West Babylon's ride ends in state Class A semifinals

TROY, N.Y. — Even though the bus to take the West Babylon girls basketball team to the state semifinals didn’t arrive at the school until Thursday afternoon, the student-athletes saw it months ago. And it never left their sights.

About midway through the season, the Eagles adapted a "See the bus" mentality. And they weren’t picturing a yellow school bus — it was a luxury coach bus. The only way they’d get one of those was a trip to the state semifinals.

West Babylon earned that comfortable experience after winning the Long Island Class A championship. But the Eagles lost to Averill Park, 56-36, in the state Class A semifinals at Hudson Valley Community College on Friday afternoon.

"This year — more than any year — we’ve been very into visualizing," Brianna Winkler said. "And seeing the bus was the coolest thing to actually see it become real."

"It was unbelievable," coach Ron Langella said. "I think these kids learned a valuable lesson about manifesting something, seeing it and actually achieving it. It’s something they’ll take for the rest of their lives and as a teacher, a coach if you can leave someone with something like that, it’s a great thing."

West Babylon (21-5) won its first Long Island championship and advanced to its first state semifinal in program history.

"It’s all we could have asked for," junior Lacey Downey said. "If we didn’t imagine it, it couldn’t have happened. It just shows we can do anything, especially with seeing it and believing it. And we did."

West Babylon trailed 31-21 at halftime after Averill Park closed the final minute of the second quarter on an 8-2 run. Averill Park (24-2) outscored West Babylon 17-0 in the third quarter, in large part due to its height advantage. Averill Park outrebounded West Babylon, 35-18, including 12 offensive rebounds compared to the Eagles’ six.

"They are really good," Langella said … "[They] wore us down. The size got us and if we’re not scoring off our defense, we’re going to have problems."

Downey had 15 points and five steals and Winkler added six points and three steals.

"Our kids gave us an amazing run, a run every coach should have at one point of their career," Langella said. "I think it’s more of a credit to how [Averill Park] played rather than how we played."

"I’m really proud we were able to make it this far," Winkler said. "After the first week of practice, I didn’t think we’d make it close to this but over time, we worked as hard as we could and we all got really close and this is the best team I could have asked for."

Downey is going to miss playing with Winkler and Emma Bllosshmi, who have played together and been close friends since kindergarten. West Babylon also graduates Lissette Cordero, who played a key role off the bench. But Downey hopes to lead the Eagles back to the state tournament.

"We’re definitely going to have to work hard," she said. "I want to be back here."