Not all high school heroes are McDonalds' All-Americans or make the Blue Star Top 40 list. Sometime they are players whose high school careers came during a rebuilding time, or when there simply weren't enough girls to form the core of a cohesive team.

One example: Sarah McAndrews, of Groton (N.Y.) High School, who varsity career started in the middle of her sophomore year, right after a string of successful seasons for her school.

"We used to be really good--we had a great player, Jen Olin, for several years," McAndrews says. "But basketball stopped being of interest to a lot of girls at our school--I'm the only person in my grade who's played since I've been a freshman, and I was the only senior this year. It was hard having no one who had played together. Every single year we had a new group thrown together as a team, not like at schools where teams stay together for year after year."

That lack of stability was reflected in the record of the teams that McAndrews played on: they went 1-114 during her high school career.

There's no question that all the losing gnawed at her. "I always got discouraged, but I kept playing," she says. "I turned my discouragement into motivation. Every time we lost ÐI hated to loseÑI would come into practice the next day and work that much harder. And worked really, really hard every day. And it paid off for one game."

That one game came in her junior season, right before the Christmas break, against Southern Cayuga. "We won by 13 points, and it was cool because I scored 13 points," she says. "We actually cut down one of the nets, and I still have a little piece from that."

At first, she wasn't sure how to react to the victory. "It was something that I hadn't experienced before, competitively I had never won a game, and most people don't think about what it actually feels like to win if you've never done it before, so it was really weird. I definitely didn't think that it would be the last game we won."

Unfortunately, it was. "This year we had a couple of close games--on senior night we were up by 20 and somehow we lost," she says. "But I definitely thought we'd be winning more. That was something I tried to do every single game, I always went in thinking that we had a chance, and that we could win if we played well."

Despite all the losing, McAndrews said that she never considered transferring to a neighboring high school. "My parents wouldn't let me," she says. "They were always supportive. They took me to practice and never missed a game, and would be encouraging even after we lost."

That attitude rubbed off on her teammates and coaches. "Regardless of whether we won or lost, her attitude was always positive," says Groton Head Coach Dick Breck. "She didn't like to lose, and she went into every game thinking we had a chance to win. She always sought out the coaches to see what she could do better, any kind of improvements or team ideas she could help on. She would come scouting with me, she would watch tapes, and do an awful lot to try to better herself She was always looking to improve--that's the type of person she is."

Sarah admits that she was a gym rat. "I would call the coach to open the gym for me. I could spend hours in there. Everyone else would have left after practice, but I'd still be in there until he'd say, 'All right Sarah, I'd really like to go home now.'

"I love doing anything if revolves around basketball," she continues. "I mastered the foul shot just from practicing after school. That was one thing I could perfect about my game, because you're the only who controls it."

Breck points outs McAndrews' strengths on the court. "She's very tenacious, a very strong rebounder and defender," he says. "Sometimes I had to calm her down. She could rein it in if she needed to, but she might pick up quick fouls just because she was so aggressive. Technique-wise, I would say her defense and her hustle were strong points. She's one of those players who led by example, just because she was so aggressive. And she's not very tall, but she probably was my best rebounder."

"I love to rebound," says McAndrews, who's 5-5. "And I'm kind of strange--I like defense. I just love having the opportunity to stop people from scoring, and steal the ball. I like to shoot and score, but on defense you get to work really hard, and when you do, it pays off."

McAndrews' love of the game led her to attend a summer camp run by Stephanie McCarty three years ago. "It was kind of odd, it was in the middle of the woods in the Adirondacks and we played outside most of the time," she remembers. "But it was really good and helpful. We also went to a team camp a couple of years ago at the U of North Carolina."

The past two seasons, McAndrews was hampered by a serious knee injury suffered at the beginning of her junior year. "I happened to fall really hard, and my knee started bothering me," she says. "Eventually I went to the doctor right before Christmas break, and he told me I couldn't play over break. It was just practice, so I just sat there. Then after that, it didn't get better, but he let me wait until the end of the season to check it out."

It turns out she needed arthroscopic surgery. "I had a huge hole in the cartilage on my femur, and they drilled in my bone to try to make it bleed [it's called microfracture surgery] to form scar tissue," she says. "It didn't work and I was on crutches for two months after the season. Then I spent a good eight months in physical therapy, just so I could play this season. I had to wear a brace 24 hours a day, and I just played through the pain because I wanted to. But it hurts all the time when I walk. I'm going to wait until next summer and have more surgery on it, because I don't want to live the rest of my life with knee pain."

Looking back over her high school career, McAndrews says that she took away some lessons from life on the court. "It taught me that teamwork is so important--no matter what I did, it took everyone to win the game," she says. "And just that you have to be determined in everything. No matter what the outcome is, you can never give up. Just ask my dad--I'm a very persistent person."

Salutatorian of her senior class, McAndrews has a bright future. She'll be attending Cornell University, where she was accepted early decision last fall, and enrolling in the highly competitive School of Engineering. "I love math and science. My grades show that I'm good at everything, but those are my favorites," she says. "I want to be a biomedical engineer and learn to design body parts. Maybe I'll make myself a new knee."

Breck is proud to have had McAndrews on his teams. "That's a kid I can point to, and say, 'I coached her. She was one of my players,'" he says.

Article written by Gball Associate Editor Jim Catalano.

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