Head coach Sam Doner and assistant coach David Bikofsky lead South’s varsity girls’ basketball team. Bikofsky, the father of star junior Sophie Bikofsky, previously assisted Doner on the AAU Jaguars team before teaming up again last season to coach South’s team.
Bikofsky credits Doner with turning the girls’ basketball program around: “I think Sam is an excellent motivator; that is one of his strengths as a coach.”
Motivation was just what the team needed after the 2008 season, in which most of South’s current varsity roster were freshmen.
“Freshmen year, Julia [Sloan-Cullen], Semira [Haghayeghi], Chloe [Rothman] and Sophie [Bikofsky] played on varsity, and the team was 3-17. The rest of the kids were underclassmen and they were one of the first generations of kids who played basketball year round,” Bikofsky said.
Last season, Doner, Bikofsky and the team turned the losing record into a 13-7 season, making it to the postseason and sectional semifinals before dropping a close game to Needham.
Sophie recognizes how far the team has come in the past two years. “Freshmen year, we were lost. We had a different coach, and we didn’t have any seniors. I don’t think our team was as into basketball and succeeding as we are, and now we also have a bunch of new players that all help us a lot,” Bikofsky said.
Last season the team gained current junior and co-captain Kendall Burton when she moved to Newton from Hopkinton. Kendall had also played on the Jaguars team since age 10. Because she has been teammates with a majority of the team for many years, playing at South was anything but new to her. “It was really convenient [to move], because all of my friends from basketball were from Newton,” Burton said.
This season, the team gained two more varsity players: Burton’s sister, Kayla and junior Jocie Collins.
Collins, who moved to Newton from Virginia this past summer, started playing with the other junior girls in the AAU league this past fall. In Virginia, Collins played on the varsity basketball team since her freshmen year. Last year, her team won the Virginia state tournament, “I have been playing basketball for eight years; it’s always been a part of my life,” Collins said.
The team’s starting lineup includes: juniors Julia Sloan-Cullen, Chloe Rothman, Sophie Bikofsky, Kendall Burton, and senior and captain, Aly Leipzig. With new and helpful additions to the team, the Lions won their first three games before dropping a road decision to Lincoln-Sudbury, 59-51. Even with __ wins under its belt, the team still takes its success “one step at a time,” according to Doner. Although they have been successful so far, the team recognizes that it has a lot to work on this season if it wants to reach its goal of making the state championship. After the Dec. 18, 61-29 win against Waltham, “as thrilled as we were, we still know that it was not the best that we can play, and now we know how much we are capable of doing,” Sloan-Cullen said.
“As individual players, everybody is really good. We are still trying to work on the whole working together as a team thing,” Collins said.
To have success during the season, players set attainable individual and team goals in order to work hard during practice.
Doner goes by the motto that true wins come during practice, not during games.
“We come into practice, and we see how the kids respond to what we are trying to do. If they respond a certain way then we go at their pace, but we still make the intensity very high. If they respond our way good things happen,” Doner said.
During games, the team “plays free” which means that they play without any set plays, leaving the girls, to make them up as they go. During practice, to prepare for the demands found during games, “we play fast break games that help us a lot and set us apart from a lot of teams,” Sophie said.
Besides the team goal of reaching the state championship, most of the players are motivated by personal goals.
“Coaches come and watch our games and practices, so we always have to be on alert, and we can’t just slack off. I think almost all of us want to play in college,” junior Semira Haghayeghi said.
Making up the majority of the team, the juniors have formed a close knit group and a team that is working to achieve higher goals.
“We had to get our beginning nerves out, and now I feel like we are a lot more solid than we were before, so we should be awesome this year if we keep on going this way; working hard and being the best we can be,” Sophie said.
