Nanuet has a ball on senior night

LoHud.com
Rick Carpiniello
Journal News columnist

NANUET — It was an afternoon of bare feet, enlarged photos, parents, speeches and fond memories.

And the Nanuet girls basketball team didn't seem to be distracted by it at all.

That's what you might expect from a team that ran the table last March, winning the Section 1, the state and the Federation Class B championships, and returned four starters this year.

The Golden Knights won the final regular-season home game their five seniors will play — although they will probably have at least one home game in the playoffs, if not two — by a 64-52 count over Tappan Zee on Tuesday.

They did it with their brand-new, big, color championship photo, which just went up on the gym wall earlier in the day.

"To have that picture go up today, on our senior night, it meant an awful lot to us," K.C. Jentzen said.

They did it with their three-sport star, Lauren Kahn, returning from a back injury that was first feared to be a fracture in her lower back.

They did it with their coach, Carlos Fidalgo [pictured above] , making speeches about his five seniors, and their parents coming down to the court for the ceremony. And they did it with Fidalgo, assistant Phil Carbone, JV coach Katie Fowler, athletic director Frank Mazzuca and Tappan Zee coach Reid Hoffer, all barefoot.

They wore no shoes for a charity known as Samaritans Feet (samaritansfeet.org), which, led by IUPUI coach Ron Hunter, and adopted by the Basketball Coaches Association of New York, and by Fidalgo, donates shoes to the 300,000 children worldwide who don't have a single pair. (To donate $5, text the word "shoes" to 85944).

"It's great to be able to help kids who don't have as much as we have," senior Amy Delva said.

This barefoot thing is catching on. Last month, in the boys' Coach Volpe Challenge Game between Gorton and Sacred Heart, spectators were asked to check their shoes at the door and then pay a donation to get them back on the way out, to raise money for Haitian relief.

"It didn't bother me," Tappan Zee coach Reid Hoffer said of coaching with no shoes and socks. "It was just such a great cause and I'm proud to be part of something that will maybe raise a few dollars for a cause. Anything we can do as coaches, I'm glad I can be a part of it."

Hoffer's team sure has some players, and has played well against most of the good teams on its schedule, and played with Nanuet all game except for a fateful 17-2 run in the second quarter.

That's to be expected, too, of this Nanuet team, which got 24 points from the unstoppable Jentzen, 17 from fellow senior Nikki Saponaro, 13 from Kahn — whom Fidalgo feared at one point might be done for the season.

The Dutchmen were led by Regina Argenzio and Meg Curran, with 16 apiece, and Devona Paul with 11.

These Golden Knights won't win their league (Pearl River did) or play for the Rockland championship this coming weekend, but then they didn't win their league last year either. Albertus Magnus won it last year, and both Albertus and Nanuet ended up playing for state championships on the same day. They may not even be favorites in the Section 1 tourney that starts next week; that will probably be Irvington.

But they're ready to go for it again.

"We'll be itching to start the tournament," Fidalgo said. "We feel like we've got a lot of basketball left and these kids don't want to stop playing. That's the feeling we had last year. They just kept steamrolling and steamrolling. It was about one more day, one more practice, one more game. Hopefully we'll have that same attitude."

They sure seem to have it. This day, while it could help in the seedings, was more about the past.

"Tonight was amazing for a lot of us," Kahn said. "We've been here a really long time and none of us would hope for it to, but it went by in the blink of an eye. You don't want this to be your last home game, but we were extremely happy, and I'm proud of the way my team played tonight. To pull out a victory and play the way we did on this night, I'm excited."

During the pregame ceremonies, Fidalgo spoke about his proud moments, and how his kids fix "unseen problems." He called them multi-tool, and dynamic, and they are.

They already have the three biggest banners a team can have. But they want all three again. As seniors.

(Tappan Zee Coach Reid Hoffer shoes his support for Samaritan's Feet)