Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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EAGLEVILLE >> For their last act as teammates, Abby Arnold and Jenna Kaufman wanted to bring Methacton girls’ basketball back.
The seniors have been a package deal since day one in a very literal sense but whenever this basketball season ends, so will a long run sharing a roster together. Their junior season wasn’t an easy one, the Warriors experiencing a rare down year, but Arnold and Kaufman saw plenty of potential in this season’s young core.
With the seniors setting the way, Methacton is back in familiar ground chasing the postseason.
“Last year, our games weren’t great, but we did have fun with the group of girls we did have,” Kaufman said. “This year, there’s a lot more personality. We are having a lot more fun this year with winning but the losing also hurts us a little bit more.”
That chase got a major boost Tuesday with a 59-44 win over visiting Pope John Paul II in a PAC crossover game.
Methacton seniors Jenna Kaufman (left) and Abby Arnold were born on the same day in the same hospital, the lifelong friends playing their last season as teammates this winter. Their hope is to get the Warriors back to the postseason.
Arnold, despite an off night shooting the ball, finished with a game-high 20 points and a double-double with 10 rebounds while Kaufman helped control inside with nine points and 16 rebounds. Entering play Tuesday, Arnold was the team’s leading scorer at 15.9 ppg while Kaufman was third at 5.3 ppg and the two were tied for the team lead with 83 rebounds.
It was almost like the universe wanted the duo to become best of friends and lifelong teammates. Not only do Kaufman and Arnold share the same birthday, Oct. 2, they were born in the same wing of Bryn Mawr Hospital.
Both of them conceded Senior Night is going to be an emotional one.
“Our families are like extended families,” Arnold said. “Some of our coaches who coached us in softball or basketball when we were little are going to come, it’s going to be a lot.”
Methacton never trailed on Tuesday and took a commanding 33-16 lead at halftime. PJP II, the PAC Frontier division leader, made a run in the third quarter but the Warriors took a timeout and regrouped.
Saydi Daye led the Golden Panthers with 16 points, scoring 14 after halftime and Sophie Vigliotta added 12 for the visitors.
While this basketball season will be their last as teammates, neither senior is going to be finished with athletics after this year. Kaufman will play a last high school softball season and she’s signed to continue her softball career at Bloomsburg.
The forward, who plays both corner infield spots in softball, isn’t taking the end of her basketball career lightly.
“We want to leave them on a good foot so they have confidence in themselves,” Kaufman said. “We don’t want to leave them stranded and we won’t, we want to give them that opportunity to play in districts and PAC playoffs.”
Arnold, who used to play softball with Kaufman, has committed to play basketball at Arcadia despite missing most of this past summer’s club season with an injury. The guard, who surpassed 900 career points Tuesday, thanked the Knights’ coaches for keeping in contact and giving her the opportunity.
“I felt really good about them,” Arnold said. “They kept checking in every few weeks to see how my back was doing and once I started to come back, they still checked up. All their coaches have come to games and that really stood out to me.
“For this program, yeah, I’ll be playing four more years but I won’t be playing with Jenna anymore.”
As for the 24-25 Warriors, Tuesday’s win puts them at 9-5 overall on the season and as of the late evening, in the No. 16 spot in the District 1 6A power rankings. They also improved to 6-2 overall in the PAC while retaining a 3-2 record in the Liberty Division, so they’re right in the mix for the PAC playoffs with crucial division games coming fast.
It’s a dramatic turnaround from last year, when the team finished 6-16 and well out of both the district and PAC playoff pictures. Warriors coach Craig Kaminski called it a “blip,” and he has a point considering Methacton was a state playoff team in 21-22 and a district playoff team in 22-23 when Arnold and Kaufman were freshmen and sophomores.
“Abby and Jenna, with the program being in the district and league playoffs their freshman and sophomore years, it was a big void at the end of the year being done on February 1,” Kaminski said. “They talked about it over the offseason and they’re using it to make sure we get back to the postseason.”
Arnold added that the Warriors had started to trend up at the end of last season, so she and Kaufman really emphasized to the returning players the importance of attending as many team activities as they could during the offseason. Attendance at open gyms was strong, the Warriors had consistently good turnouts for their summer league games and the now-juniors and sophomores had put in the work.
Kaufman gave props to sophomore Lila Cingiser as someone who really elevated her level of play from the end of last season. Four of the team’s five losses have been by five points or less, so while some of the mistakes have been frustrating, Arnold said the underclassmen aren’t earnestly trying to do the right thing and it’s more a matter of patience.
“We give each other grace,” Arnold said. “Because we are so young, we know there’s going to be mistakes, there’s going to be turnovers, there’s going to be bad shots, so we have to help each other through that so we can learn and get better.”
“They all have a voice,” Kaufman said. “They can speak their mind, they can tell us something that we’re missing.”
The Warriors may be losing a guard and a forward who have been lifelong friends and teammates, but the seniors are passing the mantle onto a freshman forward and guard in the same vein. Ava Wolf, a 6-foot-1 post player and Penny Wolf, a 5-foot-5 guard, aren’t related but they're also lifelong friends who have given Methacton a significant boost this season.
Ava Wolf is the team’s second leading scorer at 7.8 ppg and she’s already built a nice 1-2 dynamic on the interior with Kaufman. Penny Wolf is among the team leaders in assists and steals, a scrappy and tenacious defender with a little bit of burst in her offensive game.
“They’re both going to be excellent basketball players over the next four years,” Kaminski said. “What’s nice is when we put them out there, I don’t look at them like there’s two freshmen out there, I just let them play. They’re doing extremely well, they’ve come a long way in the first half of the season and we rely on them too.”
The two seniors aren’t surprised that the freshmen are having the type of impact they are.
“They’re not shy, which is good, it gives us more personality and it shows us we can trust them,” Kaufman said.
Regarding the seniors, Kaminski called Kaufman a force on the boards but also a great vocal leader who the rest of the team listens to and credited Arnold for continuing to deliver in all the areas the Warriors need her to.
They came in together in the truest sense and while their time as teammates will come to a close at some point between now and Marsh, Arnold and Kaufman want to send it out the right way. The seniors know they have a good team around them, so their objective is to make sure the group gets rewarded for the turnaround they’ve had this season.
“We’re probably the two last ones who really remember playing in the postseason and we want to get there but we want our girls to get there so they have experience once we’re gone,” Arnold said. “Then, they can lead their teams in the coming years.”
METHACTON 13 | 20 | 8 | 18 || 59
POPE JOHN PAUL II 5 | 11 | 15 | 13 || 44
M: Abby Arnold 20, Penny Wolf 10, Jenna Kaufman 9, Ava Wolf 9, Sydney Hockenbrock 5, Abby Masotta 3, Lindsay McCann 3
PJP II: Saydi Daye 16, Sophie Vigliotta 12, Grace Fitzgerald 8, Cassidy McCarthy 4, Caitlin Cianci 3, Rylee Derecola 1
Tag(s): Home High School Andrew Robinson Girls HS PAC (G) Methacton