The Greenwich High School girls’ basketball team left the team bus and entered through the dimly lit tunnels of the Mohegan Sun Arena. Right from the moment the Lady Cardinals stepped off the bus, they knew Sunday was going to be a game no one on the team has experienced, or will forget any time soon.
This was the site of the state basketball championships. Out of all the public high schools in the Nutmeg State, only eight were good enough to make it to the title game, a game that was hosted in a 10,000 seat arena that is also home to the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun.
“This was incredible and definitely memories that will last a lifetime,” GHS senior co-captain Caroline Beneville said. “Coming here and walking through the doors and seeing the big arena and playing here has kind of been a dream since my freshman year. I couldn’t have asked for a better team to play on in my senior year.”
Five years ago nobody thought Big Red would make a big splash in the state tournament. And here they were, for the first time in school history competing in the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference class LL championship game. However the storybook finish wasn’t meant to be, as Stamford High School pulled away midway though the fourth quarter and beat the Cardinals 50-45.
“I am very proud of them,” GHS head coach Chrys Hernandez said. “I just told them when we came in that there’s no reason to hang your heads. What they have accomplished in such a short period of time is nothing to be ashamed of. It would have been really nice to win it, but I am very proud of them for all the effort they put in.”
With the loss, Big Red finished the season with a 19-5 overall record.
“My freshman year nobody really knew about Greenwich basketball,” Beneville said. “It was one of those team that everybody else thought they could beat. Now it’s definitely not that way. We are one of the premier teams in the FCIAC and we just proved that we are one of the premier teams in the state. We have come so far as a program and I am really proud of that.”
For fellow GHS senior captain Abbie Wolf, being able to represent the high school in the championship game was a huge honor, one that Wolf and the entire program didn’t take lightly.
“Coach showed us blogs that said that Greenwich had no chance today,” Wolf said. “We showed them that we might be well-known or as deep as last year, but we are going to fight and claw our way. We got to the Sun. We always wanted a banner and my four years we haven’t gotten that, so that’s a disappointment. We don’t play for a banner, we play for the love of the game. To get to Mohegan, it’s been a great experience.”
And don’t for a second think that Big Red just enjoyed the thought of playing in a title game and coasted last week leading up to the contest.
“It was a lot of high energy,” Hernandez said. “I don’t think you can get any more motivated playing in a state championship. They kept their spirits high for those nine days. We broke the days up. We had some days off, had some scrimmages with the boys and did a lot of different things.”
For Hernandez, playing in the CIAC class LL championship game on Sunday was five years in the making. She took over a program that was stuck in neutral. Losing seasons were the norm for Big Red and something had to change.
That’s when Hernandez spent countless days and nights changing the culture of the program. Working on perfecting the basics, Hernandez and the rest of the Cardinals started turning things around. They missed the class LL postseason her first year, but entered the tourney as the No. 24 seed.
Although they fell to ninth-seed E.O. Smith, it was a lot closer than most expected, 44-39. While most were surprised by the outcome, Hernandez wasn’t. She knew there were good thing to come for the Lady Cardinals.
A year later, it was a 15-5 regular season for the Cards and a No. 13 seed. They also won their first playoff game in a long time, upending Bristol Central, 45-28, before falling to No. 4 seed South Windsor, 57-41.
Last year Greenwich had another look at South Windsor in the class LL state tourney. Coming into the tourney as a No. 8 seed, Greenwich blitzed Norwalk, 57-37, in the opening round and Ridgefield, 60-55, in the next round. The Cards played top seed South Windsor and almost came away with the victory in the quarterfinals, but fell, 69-66.
Then coming into this year’s state tournament, Big Red had three regular season loses and was placed as the No. 10 seed. They did what they were supposed to in the opening round, blasting lower seeded Avon, 74-55.
But from there, Greenwich’s outcome was far from certain. They traveled up to No. 7 seed Southington, got out to a 28-8 lead and held on for the 56-52 victory. Four days later the Lady Cardinals landed at Fairfield Warde High School and upset the No. 2 seeded Mustangs, who haven’t lost at home all season, 64-48.
Then it was the semis, and E.O. Smith saw a much different Greenwich team it first saw four years earlier in the class LL opening round. Again Big Red came out firing and built a 20-point lead. Although the Panthers clawed its way back, and actually held a lead midway through the fourth quarter, the team kept its composure, got back to basics and came away with the nine-point victory.
“This means everything and hits us on every level,” said Hernandez after her team’s 69-60 victory against E.O. Smith in the class LL semis back on March 11. “Individually, as a team and as a school. It’s the first time in school history the girls’ basketball team has made it to a championship game. This is a goal that we set for ourselves five years ago and to see it come into fruition is great. I think many people would have counted us out. This means everything and I’m so proud of them.”
That game against the Panthers was Wolf’s fondest memory with the team during her tenure at GHS.
“When coach told us that we were the first team to make it to the championship was amazing,” Wolf said. “We were just ecstatic. I really wish we could have taken this one home, but the fact that we are the first ones here is great. We are always building on our success, so I leave it to them next year to take care of business.”
Much of the team’s success this year, and throughout their four years with the program, are due to the stellar leadership of seniors Wolf and Beneville. Wolf’s inside presence and given the opposition fits during her tenure with the team. On the other side, Beneville’s ability to hit from long distance and to dish the ball has been key factors to the team’s success.
“They are amazing kids,” Hernandez said. “They are hard workers. They are great teammates. I really wish we were able to finish this off for them and give them that sweet send off, but they left their impact and mark on the program.”
Despite the loss in the class LL finals, the experience of being the first squad at GHS to compete in the last game of the season is something the Cardinals will never forget.
“It was an amazing experience,” Beneville said. “We all came into this season after knowing that we were losing some of our best players. I think a lot of people didn’t have very high expectations for us, but I think we proved everybody wrong. We were just as capable and even more than capable than we were last year.”
