Pierson/Bridgehampton Girls Honor Their Seniors in Regular-Season Finale; Will Face Babylon in Playoff Opener Next Week

The Pierson/Bridgehampton girls basketball team finished the regular season with a 37-35 victory at home over Port Jefferson on February 14, sending home a pair of seniors, who were honored just prior to the game in Ava Garabedian and Lyra Aubry,​​​​​​ with smiles on their faces.

Both seniors contributed to the victory with Aubry scoring a team-high and tied with Port Jeff’s Anna Matvya with a game-high 11 points. Garabedian scored two points, which came from a pair of clutch free throws. Whalers head coach John “Woody” Kneeland spoke highly of both seniors in his pregame speech and also on Monday morning, about how the two lead in different ways.

“Ava leads a lot by example in practice and her efforts do help this team,” he said. “There’s more to it than just minutes played on the court. As a matter of fact, in Ava’s case, it’s the minutes not played in the game that I think she leads in. I really believe in practice and team chemistry — team everything really, and that’s where Ava really shines. She’s a great leader. She hustles in practices and pushes and battles and those sort of things do make us a better team.”

Aubry is a three-year varsity starter and two-year captain, who may fill up the stat sheet most nights. According to Kneeland, similarly to Garabedian, she’s also a great leader.

“She has a great presence out on the court that demands the attention of the other team. She’s almost always being double teamed, but I’ll go back and say that it’s her effort that she puts in practice that really stands out to me,” he said. “Her leadership and her own coaching ability herself makes her a great part of this team. I often joke with my brother and assistant coach George that Lyra is basically another assistant coach on our team. She just knows everything inside and out. Knows the plays, knows where she’s supposed to be, where the other girls are supposed to be. She hustles and plays hard in practice and she just doesn’t take plays off. I don’t think she takes playing basketball for granted, and her result is time played and the attention she gets from the other team. She’s another player that makes our team so much better.”

Kneeland said he was missing three starters for the regular-season finale, so he made a preemptive callup from the junior varsity in eighth-grader Josephine Mott, who went ahead and scored 10 points in her varsity debut. Mott is a part of what Kneeland says is a very talented eighth-grade class, and just an overall talented group of girls that are coming up through the ranks, which bodes well for the young program.

Mott will be sticking around for the team’s playoff run, which begins Wednesday, February 28, when it plays at top seed Babylon at 5 p.m.

“I knew it was going to be a tight game scoring-wise, and it would come down, as I always tell this team, to defense,” Kneeland said. “We were going to be missing points, missing guards, missing starters, but no matter who is in the game, we can still play great defense.

“I brought up Josie Mott for the game and for the playoffs because I knew she’d do a great job for numerous reasons,” he added. “Even though she’s an eighth-grader, Josie has been coming to open gyms and coming to varsity scrimmages in the summer since the sixth grade. And whenever she would play, she’d do just fine. The situation was never too big for her. She was one of the top scorers on JV this season, and even though she is young, I knew she would provide a stable presence because she’s played basketball at a high level her whole life. And when the competition is elevated, she will rise to that. She’s just comfortable and doesn’t let easy things get to her. She guarded the other team’s best player for a bunch of the game, and I was so proud of her. She did an amazing job, and we needed every one of her points.”

Pierson is back in the playoffs for the first time since the 2019-2020 season. Following that season, the girls, like the boys, were not allowed to play the shortened COVID-19 pandemic season in the spring. Following that, a number of seniors graduated, forcing the team into what Kneeland figured would be a two- to three-year rebuild.

The Whalers just missed out on the playoffs last season, losing four buzzer-beating games, but then faced even more adversity during the offseason when one of the team’s best players transferred out of the district. That was coupled with losing starter Ani Bedini to ACL surgery for more than half of the season. But through it all, the team managed to finish 9-5 in League VII and 11-9 overall.

Kneeland said the program has been able to find success since before he became head coach when Kevin Barron was leading the program. While there were a few lean years as the program rebuilt itself, Kneeland, his brother, and JV head coach Shelley Cottrell have been able to get the program back on track quickly. But Kneeland said that was due to how fast the young players took to the game.

“I’m really proud of this team. They worked so hard this year, and they’ve all really grown so fast,” he said. “We still get called by all the big schools to play us in nonleague games. Of course, they want the win. But they also know that if they play us, they’re going to have to work for it.”