City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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Four years ago, Alena Cofield didn’t even know how to play basketball.

After two whirlwind weeks, the Neshaminy senior won’t just be playing basketball in college, she’ll be doing it at the Division I level. Cofield is still processing another remarkable turn to what’s already been one of the area’s more remarkable basketball stories of the last few years 

Cofield announced on Tuesday that she’d be flipping her commitment, one of Jackie Hartzell’s last recruits at Arcadia becoming her first at Rider.

“I’ve been trying to put it into words, when I get a second to stop and think what my life is like, four years ago I genuinely would have never envisioned where I am today,” Cofield said. “It’s crazy to me. I just picked it up and it was like, I guess we’ll see where it goes from here so when you take that second to realize, freshman year me knew nothing.

“I’m a huge believer in God and believe it’s God’s plan but I would have never gotten here without my support system and it’s a great feeling to know my hard work has truly paid off.”

Hartzell was announced as Rider’s 20th head coach on April 3, taking on her first full-time head coaching job following three seasons at Arcadia and eight at USciences. It became the first step in what Cofield isn’t looking at as anything other than a life-changing opportunity.

Cofield formally announced her commitment to Arcadia on January 19. Hartzell and assistant coach Jim Ricci – who is following Hartzell to Rider – had made the Neshaminy senior a priority, seeing her as a potential cornerstone player.

While Cofield was elated to see Hartzell get a chance to prove herself at the Division I level, the guard did take pause to think where it left her. Cofield had bonded well with the players at Arcadia during her campus visits and it was a good fit academically, but the program would likely be bringing in a coach that hadn’t recruited her.

“I was coming out of math class, I saw it and my jaw dropped,” Cofield said. “I thought she was joking. I took a screenshot, sent it to my mom and said ‘what does this mean for me?’

“Jackie has been such an important part of my recruiting process, the main reason I was going to Arcadia was because of her and her coaching. I was in shock, I was scared, I asked my mom ‘what do I do?’”

So, she reached out to Hartzell and said she was probably going to re-open her recruitment. Hartzell didn’t take long to respond and a day later, Hartzell was at Cofield’s house talking to Alena and her mom Thadora Cofield. The new Rider coach had a lot going on, including a looming introductory press conference but she was clear about one thing: she wanted Alena to come with her to Rider.

“She asked ‘what would you think about coming with me?,’ It was me, my mom, my aunt and I looked at mom like ‘is she being serious right now?’” Cofield said. “Going D-I? What? She kept talking and all I could think was how great an opportunity it was.”

It was a complete shock. 

The first time she’d shown up at a Neshaminy practice, Cofield couldn’t even take two dribbles without losing the ball out of bounds. Now, she was being offered the chance to become a Division I athlete in a sport she’d picked up almost as a joke.

So, there was no doubt what her next move was.

“Her voice was quivering,” Neshaminy coach John Gallagher said. “She called me and I said ‘I’ve been waiting for this call.’  Jackie had given me a head’s up that she was going to extend an offer to Alena, so when she called me, her voice was quivering, I could hear her mom in the background, they were just so excited.

“She’s put so much time and work in.”

Cofield knew she needed to talk to Gallagher first and she wasted little time doing it.

“I kid you not, 30 seconds after she left, I went to the back yard and called Gal,” Cofield said. “I could hear in his voice how excited he was for me and it felt really good to tell him. I’m so appreciative of him and I wanted him to know a lot of this was because of him so I kept trying to assure him of that on the phone.

“I think he knew beforehand, he said ‘I’ve been waiting for this call,’ it was just good to talk to him.”

Gallagher also wasn’t surprised that even in the midst of being given the opportunity of a lifetime, Cofield even asked what to do in regard to the Arcadia players she had bonded with over the last few months. His advice was to go on the visit to Rider, meet with Hartzell in person and make a decision from there.

Ironically, Rider was almost an even better fit logistically for Cofield and her family. She said it’s about 17 minutes from her house to the campus in Lawrenceville, NJ and her mom – a teacher – works in Lawrenceville about five minutes from the university.

