City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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GLENSIDE >> It didn’t take long for Delaney Bell and Hanna Rhoades to figure out they fit well together on a basketball court.

Despite both being local products, the current Arcadia seniors didn’t have a lot of familiarity with each other or how they played when they came into the Knights program four years ago. When their careers come to a close later this year - they’re hoping for a March date and not one in February - they’ll each do so with their name tied to a piece of program history.

While Bell and Rhoades take plenty of pride in their individual accomplishments, the seniors are looking for much more over the coming weeks.

“It’s really exciting for both us but also the team as a whole,” Rhoades said. “We were a big part of getting this program to where it is today and it’s great motivation for the season. We’re excited to be having a winning season right now, we have a good record in the conference so far and we want to keep it going and that’s what’s exciting for the whole team.”

The two seniors were at the center of another Knights win on Sunday, Rhoades leading Arcadia with 18 points and Bell posting a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds in a 68-57 win over Lebanon Valley College.

December was a milestone month for Rhoades and Bell, each of the seniors seeing their name ascend to the top spot of a program record list.

“I think it just attests to how hard and how much work we’ve put in over the last four years,” Bell said. “With this being our last year, we just want to win. Yeah, we have our names at the top of some lists but ultimately, we want a championship.

“It’s super cool, but we still have a lot of work to do.”

Rhoades, who hails from Huntingdon Valley and graduated from Abington Friends School, became Arcadia’s all-time leading scorer on Dec. 6 when she passed 2009 Caitlin (Sparks) Layne. The 5-foot-5 guard also currently holds the program record for 3-pointers, her quick-release and sky-scraping longballs a major component of her now 1,423 career points.

“I think people were more talking to us about it, we weren’t seeking to do that,” Rhoades said. “We just want to work hard and make it so we get a banner and a ring for our team”

A few weeks later, Bell found herself alone atop a different program record history. The 5-foot-8 wing from Bensalem became the Knights’ all-time leading rebounder on Dec. 30, passing Valerie DiMuro, and now has 845 career boards to her name.

Bell also made history last year when she became the first player in program history to be named MAC Freedom Player of the Year and is likely going to finish No. 2 to Rhoades on the all-time scoring list. She’s also got a chance to break the program career records for assists and blocks but like Rhoades, Bell is looking for a team title over any more personal milestones.

“It’s talked about, you see the names on the banners in (the gym) but it was never like ‘I have to go get this,’” Bell said. “We take each game as it is and whatever happens in that game is what happens.”

The milestones are a testament to the seniors’ consistency and durability. Rhoades and Bell are both approaching 100 games played in their careers, but that number pales in comparison to the number of hours they’ve put in the gym and the untold amount of reps they’ve gone through over that span.

When they came to Arcadia in 2022, the duo were part of a group of nine newcomers entering a program that hadn’t had much sustained success in the prior years. They stuck it out, also making sure to note their fellow seniors Abby Beam and Morgan Bigler did as well, through a coaching change before they'd even played a game and another before their senior year while helping bring in a resurgence to the program.

“We have a supportive team,” Bell said. “We all pick each other up and that’s been a big part of it too.”

Despite growing up and playing in such close proximity to each other, Rhoades and Bell really hadn’t crossed paths that much before they got to college. Rhoades thinks they might have played against one another when she was at Nazareth Academy before she transferred to AFS and Bell added they knew of each other through some mutual connections, but their first summer league ahead of freshman year at Arcadia was their first true introduction.

It didn’t take them long to see they were a good combo. Rhoades is an excellent scorer, she led the MAC Freedom in total points last year, where Bell can score but thrives doing everything else from rebounding to passing to disruptive defense.

A good percentage of Bell’s assists have probably gone to Rhoades and the two used their on-court connection to forge an extremely tight friendship off it over these last few years together.

“Our games are a little bit different but they do work really well together,” Bell said. “I’m always looking for her on the outside and she’s always looking for me on the inside…”

“Yup,” Rhoades added with a grin.

“...I have to make sure I step it up but if I’m not hitting, she’s always hitting,” Bell continued. “I think it’s just a matter of coming in day one together and just building it up to now through continuously playing together.”

After Jackie Hartzell took over the program ahead of their freshman season, Bell and Rhoades immediately made an impact that only expanded as they helped push the Knights to the MAC Freedom playoffs in each of the last two seasons. Last spring, Hartzell left to take over at Rider, meaning the seniors would be playing for a new coach for their final season.

Luckily for them, their next coach had a pretty good idea who they were. Diane Decker had spent the last three years at Lebanon Valley College scheming to stop Rhoades from scoring and to keep Bell off the boards - the Dutchmen swept Arcadia last year - but it still took some adjusting to being on the same side.

“She knew us very well because she’d scouted us so now she knows how to use us,” Rhoades said. “She’s definitely helped us on the defensive side with a lot of things too, I think that’s an area we’re really stepping up this year.”

“It’s definitely something that was interesting when we first had to go about it,” Bell said. “But she knows the conference so well that it was kind of a seamless transition because she knows how we play.”

Aside from their gaudy numbers, Bell and Rhoades have also grown into leaders for the team. They’re both captains this year, Bell is the Vice President of the university’s The Hidden Opponent chapter which prioritizes mental health in student-athletes and Rhoades has put an emphasis on being a unifying voice for her teammates

“We always had people stepping up as leaders and I feel like it’s just been my job this year, a personal job for me to step it up as a leader,” Rhoades said.

“There’s a lot of turnover and we had a lot of new people coming in, so I focused on making sure everybody was on board,” Bell said. “For me personally, sticking with my confidence, even if it’s not my day. It’s our senior year, we don’t have very many left, so I’m playing hard with everything I’ve got.”

The two are very like-minded in a lot of ways. As quickly as they recognized that their play styles matched, they were just as fast to pick up on their mutual competitive drive and desire to win over anything else.

It’s why they can recall a lot of days where it might have just been the two of them sharing a gym working on something or other, not with a thought of using it to propel themselves up a career accomplishment list, instead just making sure they were prepared in case they needed it to help win a game later on. Bell and Rhoades have more than secured their individual legacies at Arcadia, but there’s something they’d like to share a lot more: a MAC Freedom championship and a ticket to play in March.

“After three years of being so close and this being our last year, to get the chance, I know we’re giving it our all,” Rhoades said.

“That’s the last piece of the puzzle here,” Bell said. “We can be whatever we are on a list but if we don’t have a team banner in the gym, then I feel like the job’s not done. We’re doing all we can to get this team a banner.”