Everything seemed to be in place Thursday for Senior Night at Marist.
It was the last home game of the girls basketball season, and the opponent, North Chicago, wasn’t a threat to spoil any festivities.
But one key ingredient was missing: seniors.
Marist still doesn’t have any–senior girls, that is. The Far Southwest Side school was an all-boys institution until 2002, so Senior Night has to wait one more year.
“It will be crazy,” Kate Grunauer promised.
Grunauer is one of the four juniors who have persevered through all three Marist varsity seasons. The four–centers Bridget Bentley and Maureen Downs, forward Erin Misiaveg, and Grunauer, a guard–have experienced some humbling lows and some exhilarating highs, and their team now seems poised to become a power.
“They laid down the foundation,” Marist coach Mary Pat Connolly said.
Downs and Grunauer, each a starter from Day One, have been the heart of the program. Were Marist still an all-guys school, they probably would be at all-girls Mother McAuley, where Grunauer’s mother and two sisters went.
The two players, who had been friends and teammates at Queen of Martyrs School since 4th grade, savored the notion of breaking with routine.
“The girls went to McAuley; the boys went to Brother Rice,” Downs said of Catholic high school choice in the neighborhood. “This was the perfect opportunity to start something new.”
The challenge of starting a basketball program from scratch also was appealing.
“It was a chance to show what we could do,” Grunauer said.
The first year, Connolly assigned 36 freshmen to two freshman squads and a team that played mainly a sophomore schedule but did meet six varsity opponents. It was a learning experience.
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“Everything had to be taught to us,” Grunauer said. “We didn’t even know how to line up for `The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Everything was new.”
The toughest lessons came on the court. Marist was 3-3 in its abbreviated 2002-03 varsity season, but that included a devastating 93-27 loss to Oak Park.
“That was the worst,” Downs said. “I never want to go through that again.”
Last year Marist finished a full varsity schedule with a 17-12 mark and a regional title, but thanks mainly to its membership in the tough East Suburban Catholic Conference, the Redhawks lost nine straight games near midseason.
Connolly knew that throwing her young players into varsity games right away would create potholes but believed adversity would not destroy their confidence.
“We knew there would be tough times,” she said, “but it was a good, talented group that took risks coming here not knowing what would happen.
“We knew they were great character kids to take the road less traveled, and that’s what we built on. We knew we had to keep plugging away, and that their hard work would pay off.”
Negatives, Downs said, eventually became positives.
“It made us stronger,” she said. “We learned to play as a team because of all that.”
Players credit Connolly for getting them through the tough spots by mixing high expectations with understanding. In doing it, Connolly drew on an unusual resume.
As Mary Pat Travnik, she played basketball at the now-closed Lourdes and then at Illinois in the late 1970s as one of the university’s early female scholarship athletes.
She played pro basketball for the old Chicago Hustle and then worked as a foreman in a steel factory. She quit that job after having the third of her four sons and got into coaching, working at three high schools and two colleges over the next decade before arriving at Marist.
“It intrigued me to start a program from the beginning and see what I could do with it,” she said of the Marist job. “Things just kind of fell into place.”
That’s certainly true of this season. Marist’s 68-23 victory over North Chicago gave it a final regular-season record of 17-9 and a 5-4 ESCC mark, highlighted by the Redhawks’ 62-59 upset of then second-ranked Marian Catholic on Jan. 22.
“That was an unbelievable feeling,” Downs said.
This has all been a battle of attrition. Bentley, Downs, Grunauer, Misiaveg and first-year varsity player Maddi Keating are all that remains of the 36 freshmen who invented Marist basketball. The rest chose to focus on other sports or were cut or left voluntarily as more talented players arrived.
Those younger athletes include sophomore guard Kelsey James, a two-year starter, and 6-foot-2-inch sophomore center Abby Nelson, who hadn’t played organized basketball before enrolling at Marist but is developing into an inside force.
Marist, the No. 2 seed in the Eisenhower sectional, starts state series play Tuesday against Bremen in the Shepard regional. The Redhawks have a good shot at their first 20-victory season and an outside chance for an Elite Eight berth, although the latter may be a year away.
Whatever prosperity waits, Marist’s juniors will surely enjoy it.
“Having all the lows really makes the wins feel that much better,” Downs said. “Hopefully, we’re at the top with the rest of the top teams now.”
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