Remembering great ballers past during grim P.C. basketball season
January 18, 2024 at 12:10 a.m.
When it comes to Rams and Lady Rams basketball nowadays, it is good to remember the best players Port Chester has had over the past two decades.
The Ram standouts over that time period include Anthony (Scooby) Ordonez, the pre-season All-America who led the last Port Chester team to make the semi-finals in the Section One AA championships at the County Center in 2012, and Shamel Jones, who was on his way to ranking with the best players in school history until he wrecked his knee going up for an errant pass in 2019, underwent surgery and never was the same.
Their Lady Rams counterparts over the same timeframe include Brooklyn and Madison Ostrowski, the sister act now playing for Villanova on softball scholarships, and Kayleigh Heckel, one of the school's all-time scoring greats who transferred to Long Island Lutheran to enhance her hoops college scholarship potential, became the point guard for the prep school powerhouse that ranked as high as number one in the nation last year and has committed to play college basketball for the University of Southern California next year.
Stats tell story
But why talk about past local hoop greats over the past two decades when the current winter basketball season is still going on?
Perhaps because this is the winter of basketball discontent.
And perhaps because the latest local basketball scores tell the story.
The Rams losses in the past week or so include a 105-33 beatdown by Ossining (the first time in recent memory the Rams allowed more than 100 points), a 79-61 defeat to Carmel and a New Ro 71-34 romp. The Lady Rams losses over the same timeframe came by scores of 72-32 against Ossining, 62-28 versus Fox Lane and 59-41 vs Mount Vernon.
The current besties
It hasn't been all bad. The Rams’ Guillermo (Memo) Zabala, the transfer from the Dominican Republic and Port Chester's All-Conference returnee as one of the leading scorers in Section One, remains Port Chester's main offensive threat. And senior Samantha (Sam) Munoz and eighth-grader McKayla McLoughlin are two solid Lady Rams capable of playing just about anywhere. But after that, it is easier to talk about the Port Chester hoops past than the present. Even if it is just a quick look at the best players with a glance that goes back 20 years.
Especially with Ossining coming in to play the Rams at home Friday (1/19) at 5 p.m.
Anything, of course, can happen in a ball game, but hopefully that doesn't include another 100-point outburst by Ossining, one of the best teams in Westchester. The Lady Rams, however, have a shot at winning against Saunders away at 4:30 p.m. the same day, Friday (1/19). And both teams can hold their own against the area's lesser teams, more or less. Just not the Foxes, Mount Vernons, New Ros or Ossinings.
But no matter how you look at it, it is going to be a long winter season with January only the ending of the beginning of a hoops year to forget. And maybe, rather than dwell on the past greats over the past two decades, it is best to start talking about a developmental league season for the basketballers in the future unless things change. Fast. And not just talk about it but do something about it.
Blind Brook solution
Retired Rams hoops coach Manny Martinez has been talking about the need for fast-paced Port Chester travel teams to play off-season for the past five years to no avail. That's how he turned around the losing Lady Trojans basketball culture during his Blind Brook coaching days. But he hasn't been able to get a similar program started in Port Chester. Nobody seems to be listening.
But still, in the here and now, if you are looking for something to cheer about, Port Chester's championship-caliber cheerleading team will be competing against multiple schools Saturday (1/20) at 9 a.m. at New Rochelle H.S. Go P.C.!
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