Travel Team Celebrates Third Season as Champs

The Spring-Ford Rams Girls sixth grade travel basketball team recently captured its third straight Inter County Basketball Association (ICBA) championship with a victory over Warrington-Warwick GB. The Spring-Ford girls have now won three consecutive regular season, and postseason championships.

The team has also posted a 62-4 record over that three-year span with only one league loss, going 22-2 this season in league and tournament play. The ICBA league consists of travel teams from Montgomery, Bucks, Philadelphia, and Chester counties, as well as southern New Jersey.

Head Coach Mark Mitchell said he's had this group of girls for the last two years and before that, was the assistant the first season of the amazing run.

"It’s pretty much remained the same group of girls," Mitchell said. "There’s been a few switches here and there. We’ve had a few players depart for various reasons, but we also had a great influx from the Spring-Ford youth program, which has been flourishing over the past few years and has really brought us good products as far as the girls’ talents go and things of that nature over the last few years. That’s really helped to develop the girls and we keep getting new players who are at least challenging for those spots every year."

This season, Mitchell explained, was a little bit different in that the previous season, the girls went undefeated in the regular season, playoffs and all of the tournaments.

"We were an extremely strong team last year," said Mitchell. "We lost one of our better players due to CYO conflicts and things of that nature – one of our starters. We knew that was going to be a tough person to replace right from the get go."

In the girls' very first game, due to some of the restrictions of the tournament, the Rams took a loss by one point.

"Right away, it was a different season altogether," Mitchell said. "We took that as a learning lesson and went through most of the season rolling undefeated."

Then, reality again set in, as the girls lost to a team in the league for the first time.

"It was the best thing that could have happened to us," said Mitchell. "Again, it was another lesson to the girls that they have to come out and play every day. They went on from there and it was an improvement dramatically from the rest of the season."

The two losses this year came to Towamincen and St. Andrews of Bucks County. Mitchell further explained that in the St. Andrews game, the girls didn't press at all, as the coaches hadn't had sufficient time to review it the logistics of the press with the newer personnel.

"Our press and full court defense was our catalyst all season, and was a major factor from that game forward," said Mitchell.

From a scoring standpoint, Sarah Cooper was the standout for the Rams. She played down low and was the leading rebounder as well. As far as the rest of the team goes, Gabby Kane was the point guard who started every game and was the team's best distributor, according to Mitchell. But, really, the collective whole is what made the girls champions.

"We had a group of girls who just stepped up and played," Mitchell said. "Sometimes it was four to five minutes a game one week and the next game they were playing 15-20, depending on how they were playing. Our real emphasis is defense."

As for the team's development, Mitchell said the girls were like the "adopted" sisters of the varsity team, who had arguably the best season in school history this year.

"The unique thing is, and this is a good thing that had to happen," Mitchell said. "This year, we went to the Spring-Ford girls’ summer camp. We had some players attend those and became very familiar with the girls. Throughout this season, we had the opportunity, which was a really terrific experience, to work with the varsity team in some practice times.

"We saw them practice. They came and visited our practices and worked with us at times. We became their adopted team. We went to a lot of their games this year. In the week of their districts and state playoffs, they were sending players to our games. Even in our championship game, they sent players. It was extremely rewarding for our girls to mesh up with that team."

Mitchell said the program is a great feeder for the middle and high school programs, as there has been a tremendous amount of emphasis on the coaches learning from each other, having access to the high school and middle school counterparts – to see what they’re doing, and what they want to see come out of this program.

"We try to instill those values in the kids – the principles they want to teach as they develop," said Mitchell. "I see it as a great feeder program and one that’s really starting to gel with its older counterparts and starting to get good cohesion, I would say, so they can take those skills into the future."

Overall, Mitchell and the girls were happy for all of the support they received this year.

"It was amazing to see, even in our own Spring-Ford Youth Athletic League, the amount of support this team received, from the high school team, as well as all the teams within our league," Mitchell concluded. "I’d like to thank them for coming to see us in our final. We had a strong contingent there and it paid off in a very close game."