A talented group of girls is expected to take to the varsity basketball court in the Shaler Area School District.
But they’re going to have to get through middle school first.
The Shaler Area Elementary Basketball Association’s sixth grade girls team is being celebrated for amassing more than 100 wins over four seasons, beginning when they were in third grade.
“It was a great accomplishment for our team,” said Milani Akar, 12. “We put in a lot of teamwork and effort.”
Upon checking their records, the tally was actually 115 wins, coming off of winning a tournament in Plum in late February and ahead of going to Penn State in mid-March for state playoffs, said Gerrmar Ballard of Shaler, the team’s volunteer head coach whose daughter, Arianna, 12, plays on the team.
“This team is exceptional. They are making a great name for themselves in the community and around communities as they represent Shaler,” Ballard said. “The Shaler basketball future looks very bright as this group comes up in the ranks.”
Assistant coach Troy Piekarski, also of Shaler, compared the girls’ style of basketball to Steelers football — low-scoring, defense-focused and physical. His daughter, Victoria, 12, is on the team.
“They play blue-collar basketball. It’s hard-nosed, bring your lunch pail,” he said. “We are always frequently undersized. We don’t have very many tall kids on the team whatsoever. What they lack in size, they make up for in heart and they just refuse to lose.”
Ballard and Piekarski didn’t know each other when they coached separate in-house teams that would play each other when the girls were in second grade. A second assistant coach, Joshua Dabbs, joined them when the girls were in fourth grade.
“We were very competitive,” Piekarski said. “Every time we would play, it would be the one game that people would kind of look in on.”
Seeing the talent of their players, they teamed up to coach the girls when they started on a travel team in third grade. They worked out at Kiwanis Park the summer of 2022 to get ready for that first season.
“It was amazing,” Ballard said. “The parents were excited about basketball, and the kids were excited about basketball.”
The team had the most losses that first year, when they often would play against fourth graders. But, Piekarski said, they held their own.
“It rarely ever was easy for them,” he said.
Getting to 100 wins took a lot of effort in the off-season, practicing and playing together, said Molly Dabbs, 12, of Shaler.
At first, she didn’t want to play basketball, but her parents thought it would be good for her to try a sport. She found she liked it.
“I just really enjoy the sport and think it’s a lot of fun,” she said.
Getting 100 wins “was a really big deal for us,” she said. “We’ve been playing as a team for a long time. We’ve gotten good together. It was a great accomplishment.”
Karissa Poliziani, 12, of Shaler started playing after seeing her three older sisters and friends play and thought it would be fun.
“I like how it brings everyone together,” she said. “I’m very much into sports. I think that it’s just a great way to get to know people and have fun and be competitive.”
The coaches were keeping track of their wins and told them when they were nearing 100. As the years passed, Karissa said the girls didn’t realize they were getting close to it.
“I was so proud of my team. We came a long way since we were little third graders. We came so far together,” she said. “We play very well as a team. We have people who have greatness on offense and defense.
“I’m very proud of them and all of us and hope we can continue to play together.”
Ballard, who played basketball at California University of Pennsylvania, believes there are some girls on the team who can play college basketball.
But basketball isn’t everything for these girls, he said.
“These girls are very smart in the classroom. We have a lot of girls on our team who are straight-A students,” Ballard said. “These girls are very educated and they are very intelligent. These are future CEOs. I’m calling it now. They’ll be running companies when they get older. The sky’s the limit for them.”