City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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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 2025-26 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

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Erin Laney entered the offseason with sky-high hopes for her seventh Lower Merion squad. Life, as it does sometimes, intervened. 

Instead of four starters returning to a team that finished 14-11 overall (9-7 Central League), the best finish in Laney’s first six years, two knee injuries and two outward transfers in the span of a few weeks put a major damper on the spring.

“May was so much fun,” Laney deadpanned.

But despite a tough spring, the Aces have persevered. A young core, supplemented by an eager group of largely juniors and sophomores ready to step up, has plans to keep them right in the mix in a wide-open Central League that’s going to look much different from years prior. 

In a couple games at a September preseason event, the Lower Merion girls didn’t look like a team that had taken one body blow to the roster after another. Laney had more than a dozen girls with her as the Aces battled quality squads in Neshaminy and Abington Friends, and though they lost both, it was only by six total points, leaving Lacey proud of her team’s response to the difficult offseason. 

“I definitely would have put us as the favorite, if not top three, had I been healthy with everybody,” Laney said. “Injuries aside, the girls are really looking forward to continuing the momentum that they built last year. We are returning a lot of young talent that performed really well in league play.”

Laney’s reasons for optimism start with a pair of sophomores, guard Natalia Kasmer and forward Ella Liberatoscioli. Both honorable mention All-Central League picks a year ago, the 5-foot-3 Kasmer and 6-foot-tall Liberatoscioli are going to be the 1-2 punch that fuels the Aces’ offense this season and for the next three years. As a freshman, Kasmer averaged 10.9 ppg, 3.2 rpg and 2.0 apg, with a season-high 28-point outburst against Penncrest; Liberatoscioli averaged 7.5 ppg and 5.3 rpg, with a season high of 18 points.

The two have been teammates since they were 4th graders in the Main Line Girls’ Basketball Association (MLGBA), though they went to different middle schools, reuniting on the high school level. 

“This is their program,” Laney said. “We’ve been coaching them since middle school, this season and seasons to come with that class are what we’ve been preparing them for.”

“We’ve both seen each other’s game grow together and being able to see that growth and being able to keep that connection with each other, on the court and off the court, has helped us tremendously,” said Kasmer, whose older cousin Carson Kasmer helped lead the Aces’ boys to a Central League championship last year. “We read each other, we know where we’re going to be on the court, regardless of if we see something, if I call for a screen, we just read off each other and play off each other really well.”

Kasmer, the only returning full-time starter from last year, is really going to have to step into a leadership role. 

Senior guard Alexa Braslow, a second team All-Central selection last year, was slated to be the Aces’ on-court leader this year, but she was one of their two May knee injuries along with senior guard Lianna Wang, another starter, who tore her ACL a week before Braslow injured hers. 

The Aces aren’t the only ones dealing with losses. Garnet Valley, Conestoga and Haverford — the top three in the league for the last few years — have all graduated Division I players, though all three should stay plenty competitive. Radnor, which went 19-9 (11-5) last year and returns senior guard Nyah Yao, among others, will be strong. 

Lower Merion, Springfield (Delco.) and Strath Haven were fifth, sixth and seventh in the league last year, and all have reason to believe they’ll finish a few spots higher this time around. 

What’ll make the difference if the Aces are to push for a top-four spot and Central League playoff position is who steps up around their top two. Junior point guard Arryannah Glover has had a strong offseason and was one of Lower Merion’s top performers in that September showcase, the speedy 5-3 point guard playing on and off the ball along with Kasmer. 

“Coach Laney has had this whole thing during open gyms, just be aggressive,” Glover said, “which is something I was trying to work on over the summer, be more aggressive, have a scorer’s mindset.

“We don’t have as many scorers this year as we did last year because of how many people we lost. I’m going to have to be somebody who scores.”

Sophomore guard Joanna Lu and freshman wing Ava Shippen-Smith are two others Laney mentioned as likely contributors at the varsity level. The rest will be determined during the preseason and early in the season, that deep group Laney brought with her to that September event all vying for minutes

They’ll all have to jump right into the deep end this season. The Aces open up at Plymouth Whitemarsh on Dec. 4, then play at Garnet Valley five days later before hosting Conestoga on Dec. 11. Within the first two weeks of the season, they’ll either be right in the mix or know they have some work to do before the second half of the Central League matchups swing back around in late January. 

“It really is a crapshoot,” Laney said, “and we really won’t know who the top of the totem pole will be until we get to league play.”