On Friday February 15, St. Pius X Church’s very own fifth-grade girls basketball team was named the CYO Long Island Division Champions. The season-long effort from the Plainview based team resulted in them placing first out of 68 teams in both Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
The girls, coached by Michael Mastorides and Jamie Ortsman, defeated St. Frances in a close and exciting championship game. St. Pius X was trailing St. Frances the entire game, but with 20 seconds left in the fourth quarter, Pius tied up the game by sinking two foul shots. The game then went into overtime, 15-15.
The intensity from the game carried through into overtime, where neither of the teams scored for a majority of the three-minute period. In the final seconds, a St Pius player, who was trapped in the corner, shot the ball into the air. The final buzzer went off as the ball ricocheted around the rim and dropped through the net. Both the team and the crowd in the gym went wild in celebration of the girls 17-15 championship win.
