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Barron Collier celebrates its girls basketball, individual wrestling titles
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Barron Collier celebrates its girls basketball, individual wrestling titles
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- PAIRINGS: Prep basketball: NDN Gulfshore, Holiday Shootouts, City of Palms on tap
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An era came to its official end Thursday afternoon at Barron Collier High School.
Five senior girls basketball players, who established an unprecedented record of basketball success with the Cougars, accepted their state championship medals in front of a gymnasium packed with students at Barron’s Champions Pep Rally.
Kelsey Assarian, Dani Johnson and Erin Zampell were the driving force behind Southwest Florida’s most successful basketball program over the past four years, joined last year by Naples High transfer Michaela Hawley.
They received their last applause as a group on Thursday, from fellow students who had come to know the quartet first as basketball players.
They were 116-11 and won two state championships in four years. They also won their first-ever Naples Daily News Holiday Shootout title in December, against nationally ranked competition. Barron finished this year ranked No. 20 in the country by ESPN and No. 10 in the South by USA Today.
Assarian, Johnson and Zampell have all signed with college basketball programs; Hawley expects to sign in the next few months. The program will also lose reserve guard Karissa Naretta to graduation.
“I don’t see how it gets any better than this,” coach Mike Hamburger said a few minutes after the rally ended. “This senior class ... this is going to be the line that everybody else is going to be held accountable to. I don’t know what they haven’t accomplished.”
“We could’ve gone undefeated this year. I guess that’s only other thing,” Johnson said.
Heavyweight wrestler T.J. Avery, the Cougars' second individual state champion in three years, and girls state champion wrestler Kathy Harcourt also were honored on Thursday.
Carrying the torch for the girls basketball team next year will be a trio of current freshmen: Christine Mansour, Carleigh Watts and Saphira Philson. All three played extensively this year, but Mansour was the only starter.
She contributed more than 400 points to this year’s title run, behind a wiry frame and a steady outside shot.
“I’m just gonna remember the first day of practice,” the precocious frosh said after the rally, now a full-fledged team member in her tie-dyed Final Four T-shirt. “All the joy and excitement and thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, why am I here already?’ ”
Mansour showed exactly why she was there over the course of the season, as did Watts, who proved her mettle playing defense on state tournament MVP and Texas A&M recruit Assarian in practices.
“The first time it was really intimidating,” Watts said. “But she always helped me out ... it was very exciting and totally something new.”
While crosstown rival Naples High was the clear-cut champion of the fall sports season with its unparalleled victory in football, Barron Collier was the winter’s golden boy. Or girl, maybe.
It was an unusual sight at the rally to see stands full of teenage boys whooping and hollering for a girls basketball team, but that’s been the norm at Barron Collier, especially in the past four years.
Hamburger said that after Barron won its first state championship in 2006 — the first basketball championship for a Southwest Florida school — the Dunbar girls basketball team said the Cougars’ success gave them hope.
Dunbar reached this year’s Class 3A title game, losing by just two points.
“What’s better than giving someone else belief that they can do it, too?” Hamburger said. “It just shows ... if you challenge young teenagers, they will respond.”
“When I started as head coach (eight years ago), girls were coming in two minutes before practice eating McDonald’s. ... I feel like I’m late sometimes now when I’m 45 minutes early and girls are already in the gym warming up.”
Next year, those girls will be different. But they seem to have cemented Barron’s tradition, as has Hamburger, who admits it’s tempting to go out on top, especially with two young daughters: Jaclyn, 5, and Jordan, 20 months.
“When’s the right time to go out?” Hamburger wondered, standing after the pep rally in the gym that’s been his kingdom in Southwest Florida. “Whenever I make that decision, it will be extremely difficult. Time-wise (to spend with Jaclyn and Jordan), it’d be great ... but I’m just so used to coming here almost every day for nine months a year. These players are like my daughters, too.”
Hamburger expects to make a final decision sometime in May.
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Coach Hamburger who have done Southwest Florida proud. You were a coach that taught me to be confident. When I didnt shoot, you would take me out because you had that confidence in me. You took care of me when my leg was messed up for three years and understood everything that was going on even though it was frustrating. you weren't only a coach but a next door neighbor that cared about what was going on in my life behind the scenes whenever i had alot of problems. You're a great person Coach and you deserve the best. I miss living next door to you but maybe i can visit you soon. Congratulations on all your achievements.
Shalana
And I'll never forget when Courtney, Dani, Me and you jammed to Man, I feel like a woman! HAHAHA.
#1 Posted by sstice207 on February 29, 2008 at 9:09 a.m. (Suggest removal)
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