By Marc Thaler
Staff Writer

According to co-coaches Becky Wing and Cindy Whitcher, the Cawley Middle School girls basketball team is on the verge of something special.

Hampstead traveled to Hooksett recently for a battle of Hawks. Here, Cawley seventh-grader Abigail Wurtele is stripped of the ball after grabbing an offensive rebound in the first quarter. The locals have dramatically improved this season. (Marc Thaler Photo)

After winning just one game last season, the Hawks’last contest of the 2003-04 campaign, CMS has turned the corner this year.

Entering their second-to-last home game of the year against Hampstead on Thursday, Jan. 20, the Hawks already had three wins to their credit.

“This year, they’ve improved dramatically,” said Wing, who along with Whitcher took over coaching responsibilities midway through last season. “Last year, they were losing games by 30 and 40 points – easily. Now, we’ve had a couple of 10-point and eight-point losses along with a few wins.”

The Hawks suit up four eighth-graders, seven seventh-graders and one sixth-grader. But where their grade levels might differ, every player is connected by a common thread.

“These girls don’t like to lose,” Whitcher said. “They work hard in practice and they’ve certainly left a lot of skin on this gym floor diving for balls. There’s no ‘I don’t care’ mode. They’re always fighting. They have a lot of heart.”

That spirit, the coaches said, is the direct result of the girls knowing how to push each other.

“They’ve grown up playing sports together,” Whitcher said. “They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses so they’ve been able to encourage each other coming up through the ranks together.”

In truth, the Hawks’record is deceiving. This year’s edition has a lot of talent, Wing said. The players have really begun to recognize which athletes are best in certain roles, and that’s been beneficial to the team’s development, she added.

The number of key contributors has meant the coaches haven’t been forced to stick with the same starting five for each game. Wing and Whitcher adopted a rotational system because every player has multiple strengths.

In particular, a pair of players really stepped up this season, the coaches said.

“Samantha Walker, a seventh-grader, is a phenomenal basketball player,” Wing said. “If the team gets into a pinch, she’s the one we look to get the ball to.

“Courtney Cookson, an eighth-grader, is a girl the rest of the team also looks to,” she added. “We count on her to pull down the big rebounds.”

“Just watching everyone’s skills develop has made this a successful season,” Whitcher said. “What they’re able to do now shows they’ve really grown as a team. It feels good to know that, as coaches, we could be a part of that – that we were able to help them develop as athletes to help the team.”

The 2004-05 Hawks include eighth-graders Jennifer Berntsen, Cookson, Jillian Marx, Jessie Ramalho and team manager Kaitlin Kennedy; seventh-graders Megan Cournoyer, Allison Duval, Lindsay Johnson, Jennifer Lough, Corina Vorce, Walker and Abigail Wurtele; plus sixth-grader Deven McKiernan.

“I think we’re gonna be pretty strong next year,” Wing said. “The girls have already come a long way. But next year I think we’ll certainly be contenders.”