New-Look Girls’ Basketball Team Young And Fast

By Andy Hutchison

Despite a bulk of last year’s roster being pulled apart by a combination of graduation, student transfers, and players electing not to participate this winter — all told ten players from a year ago are gone from the roster — Newtown High School’s girls’ basketball team is off to a nice start in the early going.

Newtown won its season-opening tournament, which was played December 10 and 11, by knocking off New Milford 57-30 and defeating New Fairfield 57-51 in the tournament’s championship game. The Nighthawks, following a week-and-a-half game layoff, will resume game action December 22 at Pomperaug of Southbury.

The Nighthawks have plenty of reason to be confident and loaded with optimism after the start to the campaign.

“We’re really pleased,” said Coach Shawn O’Brien, adding that the New Fairfield game, in particular, was a tough way to get exposed to varsity play for the less-experienced players. “That was a big test early in the season.”

Newtown built a lead then fell behind before coming back to beat New Fairfield.

“To blow a lead and actually pick ourselves up and win — for an inexperienced team, that’s a really good sign for us early in the season,” O’Brien said. “They bounced back — they’re resilient. A lot of teams would crack under that pressure.”

Newtown was led by sophomore Riley Wurtz’s 17 points against New Milford and senior Sara Kelley’s 29 in the second game. Kelley, one of the top shooters in the area, dropped in 15 of those points in the fourth quarter alone.

O’Brien believes the overall youth and inexperience of his team paid off in those wins.

“They don’t worry about opponents. They just go out and play the game and let the coaches worry about the opponents,” he said.

Among the players who did not return to the court is senior Katie Bowen, who suffered a knee injury last winter and is being pursued by colleges to play softball. “That’s a big loss,” O’Brien said.

Kelley is the lone senior — and the only captain — on this young team. Kelley and Wurtz are the two players back in the lineup with substantial varsity experience from a year ago.

Junior Taylor Benson, sophomores Jessica Lynch, Abbey Doski and Carly Iwanicki, and freshman Bridget Power are all key players who start or get playing time off the bench at the start of the year, O’Brien said.

Other key players include junior Sarah Pettinelli, sophomores Stefanie Clavette and Kendall Svanda, and freshmen Erin Kenning and Maddy Good.

“We have a lot of inexperience varsity-wise, but we have players that really fit into the system that we implement — running and playing aggressive defense,” O’Brien said.

“These kids can get out and get after it defensively and they do a great job of running the floor in transition,” the coach added.

Tough teams on the schedule, in addition to Pomperaug, are Lauralton Hall, Immaculate of Danbury, and Kolbe Cathedral of Bridgeport.

Newtown went 12-8 a year ago and qualified for both the conference and state playoffs. The Hawks are seeking to get back into the postseason again this year and O’Brien does not look at it as a rebuilding season.

“Our goal is to make the state tournament and the SWC Tournament as always,” the coach said.