By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
Under longtime coach John Leahy, the Middle Township girls basketball program has become one of the best in South Jersey, and the Panthers proved that again recently when they went on a run to capture the Cape-Atlantic League Tournament championship.
By beating Holy Spirit, the Panthers tied Ocean City with six titles, most in the history of the league.
“Through the years I don’t have to say how proud I am of the program that we’ve built,” Leahy said. “That’s from our assistant coaches to our administration to our parents to our kids. To have the same number (of CAL titles) as Ocean City — knowing most of those were under (former coach Paul) Baruffi, who I have a ton of respect for and I’m still great friends with Paul — so for us to tie them, yeah, it’s nice. It’s a great accomplishment for our program.”
But, as great as that accomplishment is, Leahy is probably hoping history doesn’t repeat itself. The last time the Panthers won the league title, in 2016, they lost to Sterling in the South Jersey Group 2 semifinals. And the last two seasons, they’ve won sectional titles without winning a CAL championship.
Leahy, however, believes that having success in the CAL Tournament certainly can be a precursor to what a team can do in the state playoffs. The CAL is a difficult tournament to win, as there are a lot of Group 4, Group 3 and parochial schools in the mix. The Panthers have won the past two South Jersey Group 2 championships in part because of the difficult regular-season schedule they play in the CAL, as well as going through one of the toughest tournaments in South Jersey.
Three Cape-Atlantic League teams — including Middle Township — have at least 20 wins this season, and 10 of the league’s 21 teams are above .500. Holy Spirit and Absegami both have 19 wins and Hammonton has 17.
“I make no secrets about it, our goal every year is to win a South Jersey title. We want to win South Jersey Group 2 and get to a state final, but you want to win this one first. I’ve always said this is a great kind of practice run. If you want to win a South Jersey title, you have to win four games, so this is kind of a prep for that. You do the work all year so you can get a good seed and get home games, which we did,” Leahy said. “This is 4-0. The good thing about it is, if you lose in this tournament, you’re not collecting uniforms. You learn from it and move on. The last couple of years we’ve lost (in the CAL) and gone on to win sectional titles. This tournament really caps of off how battle tested you are by the end. It’s a great dry run.”
WHAT’S NEXT: Middle Township is the No. 1 seed in the upcoming South Jersey Group 2 tournament and hosts No. 16 Camden Academy Charter at 5 p.m. on Thursday in the opening round of states.
