By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
The Cherry Hill West High girls basketball team took on the personality of its leader, senior point guard Julia Lewis, this past winter — humble, selfless, blue collar with quiet confidence. And the team reflected Lewis’ best attribute all year. Competitiveness.
Lewis was the kind of player who would do anything to win. If that meant scoring double-digit points, she could do it (she scored 10+ points in 20 of 29 games this year). If that meant locking down an opposing team’s best player, she could do it. If it meant dishing out assists (more than 50 this season) to open players if the other team was keying on her — you get the point.
In no game was her impressive skill set on display more than in the Lions’ Group 3 state championship victory over Chatham, a dominating 34-19 triumph by West. Lewis had seven points, eight rebounds, five assists, a blocked shot, two steals and went 3-for-3 from the foul line. But more important than all that was her ability to shut down Chatham’s star player, Ella Kreuzer, a Division I talent who was limited by Lewis to just four points on one made basket and a pair of free throws. With Lewis locking down Chatham’s main scoring threat, the team was held to single digits in each of the four quarters, including just two points in the fourth quarter.
The South Jersey Glory Days Senior of the Month for April had a tremendous career with the Lions, finishing with more than 1,100 points, 200-plus rebounds and more than 100 assists, and she also had 78 steals and hit 52 three-pointers in 99 career games played. She averaged more than 11 points per game for her career, increasing her total points each season.
“Julia doesn’t get enough credit because she’s not the leading scorer on the team. It kind of distracts from all that she does. She’s our best defender, our best rebounder, she facilitates the offense at the point guard position, she doesn’t turn the ball over,” explained West head coach Dan Butler. “She’s calling all our sets, and she’s a calming factor for us. I think she gives everybody else on the court confidence. She’s definitely the type of player to get her teammates involved in the game before she worries about scoring. She could shoot more if we needed her to, and she does score when we need her to. But I think she really just facilitates the offense and gets her teammates set up so well. She’s incredible. I can’t say enough positive things about her.”
Lewis emerged as the leader of a solid sophomore class — kind of because she had to. When she was in 10th grade, there were no juniors or seniors on the team.
“We didn’t have any upperclassmen and there were four sophomores on varsity, the four of us who are seniors now. We didn’t have anybody older to look up to, so I kind of had to (be a leader) and be as vocal as possible. We weren’t great our sophomore year, but we definitely had potential,” Lewis said. “We’ve been playing together for four years and then Kirsten (Gibson) was a freshman last year and came in and helped us out a lot. We had a bunch of people who could score and it made our offense flow. We had a great season last year, even though we lost in the (sectional) semifinals in a really tough game.”
Two years ago, the Lions were 17-9 with all those sophomores, but got bounced in the first round of the state playoffs by Winslow. Last year, the team won 19 games and made it to the sectional semifinals before losing to eventual state champion Mainland Regional, 44-39. This year, the Lions put it all together, going 25-4 and winning the first state championship in program history.
“I’ve been with the girls program for 16 years now and we went through some really rough years with single-digit wins. All that changed when Julia Lewis and this senior class came to West four years ago,” Butler said. “They started as freshmen, they went through their growing pains, playing an Olympic Conference schedule with some really tough, high-quality teams, but they developed, both mentally and physically, and grew into a state-championship caliber team this year. Julia has been our captain since her sophomore year, which is kind of rare. That year was bizarre, we didn’t have a single junior or senior in the entire program, so we were basically four sophomores and a freshman. Julia had to mature more quickly than her years would indicate. But she’s the epitome of a student-athlete. She’s one of the best soccer players in our school and they won a sectional championship and went to a state championship two years ago. She was great in track, also. She’s just a special human being. She’s somebody who’s easy to follow, someone who does all the right things all the time.”
Lewis said she could tell early on that the Lions had something special brewing this season.
“We had the exact same team coming back and we worked all summer. We had summer league and summer practices and all that stuff. Our schedule was really tough, but we knew that would help us in the long run,” she said. “We played some good teams early, like Cherokee and Moorestown. And in that South Jersey Invitational Basketball Tournament we played teams like Paul VI. We lost to them, but you could tell our team chemistry was there and everything was coming together, and by the time the state playoffs came we were at our peak.”
Lewis said she believes her love for basketball impacted her teammates. She loved showing up to practice every day, and that kind of energy became contagious.
“Overall, I like how far our team came this year. Freshman year we lost in the first round of the state playoffs. I never thought we’d be playing five more games after that by the time I was a senior. But our team got along really well, we did a lot of stuff outside of basketball. We all liked hanging out together, and that’s one of the things I like most about high school basketball,” said Lewis, who is committed to play basketball at Mercy University (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.) next year. “Basketball is my main sport and I love playing it, so I wanted to show up to practice every day. Whether I was a captain or not, I wanted to practice, and I think that rubbed off on everybody. Like Kirsten, even though she’s a sophomore and she’s not considered a captain, she was still a great role model. We were all able to communicate and people took advice well.”
Lewis said West rode that underdog mentality throughout the state playoffs this year, and pulled off what no other Lions team had ever done. They beat Winslow, Timber Creek, Toms River East, Moorestown, Neptune and Chatham in succession, and only Moorestown got within 10 points of West.
“We started our first playoff game with a huge win (87-46 over Winslow), everybody came out and was playing fast and confident, and that just kept carrying over game after game,” Lewis said. “Like the team we played in the sectional final, we had already played them twice earlier in the season. We knew it was going to be hard, but our confidence was high. Our coaches always said, ‘play like underdogs.’ We couldn’t get too high from the wins, we just had to come in and work.”
What made that run possible, in large part, was Lewis leading the way on offense, not turning the ball over and getting the Lions into their sets so they could be successful on the offensive end.
“We’re a defensive team, so that means we’re limiting the opponent to a reduced number of possessions, but that also affects our number of possessions. It puts more value on each possession,” Butler explained. “She has the ball in her hands all the time facilitating our offense. She’s disciplined and has great awareness and basketball IQ. She gets us a great shot almost every time down the court. She’s our No. 1 ball handler and the No. 1 person in charge of our offense.
“She’s a calming influence. She’s the outlet against any kind of pressure, and it’s unique in girls basketball to have the ability to handle the ball so well. It allows everyone else to have a more simplified job.”
Butler has a huge challenge next winter, trying to replace the kind of leadership that Lewis and fellow seniors like Danielle Short, Molly Bovell, Addison Petti and Jada Sayers brought to the table every day.
“(Lewis) makes it easier for other kids to kind of fall in line and understand what the program’s expectations are,” Butler said. “She takes a lot off my shoulders because she’s basically a coach on the court. She does an excellent job of preparing, for practices and games. She leads by example and leads with compassion and heart. She’s much more mature than what you would expect a high school kid to be.”
