Lady Sachems Nearly Pull Off Upset

The Reading girl’s basketball team had lost one game all season – a two-point defeat at Woburn in early February. Out of their 18 victories, only one team was able to stay within 10 points of the Rockets – York High School in Maine.

But there were the Sachems. The senior-laden team from (9-10) who lost to Reading (19-1) both times they played this year by an average of 32 points. Winchester held a two-point lead at the end of the first quarter, which increased to eight points by halftime, before Reading mounted a second half comeback, which saw the top-seed Rockets rally for a 49-35 victory.

“Reading is a real good team,” Winchester coach Jason Cacciapuoti said. “There’s a reason they only lost one game all season. But I couldn’t ask anymore of my kids. They played hard, they put pressure on the ball, they played with energy; they were great.”

Trailing 20-12 to start the third quarter, the Rockets started the second half trying to pick up the speed of the game. Their full-court press forced Winchester into turnovers and sophomore Olivia Healy took full advantage. The guard scored 25 of her 28 points in the second half.

“That first half was brutal,” Reading coach Kim Penney said. “We normally score that many points in a quarter. Winchester played hard and we just couldn’t hit anything. We knew we had to pick up our intensity in the second half and speed up the pace of the game.”

With the increasing pressure and the Reading comeback, Winchester still held onto a two-point lead at the start of the fourth. And even with the loss, the resiliency the team played with is what Cacciapuoti is most proud of.

“We were definitely raddled when they started pressing,” Cacciapuoti said. “When that has happened in the past we haven’t been able to quite comeback, but this night we stayed strong and were able to push back.”

But it was Healy who proved to tough for the Sachems to stop.

Early in the fourth, Healy had scored to tie the game, and as Winchester set up the inbounds pass, Healy stole the ball and laid it back in, giving Reading a 30-28 lead. Reading never trailed again as they finished the game on a 19-7 run.

“We were able to set the pace of the game in the second half,” Penney said. “We picked up our defensive intensity and were able to start knocking down some shots.”

Reading will play the winner of the Gloucester-Salem game on either Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

In her final game as a Sachem, Shelby Santini nearly helped lead the Sachems to victory. With Samantha Mangano sitting on the bench for most of the second quarter with two fouls, Santini worked the Winchester offense, finding the open player, forcing turnovers and scoring 13 of her 22 points in the first half.

But Santini’s not alone; Winchester will graduate three other seniors – Mangano, Katelyn Weber and Olivia Macrorie. The four players helped lead Winchester to three straight tournament appearances, and elevated the program to new levels of success.

“Those four seniors have done more for the Winchester program than anyone I can imagine,” Cacciapuoti said. “They made me a better coach; I don’t know how we’re going to replace them. It’s tough to see them go. I wish they could all go to college together and I can coach them again.”