South River girls one of GMC’s best stories

BY GEORGE ALBANO
Staff Writer

Steffanie Shoop, the second-year head coach of the South River High School girls basketball team, is proceeding with caution.

When she talks about her team and the moderate success they’ve had so far this season, she’s careful not to get too far ahead of herself. She makes sure her players walk the same line, too.

But the truth is the Rams have been one of the biggest surprises in Middlesex County the first half of the season. Their 6-3 record going into Wednesday night’s game at Highland Park is reason enough to make people raise eyebrows.

What’s been even more amazing about this South River team, however, is how they’ve gotten to that point. The Rams struggled mightily last season, winning only five games. What’s more, they graduated their two leading scorers, guard Tara Tatak and forward Heather Walling.

“We had a tough season, and we lost a big guard and a big post player,” Shoop said. “It hasn’t been easy filling those spots.”

Some nice varsity players were returning, even a couple of starters. But keep in mind, unlike a lot of other schools in the county, South River has never been considered a basketball hotbed.

“One of the major problems at our school is we don’t have a feeder program, a recreation league like other towns have that develop players by the time they get to high school,” Shoop explained. “We don’t have a program like that up and running here. Instead, we get girls we need to work with skillwise.

“They’re doing great, too,” she added. “All the girls have really stepped up and are practicing real hard. They’ve done everything we’ve asked of them. It’s just that we have to work on basic skills. We have to show them, this is a chest pass, this is a bounce pass, and when to use them. Other coaches don’t have to worry about that. The players they get already know that by the time they get to high school. They learned it in the lower leagues.”

Without a feeder system, Shoop doesn’t even get pure basketball players.

“Basically all our players are three-sport athletes,” she said. “Basketball is not their No. 1 sport. I have one girl whose main sport is soccer, another who runs track, another who plays softball. I can think of only one girl whose main sport is basketball. The rest of the girls fall into spots.”

But in her one and a half years as head coach, Shoop has slowly begun changing that attitude. Hopefully, someday she’ll get the feeder program the program so desperately needs, but until then the Rams have been getting it done with hard work and desire. And the ability to learn and want to get better.

“I’m very honest with my players,” Shoop said. “I let them know when they do something right and I let them know when they do something wrong. A lot of coaches will sugarcoat things, always tell players they’re doing a good job even when they’re not. My assistant coach [Chris Brasno] and I don’t sugarcoat anything. We let them know when they do something right and when they do it wrong. If we never tell them they’re doing it wrong, they won’t think they have to work on it.

“We play to our strengths and try to minimize our weaknesses.”

So far that philosophy has worked splendidly for the Rams, who posted wins in six of their first nine games. It hasn’t been easy, either.

“I told the girls that everybody can look at their schedule and pick out games and say that’s a win, this is a win, that’s another win,” Shoop said.

“But we don’t have that. Every single game we have is a full-out war. We have to fight for every win every game. We don’t have a schedule where we can pick out a single win. Our girls don’t get any breaks. We don’t get any off nights.

“But I just tell them to keep believing. It takes a while to build confidence, but we’re starting to see it.”

Shoop doesn’t even have a set starting lineup every game.

“It varies every game,” she said. “I don’t keep it consistent. I use different starters depending on who we’re playing and what we need.”

There are a few exceptions, however. Three to be exact. One is junior point guard Brittany Darrar, who broke into the starting lineup at the end of last season and has started every game this season.

Cherubin Rena, another junior and a guard/forward swing player, has also started every game and leads the team in scoring with 10 points a game. Darrar is second with seven a game.

The third starter is Stephanie Francis, another junior guard who started all of last season.

“We have three seniors and the rest of the team are basically juniors,” Shoop said.

Two of those seniors are twins Carolyn and Cathleen Shields, who both start and come off the bench and play the post. The other senior is Melissa Khase, a newcomer to the team.

Rounding out Shoop’s seven-player rotation is Emily Applegate, yet another junior guard, while sophomore guard Taryn Garenza provides depth off the bench.

Except for Taryn and Melissa, who is new, everybody else saw playing time last year,” Shoop noted.

So what’s the main reason for the turnaround in this year’s South River team?

“I think it’s experience,” Shoop said, “but hopefully it’s confidence. Yeah, all the girls have another summer under their belts, but mostly it’s confidence.”

And don’t look now, but with a similar second half of the season, the Rams could find themselves playing in this year’s state tournament.

But, of course, Shoop doesn’t want to talk about that. Not yet anyway.

“We’re just taking one game at a time and not looking ahead,” the South River coach, whose team hosts JFK on Thursday night, said. “We don’t want to lose focus. If you start to get too ahead of yourself, that’s when you lose focus. We don’t want to overestimate ourselves or underestimate other teams.”

It certainly doesn’t appear anyone will be underestimating South River High anymore.