Her coach still remembers Margaret Whitley as that little girl in red cowboy boots pacing up and down the bleachers at all of her sisters’ games. She didn’t miss one, high school or summer league.
The youngest of four Whitley girls, all of whom have played basketball for Geneva, Margaret was a third-grader in 2009 when her sister Taylor led Geneva to the state finals for the first time.
All grown up, Geneva’s starting point guard as a freshman, Whitley will be front and center when the Vikings meet New Trier in Monday’s Class 4A Conant supersectional.
The winner gets the Fremd-Huntley winner in a Friday state semifinal in Normal.
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, is play with this team,” Whitley said. “If somebody told me in July that I’d be starting on varsity and getting ready for a supersectional I wouldn’t have believed them.”
Geneva (23-6), which blew out St. Charles East 64-39 to win its fifth sectional in seven years, can only hope history repeats itself.
Six years ago, a Taylor Whitley-led Geneva team beat New Trier 54-49 at the Loyola Supersectional en route to a fourth-place finish in 4A.
Beating this Trevians team could be a tall task, literally.
New Trier (29-1) is perfect aside from a loss in the Dundee-Crown championship to Prospect, who coincidentally beat Geneva at the McDonald’s Shootout. A great matchup looms between Geneva sophomore post Grace Loberg and 6-foot-3 New Trier junior Jeannie Boehm, who scored 16 points in a 41-39 sectional final win over Evanston.
The Trevians’ size extends to their guards, which could challenge the Vikings.
“They are going to be taller than us, their guards especially,” Geneva coach Sarah Meadows said. “Our kids will have to play bigger.”
Geneva seems to wear the underdog role well.
“It’s going to be a challenge for us; they are 29-1 for a reason,” Meadows said. “But I think our kids like that position. In the big basketball picture I don’t know how many people turn their heads when Geneva is mentioned. We’re OK with that.”
Three Geneva starters — Loberg, Janie McCloughan and Abby Novak — started for the team last year that beat Rockford Boylan to get to state.
Geneva’s guards, and consequently its ballhandling, were the question mark coming into the season.
Two freshmen seem to have answered that.
Whitley burst on the scene with 20 points against Batavia in her first start in December when McCloughan went out with a concussion, and hasn’t looked back. She scored 17 in Geneva’s sectional semifinal win, and fellow freshman guard Stephanie Hart was huge in holding down St. Charles East star Katie Claussner in the final.
Whitley plays with the moxie and confidence of a kid who’s grown up around the game. It’s clear to Meadows how committed her freshmen are.
“Half day Thursday they all wanted to come in and watch film together,” Meadows said. “Freshmen don’t do that normally. When you don’t have to be serious they act like freshmen, but when it is time to focus you would never know that they are freshmen. They get it, they are hungry and they want more.”
And the Vikings seem to be peaking at the right time.
Whitley said they’ve counted 14 injuries that have cost girls time at one point or another, but Geneva is relatively healthy now. McCloughan scored 18 points in the sectional final, a game in which Geneva avenged an earlier loss to East in emphatic fashion.
“All the hard work is paying off now,” Whitley said. “We’ve had a tough season trying to get the whole team at their best. Now everybody is feeling healthy and we’re ready to go.”
Joshua Welge is a freelance writer.