Carroll is 12-1 overall this season and sits atop the Greater Catholic League Co-ed standings at 6-0. The Lady Patriots picked up a pair of wins against Waynesville on Monday and Badin on Wednesday. The team is outscoring opponents by more than 17 points per game and its only loss came against state-power Mount Notre Dame by eight in late December in a game Carroll led at halftime.
“We have five seniors and that helps a lot,” Carroll head coach Cecilia Grosselin said. “There’s a lot of camaraderie. They trust each other and they play well together which always makes thing a little bit easier.”
Carroll has put on the floor some groups led by seniors in recent years, but haven’t seen all five of its starters come from that group until now. Grosselin said it’s one of the biggest differences she has noticed for how focused her group is on the floor.
Credit: Steven Wright
Credit: Steven Wright
Senior Kiera Healy was a second team All-Ohio performer last season. She exited Monday’s game averaging 15.7 points per game and 7.4 rebounds this season to lead the team in both categories.
Maura Petrovic was an All-Ohio honorable mention selection a year ago. The guard recorded her first career double-double with an 11-point, 10 rebound game against Fenwick on Dec. 13 and has been a stat filler in nearly every game. Eva Snyder has emerged as the team’s second leading scorer at 12.7 ppg and one of the team’s top defenders.
“Kiera, Maura and Eva, they’ve started since their freshman year,” Grosselin said, who is the reigning GCL Co-ed Coach of the Year and a four-time awardee. “That’s four years of playing for those three together. Yeah, I’m really proud of them and how they’ve been working and they really want to have a great season this season.”
Together they start along with fellow seniors Anna Cate Seltsam and Raegan Reilly. Junior Eva Barron and freshman Kate Petrovic have been two of the first options coming off the bench, although Barron has missed time recently.
One area of improvement is the team’s three-point shooting. The Patriots have yet to finish a game shooting better than 33.3 percent from beyond the arc. As a team Carroll is at 22.3 percent on the season.
The Patriots make up for it by shooting better than 53 percent from two and almost 80 percent at the free throw line as a group.
“We just got to keep working,” Grosselin said. “We’re far from where we want to be. Just going to keep working.”
The rating system used by MaxPreps places Carroll as the second-ranked team in the state in Division III, as of Monday. Those are not the official Ratings Percentage Index rankings used for postseason seeding by the OHSAA, which are not officially released until Monday but listed Carroll in third by a narrow margin in the North portion of the Southwest District as of Wednesday morning.
Credit: Steven Wright
Credit: Steven Wright
Carroll has advanced to at least the district finals of the postseason for three consecutive seasons and has made it to regionals the last two. All three years the team lost to league rival Badin.
Grosselin said despite those setbacks potentially being low-hanging motivation, the team has not set an overall goal for how it wants to define success this year. That, rather, is coming on a day-by-day basis while the team works toward getting back to having another chance to claim a second straight league title and get over the hump in the postseason.
“We’re taking everything one game at a time. I hate to look too far ahead,” Grosselin said. “We want to go as far as we can in the tournament to have a good season. With that comes good effort from everyone and playing hard and making some of these younger players better, getting them ready for next year.
“We haven’t talked too much past our current week. We have three tough games right here with Waynesville Monday, Badin on Wednesday and Alter on Saturday. We keep just pounding away at it and working at it and hope that it pays off.”
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