Syracuse, N.Y. – The Bishop Grimes girls basketball team stole the hearts of Syracuse last winter, winning a teary-eyed home playoff game just hours after their school announced its closure and going all the way to claim the sectional championship, the last in the school’s storied hoops history.
The team became a symbol in the fight for students, parents, and alumni to show their pride in their school and protest the Syracuse Roman Catholic Diocese’s decision to close it.
The Cobras rostered just one senior and a bevy of young talent who believed that season was just the beginning of what could have blossomed into a perennial contender. Jordan Vaught, their first-year head coach and a Cobra alumna herself, looked like a rising star on the sideline.
In the 10 months since, the players and coaches from that team have spread out across the Syracuse area, though they still keep in touch and cheer each other on, no matter what colors they wear.
Of the 10 players who scored a point for last year’s team, seven transferred to the new Bishop Ludden-Grimes school and five play on the team this year.
Starting guards Aaliyah Zachery, now a sophomore, and Sicily Shaffer, now a junior, teamed up and transferred to Baldwinsville. Loyi Mugushu transferred to Henninger and no longer plays basketball. Kierra Baxter, the team’s lone senior, now plays basketball at SUNY Potsdam.
Bishop Grimes athletic director and boys basketball coach Bob McKenney took a post at Syracuse charter school OnTECH, where he’s leading the school’s three-year-old basketball program. Vaught and two of her assistants took the year off from coaching.
Syracuse.com spoke with four players from last year’s team, as well as Vaught and McKenney. Here’s their story, in their own words.
Bob McKenney, athletic director and boys basketball coach: We’d all be lying if we said we weren’t still sad that we’re not where we were. I think most of us loved what we were doing and loved our setup. There’s still some bitterness out there for all of us, but we’re trying to work our way through it.
Vaught, academic counselor and girls basketball coach: I think it’s been really helpful to have each other.
McKenney: We have a group of us that have gotten together at least twice a month. A lot of coaches, a couple of teachers and some administration who get together a couple of times a month. We had our Christmas party. We’ve stayed close.
Vaught: So, actually, a couple of my coworkers and I, we started a business (Education Collective). So obviously, we loved what we did on a day-to-day basis with our kids and we didn’t want to not have the opportunity to do something like that anymore. So we actually started a little business and it’s kind of pretty much just doing everything that we did at Grimes, but as a private entity, and we’re able to work with a much larger and broader population.
Sicily Shaffer, Baldwinsville junior: I keep in touch still with some of the Grimes girls and Kierra since she graduated. She still comes to mine and Aaliyah’s games, and she goes to a lot of Ludden girls games.
Vaught: I had a couple of girls come to me (to help decide what school to transfer to). Obviously, it’s tough. Realistically, when you think about it, sometimes when you have conversations with them, you forget they’re 15 and 16 and 17 years old, right? Some of them were really having a hard time trying to figure out what they felt was the best decision for them.
Olivia Bitz, Bishop Ludden-Grimes senior: For me, it was kind of a done deal because my other option was East Syracuse Minoa, and I don’t really know anyone from ESM. My mom also taught at Grimes, and she got the job at Ludden, and all my friends kind of just decided to go there. I was definitely upset when I found out Aaliyah and Sicily weren’t going there because we all had really good team chemistry last year, so that was kind of hard. But I knew (what) Ava Carpenter (was doing) going into my decision, so that kind of helped, Riley, all those girls. Angelina Delledera and I have been going to school together since kindergarten, so I’m not going to graduate without her.
Riley Abernethy, Bishop Ludden-Grimes junior: I wanted to stay where my people were.
Shaffer: Aaliyah and I wanted to keep the chemistry that we had, so we wanted to stick together. So we found a school that we both really like, and we like all the girls on the team, and we’re like, this is what we want to do. And it’s been amazing since. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Vaught: They had such a good connection last year on the court and the year before that developed and they just play so well together. And off the court, they get along very well together, too. They’re really close.
Shaffer: It was so sad and devastating (at last year’s graduation). I didn’t want to believe it, but you had to come to it. It was so sad. I’ve never cried so hard because going from Central Square to Grimes, it was so crazy. And I just thought that was my little family, my second family. It’s just crazy to think that that’s now gone. We’re all split up now.
Bitz: It was awkward in the beginning, for sure. We were Grimes and Ludden, separate, like none of us really talked to each other. But honestly, it got super easy for me right when basketball started with open gyms and stuff. Me, Jaylianna Pascarella and Ava Carpenter, we always played each other when we were in elementary school and we were rivals, it was St. Rose and Blessed Sacrament. And honestly, all the girls from Ludden were very helpful and showed us where to go. Or like, the team room, what do we do? What are your game day rituals and stuff like that? They were really good at helping us out with that.
Abernethy: I feel like after the first week, it felt really good. I never really felt out of place for basketball.
Bitz: We got these kids coming into our building, but honestly, it never really felt that way. Nobody ever made us feel like, ‘You’re Grimes students, this is our school.’ We all kind of meshed together pretty easily, I would say.
Vaught: It’s really nice to see that they’ve all been very accepting of what’s happened because obviously it’s tough for both sides of it. It’s not a one-sided thing.
Abernethy: (Bishop Ludden-Grimes head coach Carmella Petrera) is amazing. We had basketball camp during the summer where we coached young kids at other private schools. And that was really a good thing during the summer, got me to meet some people and get a feel of the program. We all went to dinner after the game (against C-NS), and that was fun. We spend a lot of time together, and Carm’s really just encouraged us to spend time getting to know each other, switching up our partners.
Shaffer: (Baldwinsville head coach Kathy Morse) has been very inclusive, explaining to us all the plays in detail because she wants us to understand them as well as all the other girls.
