McKenna, Red Devils Share Shootout Memories

The 2010-11 season has been difficult, to say the least, for first-year head coach and Hinsdale Central’s girls basketball team, which takes a 2-18 record into Saturday’s West Suburban Silver game at Glenbard West.

Yet despite enduring a 49-39 loss to Chicago Bogan at Monday’s , McKenna smiles when he reminisces about the Shootout—a three-day girls basketball showcase in which he’s participated as a coach since the inaugural Shootout in 1990.

Prior to coaching the Red Devils, McKenna had been the head coach at St. Ignatius, where he compiled over 400 victories in 23 seasons before resigning after the 2008-09 season. McKenna has only missed coaching in one Shootout over the past 21 years—that being last winter when he wasn’t coaching.

The 2011 McDonald's Shootout featured 31 teams from three states (Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana), with games taking place last weekend, and on Martin Luther King Day.

“Last year was the 20^th anniversary (of the Shootout) and only (Maine West coach) Derril Kipp and I had been (coaching) in the first 19, but then I was off last year,” McKenna said. “I’ve told the kids that I have a ton of memories. So many great players have played at this thing. We started at Northwestern, then it went to DePaul and then it came out here. It’s one of my favorite days of the year.”

Senior point guard Maggie Brennan, who’s returned to the starting lineup after missing most of the season with a broken index finger, has been on varsity since her sophomore year. Unfortunately, the 2009 Shootout is where the Red Devils experienced their first loss of the season. Hinsdale Central went 31-3 that year and advanced to the Class 4A sectional finals.

“It was our first loss,” she said, “but there are great teams here and it’s a great experience to play good teams.”

Assistant coaches Gia Navarra and Morgan Kasperek, both former Red Devil standouts, also competed in the Shootout. Navarra and Kasperek went on to play collegiately at North Central College and the University of Iowa, respectively.

“Today our coach (Tom McKenna) was telling us the history of it (the Shootout), and how it came to be,” said Hinsdale Central senior Christine Rush, the team’s leading scorer. “Coach Gia was telling us about how she remembered playing in front of college coaches that were scouting her.

“It’s a huge honor being able to play in front of all these people, and playing in a tournament that’s very prestigious,” she added. “It’s a very big deal.”

Now, Hinsdale Central turns its attention to the remaining eight games on its regular season schedule, with the hope of finishing strong and going into the postseason on a positive note.

"We’re going to be on an eight-game winning streak and then we’re going to win a regional. Right?” McKenna said as he turned to Rush and smiled. “They may be the best group I’ve ever worked with. A lot of people would have died at this point. They have not died at all.”

McKenna and Rush liked how the Red Devils fought back during the second half of Monday’s Shootout loss after being outscored 18-5 in the second quarter and falling behind 31-19 at halftime.

“Earlier in the year, we would have gotten blown out by 20 or 25 (points),” McKenna said. “Today we hung in there and made it a game right to the end.”

“Even getting down in the second quarter, we still kept with it,” Rush said. “I think that’s what defines a team. We’ve just got to work on the little things like boxing out, being strong with our passes, dribbling, taking care of the ball. If we just worked on those, I think we could pull off a lot more wins.

“I feel like we have more team effort. I feel like we’re working a lot better with passing the ball around and looking for open players and things like that. I think earlier in the year we were kind of timid, so I think we’re a lot stronger and a lot more confident.”