around her knee

The trade-off is there’s a chance of dislocating her knee again, so she’ll have to play in a knee brace for at least the start of the season. That’s another advantage of playing in summer league, that brace is already getting broken in and Searfoss is able to get a feel for how to play in it. 

“They make less intensive braces that I can maybe try down the road but for now, I’m sticking with the safe brace,” Searfoss said.

There have been flashes this summer, the guard converting some of her patented acrobatic finishes around the rim and sticking shots from the perimeter, they’re just not at the frequency she’s used to having them at. Searfoss is being patient with it, she knows the payoff comes later on but the work in June and July helps get there.

“There are moments I feel like myself again but I think it’s mainly mental,” Searfoss said. “I just have to get back to that ‘domination’ attitude of ‘no one can stop me’ the way I used to have it and I think that will come with time.

“I’m glad I’m playing in this league, it’s helping get my confidence back so I’m not just getting thrown right into it.”

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Molly Masciantonio (Class of 2024 | La Salle)

While she plays the waiting game, Molly Masciantonio figured she’d play a few basketball games.

Masciantonio wrapped up her six-year college career in March, spending the last five at La Salle following one year in Division II at Holy Family. One of the nation’s best point guards statistically in her time with the Explorers, Masciantonio is getting a little bit of a fix playing summer league but she’s hoping there’s more serious hoops ahead.

Masciantonio has eyes overseas, she’s just waiting for it all to come together.

“It’s a good way to still get up and down the court,” Masciantonio said after Tuesday’s games. “I’m not trying to do too much, I don’t want to get hurt but overall it’s been fun.”

This summer, Masciantonio is playing on one of the team’s alumni dominated rosters. It’s a new group put together by USciences alum Jess Huber and Alexa Naessens, the Colgate grad the one who brought Masciantonio into the mix, and the recent La Salle grad figured it was a good way to bide her time while her agent worked out details of getting her overseas.

Current Division I players aren’t eligible to play in the league, but Masciantonio is one of a few former D-I athletes still playing including Naessens, Drexel alum Kate Connolly and recent Bucknell grad Julie Kulesza. 

Naessens played in the league for the first time two years ago, her first summer after graduating college then played a year in Ireland. Masciantonio is hoping it’s a similar path, saying her top opportunity to play overseas is Dublin although it’s not locked in at the moment.

“It’s always been my dream to travel the world and play basketball while hopefully getting paid while doing it,” Masciantonio said. “Hoping it all goes smooth in the next couple weeks. It’s a little shaky right now with the American imports rule, but I just hope I get an opportunity.”

Playing in the league has been a bit of an adjustment for Masciantonio, an All-PCL performer at Archbishop Carroll before her college career. At La Salle, she made her name as a passer, chalking up assists and rarely any turnovers and a defensive disruptor with a penchant for creating steals.

There’s not that much structure in the summer, especially on a team where nobody on the roster plays with anyone else outside of these 10 weeks. So, one of the nation’s best in terms of passing the ball over the last four college season is not really running the show with this group.

“I’m on the wing and I don’t think I’ve played there in six years,” Masciantonio said with a laugh. “It’s good conditioning, I definitely need it.”

A potential trip overseas would be a fitting next step on a career path that’s had quite a few turns along the way. Coming out of Carroll in 2018, Masciantonio wasn’t highly recruited so she took what was there and went to Holy Family, leading the Tigers in scoring during her lone season in Division II.

It seems odd to say with the current state of the transfer portal but at the time, it wasn’t as easy to change programs or levels and Masciantonio had to sit out the 2019-20 season in her first year on Olney Ave. Following that redshirt year, her first season eligible to play for La Salle happened to be the Covid season which tacked on another extra year of eligibility.

There aren’t many, likely not any, that can say they had that kind of college experience and for all the challenges it provided, Masciantonio embraces the path she took.

“I loved the game so much that coming out of high school, I was going to whoever wanted me,” Masciantonio said. “When you love the game, that’s what makes you work hard and makes you happy to be there. La Salle taught me a whole lot, especially to enjoy life but also work hard.”

At La Salle, she morphed into a textbook point guard but did manage to keep some of her scoring knack by reaching 1,000 points during her final season. Assists were definitely her thing however and the 5-foot-10 Masciantonio led the country in assist-to-turnover ratio during the 2022-23 season, recording 4.72 helpers for each giveaway and recorded one or fewer assists in a staggering 19 of 26 games that season.

Masciantonio departed La Salle with 399 career assists to 160 turnovers in four years, good for a 2.49:1 career assist-to-turnover ratio. She also leaves with the program’s single-game record for steals, nine, with 193 career swipes in 110 games (1.72 spg) generated from a mix of her height, wingspan, quick hands and instincts.

“The players around me were great scorers and playing with them through four years, I knew where they were going to be, so I give most of the credit to my teammates,” Masciantonio said. “I take a lot of pride in not turning the ball over. As a point guard, your job is to not turn the ball over so it ended up that my teammates were making a lot of shots and I managed not to turn the ball over.”

Masciantonio is hoping to know by early August if the opportunity to play abroad pans out and ideally she’ll then be heading overseas in September. While she laughed and said her dad has been getting on her case about a fallback option, Masciantonio hasn’t gotten this far by giving up or shying away from a challenge and she wants the next one to come in a different country.

“I don’t want a back up plan, this is what I want to do,” Masciantonio said. “Everything works itself out for a reason. I’ll find something, life is life, it’s what you make of it.”