Philly’s Catholic League was three times a state champion in girls’ basketball

The Philadelphia Catholic League made history this season.

For the first time since it’s been in the PIAA, three teams from the Catholic League won state championships.

Archbishop Wood topped Villa Maria, West Catholic beat Mohawk and Cardinal O’Hara took home the state title trophy in a lopsided victory over Chartiers Valley last weekend.

“It says that we’re the best league in the state,” said Chrissie Doogan, the O’Hara girls’ basketball coach who previously played for the program. “I would’ve said that before all three of us won the state title. There’s no days off as far as league games. Every night is a battle, the kids embrace it, and that’s why I think some kids chose to go to Catholic League schools. They want to be challenged and they want to play at a high level.”

With roughly 20 seconds left in the contest, Mike McDonald, Archbishop Wood’s girls’ basketball coach, was finally able to breathe as the end of a season that featured strict health and safety protocols and personal sacrifices.

Villa Maria replaced its starters with subs, a clear sign that the game was over, as the Vikings won the Class 4A championship, 44-34, over the Victors last week at the Giant Center in Hershey.

“That was pretty emotional for me because of all of the sacrifices the kids and the coaching staff had to do this year to make it happen,” McDonald said. “It was a relief, rewarding, and it was just a moment of greatness. … It was a moment of appreciation for everything this team has done.”

Wood’s state championship victory was the sixth in program history and third with McDonald at the helm. The Vikings (17-2) also finished the season ranked No. 7 in the country nationally by MaxPreps.com, which is their highest ranking in the program’s history.

Wood had no positive COVID cases and were able to play a full schedule. At one point, McDonald was worried the season was in jeopardy when Pennsylvania put high school sports on pause until January. He said it began to feel like “March 2020” again, but once his squad got the green light to start practicing, they bought into staying within their own bubble and mask-wearing.

“When a couple of schools shut down again they realized, ‘We really have to buy into doing everything we’re supposed to be doing off the court in order to make the on the court stuff happen,’ ” McDonald said.

The Vikings group of seniors -- Kaitlyn Orihel, Noelle Baxter and Dana Kiefer -- were also motivated to win a state championship after last season’s run was halted in the quarterfinals due to the pandemic.

Once the season finally started, the group came up with the mantra, “Unfinished Business”.

Orihel had already been on the losing end of a state championship as a freshman, and when she walked into the Giant Center for warm-ups before tip-off last week, she said wasn’t leaving the court with that feeling ever again.

“It was the perfect ending,” said Orihel, who finished her career as Wood’s all-time scoring leader with 1,462 career points.

Like McDonald, Beulah Osueke, the West Catholic girls’ basketball coach, felt a major sigh of relief after the Lady Burrs defeated Mohawk, 67-56, in the Class 3A title game.

“If we would’ve went that far and not won, it would’ve felt like it was all for nothing,” said Osueke. “I know that’s not true, but that’s how it feels.”

Osueke, who announced on Wednesday that she’s left her coaching job at West Catholic to develop a sports-based project that will be introduced in the summer, said the pandemic was extremely tough on her team during the season.

The Lady Burrs (12-4) weren’t able to play a full schedule and had three games canceled this season -- two against Neumann-Goretti and one vs. Lansdale Catholic. They also dealt with positive cases within West Catholic, which led to the team missing a lot of practice time.

“Everything my kids have to deal with in a normal year is more than enough, honestly,” Osueke said. “With one of their hobbies they see as a safe space or something they love also being in danger of not happening, I couldn’t imagine the toll it took on them mentally and emotionally because I know in the past basketball has always been a safe haven for them.”

Before the season started, West Catholic wasn’t able to practice together in-person due to restrictions within Philadelphia, so Osueke had to improvise.

The Houston native set up virtual workouts to try to keep her team engaged, but Osueke said she wished she could’ve been around her team more often than just games or practices.

In previous seasons, Osueke and her team would watch practices at local universities or have other events like their annual holiday dinner.

“It’s a miracle that we even had a season,” Osueke said.

West Catholic wasn’t the only team in the Catholic League to bring home a PIAA trophy for the first time.

O’Hara, who lost in their previous two state championship appearances, didn’t let this opportunity go to waste. The Lions (15-4) topped Chartiers Valley, 51-27, in the Class 5A championship.

In 2016, Doogan and her daughter, junior forward Maggie Doogan, were in attendance for O’Hara’s loss to Cumberland Valley.

At the time, Doogan was an assistant coach on Linus McGinty’s staff and Maggie Doogan was there to spectate.

As she sat there and watched the Lions fall, the younger Doogan imagined potentially winning states while playing under her mother, and it came to fruition last week.

“I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else,” said Maggie Doogan, a junior who earned First Team All-Catholic honors. “She’s been there since day one for me. She developed me into the player that I am now and I wouldn’t be able to do it with anybody else.”

Before the O’Hara mother-daughter duo won the championship, though, their season almost went in the opposite direction.

The Lions started the season 3-3 and began to feel the effects of a season altered by COVID.

While O’Hara didn’t have any games canceled due to COVID, the lack of a regular offseason program hurt the team, especially not having a preseason or a non-conference schedule.

“We’re jumping into a season where we open at Neumann-Goretti, at Archbishop Carroll, and at Wood,” Doogan said. “We had no preseason… you usually get 10 games to get ready for the Catholic League and we didn’t get any this year, so that was new for us.”

But after that initial hiccup early in the season, O’Hara got back on track.

Following the Lions’ third loss — a 63-62 tight contest against West Catholic — Doogan held a meeting with her team and preached getting back to the fundamentals and ignoring the outside noise as much as possible.

And it worked for O’Hara.

The Lions closed out the year winning 12 of their final 13 games, which they rode all the way to Hershey.

“We were thankful for the Catholic League and the archdiocese, our administration at O’Hara that put in so much time and effort and money to make the campus safe,” Doogan said. “There’s all kinds of hand sanitizers everywhere, masks everywhere and we were just really appreciative of all the efforts that were made for these kids to get their season in.”