The ever-successful Londonderry High School girls’ basketball program has gone without a freshman team for a number of years now. And the 2017-18 LHS girls’ junior varsity hoop squad showed what one major result of that fact is.
Coach Jamie Doyle’s Lady Lancer JV crew was 14 players strong, and 11 of them were freshmen experiencing their first high school hoop action. Several ninth graders – including Charlotte Sullivan, Ashley Rourke, and Mia Fantauzzi – bypassed sub-varsity hoops entirely and went directly to the varsity level.
Doyle’s youthful junior varsity bunch got plenty done from December to March, winning half of its 20 games and making it into the second round of the state tournament before being felled.
The 10th graders included forward Theresa Radzelovage and guards Ashley Doyle and Maura Buckley, and the freshmen were forwards Alexis Meola, Audrey Gagnon, Sarah Clegg, Katherine Marshall, Julia Soucy, Alana Myron, and Kylee Crawford, and guards Lauren Rauseo, Shannon Rauseo, Emily Moran, and Hannah Desmarais.
The Lady Lancers went 10-10 overall on the season and were bested by top-seeded Manchester Memorial by just three points in that second round of the JV tournament.
Coach Doyle felt that his team’s top performances of the season included impressive road wins at Merrimack High, Trinity High of Manchester, and Spaulding High of Rochester.
“Obviously, with a very young team with only three sophomores and 11 freshmen our goal was just to be better by the end of the year,” said the coach. “I believe, based on our performance at the end of the season and our performance in the JV tournament, we achieved the goal. I look forward to the 11 freshmen returning next year and taking that next step.”
The extremely youthful Londonderry High varsity hoop crew of coach Nick Theos only loses one player – battle-tested, role-playing guard Michaela Downing – to graduation this year. So there may not be a whole lot of varsity roster spots up for grabs during the 2018-19 campaign later this calendar year. But you can rest assured that some of the 2017-18 LHS jayvees will be planning to do their utmost to make the move upward.