Cofield took her visit last week and got the full tour from a few players on Rider’s team. A couple of the girls she toured with are currently in the transfer portal but Cofield said they had nothing but positive things to say about the school

“It was amazing, the campus was much bigger than I expected and I loved it,” Cofield said. “They showed me the locker room, their gym, weight room and it was just such a huge difference even from Arcadia. They showed me their locker room and said ‘yeah, it’s kind of nice’ and I thought ‘kind of nice? This is huge!’

“This was a different feel. It was honestly nerve-wracking, the girls were huge compared to me but it also felt like home.”

Leaving an AAU practice late last month, Gallagher looked at his phone and saw a text from Hartzell asking him to call. His first thought was that a Division II program might have swooped in and poached Cofield and Hartzell was breaking the news.

Gallagher has known Hartzell, who also coached at Archbishop Ryan before moving to the college ranks, for more than 15 years. So when Hartzell said she had gotten the Rider job, Gallagher’s first reaction was excitement at seeing her years of work rewarded.

The conversion moved to Cofield and Hartzell told Gallgher she wanted the guard to join her in New jersey.

“I knew from the start she was a D-I athlete but if I would have told you three, four years ago that it’d be a D-I basketball athlete, that would have been a stone-cold lie,” Gallagher said. “Here we are today. It’s fun to have been a part of that journey and see how that all took place but it all starts with her putting the time in.

“Jackie and Jim mentioned to me, they saw how hard she works and they only expected that to continue.”

After her freshman year, where she played JV and survived mainly on speed and athleticism, Cofield learned she’d be starting as a sophomore. She had Gallagher help her find an AAU program, moved into the starting lineup for Neshaminy then made the move to the Mid-Atlantic Magic between her sophomore and junior seasons seeing that she needed to keep upping her level.

With the Magic unable to field a U17 team last summer, Cofield spent her last summer playing with Upper Makefield Heat Hoops on a roster full of mostly SOL league rivals. They became fast friends and her playstyle and mentality meshed perfectly.

The Arcadia staff also became frequent courtside observers last summer and their belief in what Cofield had become and still could be as a player forged their relationship. Cofield is the type of person that when someone backs her, she’s going to give them all that she has and that was how she saw the next four years going with Hartzell and Ricci.

“The fact that she asked me to come with her, I’m ready to put in so much work that I feel like I’m going to be a different player,” Cofield said. “She has put so much trust into me and it feels good to know someone believes that I am capable of that.

“At first, I was scared. I didn’t know if I was capable of all this and then I thought to myself, she didn’t offer this to anyone else.”

This season, Cofield was the lone senior in Neshaminy’s starting lineup. She averaged a near double-double, even at 5-foot-3, the point guard grabbed 9.3 rebounds per game, adding 10.1 ppg with 2.3 assists and 3.1 steals on her way to first team All-SOL Patriot honors.

Cofield, who is playing flag football for Neshaminy this spring, has already started her preparation for next year. The senior said she’s starting to lift more consistently; she’s already tabbed Ricci for some areas to focus on over the summer and plans to put even more time and dedication than the already impressive amount she’s given to the game.

Division III programs can’t offer athletic scholarships and even with academic scholarships or financial aid packages, many athletes at that level have to foot some of the bill. The offer to play at Rider also came with a scholarship which Cofield – who also works two part-time jobs on top of everything else – admitted was something else she never expected to have in front of her.

“My mom said ‘this is now your job, this is a full-time job for you,’” Cofield said. “I have a huge advantage coming out of college, which is a great feeling, this has helped me toward my future and it’s just crazy. One single moment just flipped everything.”

Cofield firmly believes that Hartzell and Gallagher before that didn’t pick her for no reason. The senior said the same about Neshaminy assistants Nick Reisig and Megan Gallagher, who stayed in her corner from that first wild practice, and every other travel coach or teammate she's had along the way.

They saw what she was willing to put in then watched her do all she could to maximize it.

Going to Rider, Cofield said she sees it as an open opportunity. The program will be embarking on a rebuild but she’s not expecting to have anything given to her, whatever she gets, she wants to earn.

“I’m fully prepared to do whatever it takes to show her she didn’t make the wrong decision,” Cofield said.