Floral Park girls basketball team turns 'wacky time' into success on the court

They have a TikTok video where an intersquad scrimmage breaks into a conga line. They sing the National Anthem at the top of their lungs before games – at home and on the road. They’ve been known to spontaneously stop their layup lines and break into dance moves when certain songs come over the public address before a contest.

The Floral Park girls basketball team may often come off as a bunch of wacky cut-ups, but no one should be deceived by that. The Knights are undefeated and, at 20-0, a major player in the Nassau Class A tournament. Top-seeded Floral Park will host South Side in a quarterfinal on Tuesday.

“The lights come on and they can play,” Floral Park coach Michael Spina said. “You could see it from the outside as something less than serious, even immature, but this is just a very loose team that doesn’t let in the pressure of getting everyone’s best game coming at them.”

The secret sauce with the Knights may very well be the way they have fun together. At some point bus rides to road games became a forum for riff-offs – like in ‘Pitch Perfect’ – and at another they added making cat noises at each other during practice. They once got their hands on the iPad of physical education teacher and football coach Ron Pickett – whom they fondly call “Pickles” – and left him over 100 selfies of themselves on it for him.

And of course, there are the TikTok videos. The Knights make them all the time, about anything and everything. And they believe that doing all these antics as a team has produced something that translates to the court.

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“We have what coach calls ‘wacky time’ before the games and it’s a way of shaking off the nerves before we play,” said junior Frances Reilly who, along with twin sister Orla, heads up the TikTok video team as well as many of the other unique activities on the squad.

“It also has helped us build bonds between us,” Orla Reilly said. “We do these things together. It makes us closer off the court and that makes us closer on the court.”

Spina, whose career record is now 162-42 as the head coach, believes the shenanigans actually have unlocked the potential of his team. “If we took this away and made everything serious business, I don’t think we’d be this same team,” he said.

Special sauce, however, only works on a recipe where the primary ingredients are of a high quality and Floral Park has that, too.

The Knights have a senior point guard and leader in Jaeda Delsion, who has a natural court vision and the quickness and ball-handling skill to get to the rim. Delsion worked hard in the offseason on finishing at the rim and improving her outside shot.

“Last year we had a good season [18-3], but I wanted this to be a great season,” she said. “I wanted to improve myself so we can go far. ...  A lot of us improved our games from last season with the same thing in mind. But this new culture of goofiness? I’ve come to believe that making the work we put in fun makes it not seem like work.”

Then there is sophomore shooting guard Erin Harkins, who leads the Knights in scoring with a 15.3-point average. Harkins is the team’s top outside shooter with 44 three-pointers thus far. Spina said of Harkins: “She’s a great shooter but in no way a one-dimensional player. She has the handle to get by her man or to work a defender and get her own shot.”

“Maybe people saw us as going into a rebuilding year and this has turned into something much bigger than that,” she said. “All that fun stuff we do has been a part of that. We have time to be ourselves before we get serious and play.”

“But it would be nice if we had more followers for our videos,” she added with a smile.

And the third centerpiece player for Floral Park is 5-10 freshman forward Maya Bateau. She will block or alter up to 10 shots per game, Spina said before adding “she has some moves that tell you already she could be a Division I player.”

This gift has earned her the nickname “Ms. No No.” She even dons a hoodie with the moniker emblazoned on the top and a silhouette of a girls basketball player making a blocked shot below. The player blocking the shot has “24” – Bateau’s jersey number – on it.

“We work hard together and we have fun together, but it doesn’t mean we don’t all take basketball seriously,” she said. “We want to win and no matter what people from the outside see in us before the game, they won’t miss that when the game starts.”

Spina’s ability to adapt to his team’s eccentricities also is no small part of the Floral Park success story.

This culture is very different from what he is accustomed to as a long-time football coach at Locust Valley and Floral Park. His approach to coaching girls basketball doesn’t look so different from football. There are film sessions – though the girls insist on pizza while watching – and an emphasis on practicing multiple defenses with an eye to confounding opponents. He also includes a drill designed to create chaos so players will keep their heads in any circumstance.

“He’s a good sport about us doing our thing,” senior center Sabrina Louis said. “I’m not sure he could control us if he tried, but he’s let us be ourselves and we’re a better team for it.”