North Allegheny girls hope January road trips make Tigers a tough ‘out’ later this season

By: Chris Harlan
Saturday, January 13, 2024 | 11:01 AM

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No, the North Allegheny girls basketball team hasn’t left the WPIAL, even though its schedule certainly looks like the Tigers moved closer to Harrisburg.

The team scheduled road games against York, Susquehanna Township, Cumberland Valley and Central Dauphin in a 10-day stretch in January. They’ll travel across the state twice, with one section game in between.

The four out-of-district opponents are members of PIAA District 3, and three of the four have won state titles in the past. But the out-of-town schedule wasn’t just driven by North Allegheny’s effort to find quality opponents but also a desire to play in unfamiliar places.

NA coach Spencer Stefko said that’s a necessary skill for a team that wants to play into February and March.

“Knowing what kind of team we were going to have (this season), we made a conscious effort to make sure we could win outside of the friendly confines of our gym,” Stefko said. “When you’ve got a team that can get up and down the floor and shoots it well, it’s tempting to fall in love with that when you’re at home and everything is going well.”

North Allegheny is the reigning WPIAL Class 6A champion, and Stefko has a senior-led team this winter that’s hoping to repeat as district champions and maybe go farther into states.

The Tigers enjoyed a strong start to this season. Senior guards Kellie McConnell, Lydia Betz and Caroline Henderson are frequent double-digit scorers for the Tigers, who also were boosted this winter by the play of seniors Grace Heliger and Emily Glass, who Stefko credited as a “heart and soul” motivator.

One trait that maybe makes this season’s roster different than some previous groups was they didn’t all rise through the grade school and junior ranks as basketball standouts, Stefko said. Instead, they worked their way into a starting spot for the varsity.

“This is really a self-made group,” Stefko said. “There’s not a lot of kids who you’d looked at in eighth grade and say, ‘That kid is going to play meaningful varsity minutes some day.’ They just worked their way into it. Each one of them in their own way is a self-made gym rat.”

Stefko said he knew this group wouldn’t shy away from a challenge. So, when he decided to schedule some tough games across the state in the middle of the season, there were no objections.

“I’ve got to give credit to the kids,” he said, “because they agreed that they didn’t want to become overly dependent on all that stuff that works at home in December and have it abandon you in mid-February.

“We’ve got to be a tough, gritty team if we want to be a tough out. I don’t know how much of that (grit) you can foster when everything is going well.”

The Tigers did have one moment of disappointment this year.

A narrow loss to rival Norwin on Jan. 2 knocked North Allegheny from the top spot in the sections standings. They’ll rematch at Norwin on Jan. 25, but the Tigers hope to be an improved team after battling some top programs from across the state.

“We understand that (a tough schedule) increases the probability you take a loss,” Stefko said, “but we’re just trying to get to the point that we’re a tough ‘out’ in February. We look around right now and see a couple of teams in front of us. We want to do everything we can to close that gap.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

Tags: North Allegheny