By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
When Scott Meile was named the new Holy Spirit High girls basketball coach last fall, replacing Tim Whitworth, who stepped down after several very successful seasons, he figured all he had to do was not screw things up. Here was a program with a long history of success, with dedicated players and parents who spend their offseasons on the AAU circuit.
But Meile said he quickly found out that coaching basketball in Absecon is a whole lot different than at Oakcrest, where he spent many years trying to build up a program whose players have far less experience than the ones choosing Holy Spirit.
“It was definitely not easy, this is a way bigger challenge than I thought,” said Meile, who also has been a very successful coach of the Oakcrest boys soccer program for years. “I thought I was going to come in, roll the balls out and we were going to be fine. But it’s a challenge, like any other season I’ve had; there are just different obstacles.”
The fact that Holy Spirit will be taking on Middle Township on Saturday at noon at Egg Harbor Township High in the Cape-Atlantic League Tournament championship game is pretty incredible, when you think about what Meile and the Spartans have had to overcome this season.
There were a couple of factors working against Meile. One, he inherited a team with four seniors and four juniors who had spent their entire careers with one coach, and the players and new coach didn’t have a lot of time to get to know each other. Two, Meile’s style is vastly different than that of Whitworth, who ran an up-tempo, almost frenetic offense in which the Spartans didn’t mind missing shots because they were intent on taking as many of them as possible. With Meile’s offense, the Spartans are much more deliberate and value ball movement as opposed to volume shooting.
Meile said it wasn’t easy to get his players to believe that playing a different brand of basketball could be successful, too.
“They bought in a little more (as the season went on). A lot of the things, the terminology stuff in December, was new and they were scratching their heads, like, ‘what is this? What do you mean by this?’ As we’ve gotten more comfortable with each other we’ve built that bond and they trust me a little bit more, trust the coaches a little bit more,” he said. “We have meetings all the time about how we’re going to get better and how we’re going to improve.”
It’s taken a lot of meetings because, Meile said, the older players were resistant to change.
“Coming in as late as I did and being handed a roster, that was difficult. I was like, ‘I know who these kids are, I’ve seen them in the CAL,’ but they didn’t know me and I was trying to dictate to them, ‘hey, we need to do it this way now.’ They played such a different style the last couple of years and now I’m asking them to play much more controlled and doing different things, and that was the hardest thing. They didn’t want to do it,” Meile said. “We had some rough moments. There have definitely been some moments when I scratched my head and thought, ‘this isn’t as easy as I thought.’ There’s a lot of history and tradition here, so for someone who’s not as familiar with it and not a well known name, some of those questions came up, like, ‘why are we doing this? Who is this guy?’ There was a lot of that.”
Meile said it’s been just as difficult at times to gain the trust of the players’ parents. Many of them weren’t very familiar with him, he said, because Oakcrest and Spirit play in different divisions in the Cape-Atlantic League and the teams haven’t played each other since the final game of the covid season of 2021.
“I heard through the grapevine that a lot of parents were panicking, like, ‘why are we giving this guy a job here?’ But I’m really lucky. It’s been a great ride and I’m so excited for the next chapter,” Meile said. “This year has been a ride I’ve not had in a long time. I love the kids (at Oakcrest), they are great, great kids, but (at Holy Spirit) it’s a different level of expectation. We’re 18-8 right now, but if we were 8-18, I wouldn’t be here much longer. The pressure of it is fun, but it’s just a whole different level.”
It took a little time for everything to work out, as the Spartans started out just 2-2 this season before winning nine of their next 10 games. But then there was a span from late January to mid-February when Spirit went 4-5 and didn’t win back-to-back games until the CAL Tournament.
Now, the Spartans find themselves about to play for a league championship, in large part because Meile has found ways to get the best out of different parts of his roster. Megan Kane, a junior, has stepped up to become the team’s leading rebounder, doubling her output from her sophomore year, and Lauren Cella, another junior, has taken over the role of point guard, allowing Sabrina Little to flourish as a shooting guard. Little has become the school’s all-time leading scorer in girls basketball with more than 1,400 career points, and has scored nearly 450 points this season. But four other players have scored at least 100 points, as the Spartans have become extremely balanced.
“I’m lucky because the seniors I do have — Sabrina, Kieran (Brewster), Ava Catona, Ava Buccafurni — they’ve been nothing but supportive and they’ve always given us a boost,” Meile said. “Megan Kane and Lauren Cella have made a huge leap, so we have five kids on the floor at all times who are threats to score, and there aren’t a lot of teams that can do that.”
