With a less than stellar record this season, the High School South boys basketball team may not be much to look at. But hold on: In a few years Pirates coach Eric Mooney may have a veritable powerhouse on his hands.##M:[more]##
That’s because the Grover Middle seventh grade boys basketball team finished its season on February 14 against cross-town rival Community Middle School (39-22) with a perfect 14-0 record, winning by an average score of 48-22, and looking like the middle school equivalent of the Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era. A team composed of all seventh graders that often plays teams of eighth and seventh grade students, the Grover Middle School Jaguars have proved that talent, smarts, and hard work can lead to big success.
“There is a real complexity to our system and we really don’t differ from what they do in the high schools,” says coach Wayne Wendel, who also teaches social studies at Grover. “We are not a typical seventh grade team in the sense that you try to do the minimal. We play multiple defenses, we have four different offenses, we play different situations differently.”
Tri-captains Henry MacQueen, Drew Sivertsen, and Jack Dennehy have been the team leaders for the Jaguars all season. “Henry is our starting center and is very fast. He is also our top rebounder,” says Wendel. MacQueen, whose brother Grant is a senior at South and hopes to play on Yale’s football team in the fall.
“Drew is probably our best offensive player,” says Wendel. “He is very aggressive in the open court, puts a lot of pressure on the defense, and is one of top leaders in steals.” Heading into the last week of the season, Sivertsen was leading the team with 88 total points.
“Jack is one of our best offensive players, says Wendel. “He’s a good shooter and an incredible rebounder.” Dennehy is a top free throw shooter, hitting on 59 percent of his shots. Wendel says that Phil Trachtenberg is the team’s best three-point shooter with the quickest hands on the team. Ball handling is Zach Donahue’s forte, and Dennis Cannon is usually the first player coming off the bench. “He does a very good job running the floor,” says Wendel.
Also making big contributions to the Jaguars’ perfect season were Ryan Brazel, Kevin Flores, Zach Hundertmark, Brandon Lerner (who missed 10 games after injuring his wrist), Sam Macaluso, Matt Rhatigan, Mike Skapyak, Casey Tosches, and Avi Vaswani.
Wendel has coached basketball for 30 years. Growing up on Staten Island, Wendel played basketball in high school. “I didn’t have the size or the talent to play at the college level,” he says. He attended Wagner College and served as an unofficial student intern to the varsity basketball team coached by future N.B.A. coach P.J. Carlesimo. “He was very kind to me and let me attend his practices,” says Wendel. “I was really more a manager than a coach, but I got his playbook, I was able to watch him work, and I was able to learn what he was doing.”
After graduating from Wagner, Wendel coached seventh and eighth graders at Staten Island Academy for 17 years before moving to West Windsor Plainsboro.
Next season he will coach many of the same players in the Grover eighth grade basketball team. “These guys will try out next year and I expect the vast majority to make the team,” he says. “But there are no guarantees. Other kids may work harder than some of them during the year. We’ll see what happens.”
— Jack Florek
