City of Basketball Love

By Finn Courtney (@finncourtney_)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2024-25 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

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It’s a time of transition, youth and competition for Pennsbury girls basketball.

The Falcons graduated seven seniors after another trip to states a season ago, including star guard Sofia Vitucci who capped her career after scoring 1000 points during her four seasons at Pennsbury. 

While losing players to graduation is tough enough, the loss of rising sophomore Joley Hohman for the season with an ACL tear is an unexpected loss. Hohman, the headline returner for Pennsbury, was expected to start and take a major step forward this season. To say the least, head coach Frank Sciolla is looking at a much more fluid rotation than years past. 

“It’ll probably be a number of different people [carrying the scoring load],” Sciolla said. “We graduated seven seniors, the majority of them who are three or four year varsity players and then (Hohman) tore her ACL, so she’s out. So really, the deck is wide open for people to play.”

With Hohman’s absence, that leaves seniors Maggie Burns and Ava Jordan as two players who will need to jump into the starting lineup and play a major role not just on the court, but off it as the leaders of this young Falcons team.

“From the on-court piece, you’re gonna need it from Maggie Burns and Ava Jordan and they're in different roles,” Sciolla said. “Their roles have been complementary throughout their career, they've come in as defensive stoppers or as rebounders, they’re good in full court pressure. And now this year, the ball's gonna be in their hands a little bit more, so they're going to have to be better and they're going to be guarded in a different way.”

Without those two and sophomore Sammie Haws — a likely starter at the start of this season, after getting a lot of playing time as a freshman last season — at events this fall, Sciolla’s gotten a look at his underclassmen. And Pennsbury might have something special in freshman Alyssa Thomas. 

Thomas starred in their win over Agnes Irwin at one showcase, leading the Falcons in scoring and knocking down four three-pointers, while later being the x-factor and go-to leader in their other win of the day against Parkland. The freshman looks every bit of her young age, but her play tells the tale of a veteran.

“We did a great job today as a team and we all helped each other and those shots wouldn't have happened without my other teammates,” Thomas said afterwards. “I've been trying to work on the defensive end this summer, with rebounds and deflections, and obviously not reaching.”

For Sciolla, who’s known Thomas since she was in fourth grade, her coachability, work ethic and innate basketball IQ is no surprise. 

“She plays at the speed she wants to play at, she doesn’t get sped up and that will enable her to be successful,” Sciolla said. “She just loves playing, she’s constantly working on her game, she’s got good court vision and so it gives her an edge that we're obviously gonna need.”

Other returners include starting center Emily Panero and sophomore guard Shea Quenzer. Quenzer was mostly a JV player last season, but suited up for varsity towards the end of the campaign. While her offensive skills are still developing, her defensive chops were seen time and time again in fall wins against Agnes Irwin and Parkland, helping to hold them to 24 and 17 total points respectively - with Hohman’s injury, Sciolla says that the 5-2 guard will likely be asked to play in an increased role.

The competition for playing time will be an open field, as between the returners, many talented incoming freshmen are coming in with a ton of upside. Forwards Grace Schaffer and Adriana Oberto and guards Keira Socha and Marley Davis all flashed potential throughout Saturday’s activities while another freshman, Bella Stewart, is coming off an injury, but has both size and athleticism in her favor to get on the court.

To Sciolla, he sees both sides of the situation, with some excitement over how much day-to-day development will occur but also the uncertainty in not knowing who’ll start, who’ll come off the bench, who will rise and fall. 

”We are gonna have situations where I think there'll be five or six people that have varsity uniforms and there will be a lot of nights where people are switching them and changing them,” Sciolla said, on the roster. “We were actually thinking about, you know these kids, we all do these like media shoots, photo shoots and we’re like, we really can’t do that this year. We can’t have the varsity in their uniform on November 25 because that might not be the varsity by December 12.”

While size to the outside viewer may seem like a problem for the Falcons, with Panero topping out for the entire team at 5-10 and the majority being between 5-3 and 5-9. Yet, this is nothing new for Sciolla as the physical style of defense Pennsbury’s been used to playing lets them “get away with it.”

Thomas, despite entering just her first year as a high schooler, let alone varsity, seems more than game to the challenges faced and herself sees the high upside the Falcons will have on the defensive end.

“We are a great team defensively, defense is gonna be our big thing this year,” Thomas said, “[we’ve] been really working at bettering ourselves on the offensive end and I think that will work all great together as a team.”

Even with the uncertainty with regard to rotations and youth movement in full bloom, Sciolla is doing anything but tampering down expectations. After all, winning over 500 games gives the Pennsbury coach a unique perspective on blocking out outside noise and focusing on the on-court play.

“It’s gonna be a really interesting year for us. But we’re not dialing down anything we’ve done, we’ve been in states the last six years, we’re not changing our expectations just because only one kid can get into an R-rated movie,” Sciolla said. “We’re gonna get better and better and hopefully, by the middle of January, it’d be like we normally are and have a chance to compete with the better teams in our league and our district.”