Aaliyah Zachery, Baldwinsville sophomore guard: Definitely going from a smaller school to a bigger school, everything was much, much different. In the classroom, with basketball, many different challenges, but I was able to adjust and I’m doing very well now.
Abernethy: It was weird at first, but now it just feels like it’s been forever.
McKenney: We tried to go to all the senior nights in the fall. So we went to Syracuse City soccer senior night, and we went to Ludden boys and girls.
Vaught: I’ve actually been to a couple of the Bishop Ludden-Grimes (girls basketball) games and then a couple of the B’ville games as well.
Abernethy: She’s been to almost all of them, I think.
Zachery: It was a nice little surprise seeing them.
McKenney: It’ll be tough to get myself to go watch, to be honest with you, over at Ludden … It’s been hard. It makes me sad.
Bitz: Jordan has really been my coach since seventh grade. She was the assistant coach when I got pulled up in eighth grade and I was all nervous and she was that supportive coach for me. So it’s definitely weird seeing them in the stands, but it’s nice to know that they’re there supporting us and everything.
Shaffer: I love seeing them at our games supporting us still. Even though they’re not coaching us, I love that they’re still supporting us.
Vaught: It’s different. I will say it’s very different. But at the end of the day, it’s all about the kids, right? And so as much as I might have certain feelings regarding the situation, I put my feelings to the side and I do it for them. And the games are fun. They’re really fun. And it’s kind of nice to be able to sit back, watch from the bleachers and kind of really watch them play. Obviously, when you’re coaching in it, it’s a little bit different, but the games are fun. The girls have been doing so well.
McKenney: I did watch a Baldwinsville game on Hudl. I watched it live, watched Aaliyah and Sicily play.
Vaught: It’s funny, though, it’s so different from the sideline and you’re like, ‘Ooo, ooo.’ It’s like a little bit more stressful, almost. But no, I’ve really enjoyed it. The atmosphere has been really good and it’s nice to see all the parents again from the girls and be able to chat with them in the stands and catch up with them as well.
Bitz: We’ve all kept in contact with each other. Aaliyah and I reach out to each other all the time, ask how the games have gone. I just saw her dad the other day at the C-NS vs. Liverpool game and he was like, ‘I missed you guys.’ It’s just nice. But also, we all go to each other’s games and support each other’s games whenever we can if they’re not scheduled on the same night. We know we always have each other’s backs, too, so that always helps.
Vaught: I was so excited when I was given the opportunity to come back and coach at Grimes, obviously in a different position, not as an assistant, but as the head coach. I was so excited to come back and coach them because I knew what each and every one of them was capable of, and I knew how good each and every one of them could be and will be and is. So it was a little heartbreaking when all of this happened, to know that we were kind of just getting started and to kind of have everything – I don’t want to say thrown away, but – all their worlds were just shattered.
Scott Schild | sschild@syracuse.com
Zachery: We were all young players; we all had time to be better. We were all really young, and we were just continuing to grow each year.
McKenney: I actually think boys and girls had a legitimate shot the next couple of years to contend for sectional championships. I think that’s been one of the hardest parts for all of us, you put a lot of time and energy into it, and then all of a sudden, it’s just kind of torn away from you. And that’s, I think, where it’s been hard from the coach’s perspective to let that go. Knowing the time and work we put in and thinking it really could see something come to fruition a little bit in the next couple of years.
Vaught: When I go to these games, I typically go with my assistant coaches from last year, Mandy Marino and Alex Van Tassel … Mandy will always say, ‘I was so excited to get to work with them in the offseason, and get to do open gyms with them and do summer leagues and continue to help them grow as players.’ And so it’s just tough to know that they were already all so good and there’s so much potential there and to know that you just don’t get to work with them anymore.
Shaffer: Team dinners after practices, before games, that really did help us. Everyone just got along. It wasn’t divided or anything. And that’s what I loved about it. Our coaches, we would watch film together, and we would write down stuff together, and we did posters, goals that we needed to accomplish together. That just really helped us get closer to one another.
Abernethy: The chemistry that me and Sicily and Aaliyah all had together, we were unbeatable at the end of the season from Section III, and I feel like that we couldn’t really get any worse. Only up from there.
Shaffer: I think we had the potential to go really far. If we didn’t shut down, I think this year, we would have been great.
Abernethy: I think that’s one of the things I’m going to miss in my senior year, is the fact that we would have been so good, and it’s not going to be the same. I feel like we could have won three in a row if we stayed at Grimes.
Scott Schild | sschild@syracuse.com
Bitz: I was really looking forward to this season with those girls, and I think we really would have had it. We were right there last year and I think we would have just been even better this year, playing with each other all the time and building those relationships. It definitely sucks, but I’m not going to sit there and dwell on it. I want the best for those girls and I know that they want the best for us too. It sucks that we’re in the same class (AAA), so we both can’t get it. It’s definitely hard, but I think we’ve all grown to realize that it’s going to be alright, and we’re all on a special team regardless.
Vaught: To have all of that happen in the middle of your season, in the middle of your school year, finish the season the way they did, and kind of have to go through all these adjustments on top of still trying to figure everything out, I’m very, very impressed at how each of them have handled themselves and continued to work through it and bounce back from it.
Shaffer: We were like, ‘We need to stick together. We need to push through this. We gotta win this sectional title for our school.’ We weren’t even doing it for ourselves anymore; it’s for everyone.
Bitz: I think we were something really special. I think if things were different, we’d probably be playing for another sectional title this year. But it’s just not how it went. But hopefully, maybe we’ll see each other in the sectional finals this year.
McKenney: At the end of the day, again, the kids survive. They’re doing it. I’m proud of them.
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