It was a season to remember for the Turners Falls girls basketball team and one that the program hopes can be the standard going forward.
The Thunder went 13-5 during the regular season and took the Hampshire League South title with an 11-1 record.
It was the first league championship for Turners in 40 years.
“It was one of our goals at the beginning of the year,” Thunder coach Jim Cadran said. “We thought we might be the first team ever to do it at Turners but after some research we saw that someone else had, but it hadn’t been done in a really long time. The girls were excited about that.”
After the first three games of the season, it might have been far fetched for those outside the program to believe a league title was in play. Turners opened the year with three straight losses, falling to Frontier, Southwick and Pope Francis.
All three teams are a division higher than the Thunder and each one ended up making the Div. 4 state tournament and Turners didn’t get deterred after each game.
The fourth game of the season was the takeoff point for the Thunder. Turners went on the road to take on rival Greenfield, a team it hadn’t beat since 2014. The Thunder won the game, 41-32, snapping a seven-game skid against the Green Wave.
“Greenfield had had our number for years,” Cadran said. “That win really jump started us. After the Greenfield game, all the girls were just standing there. It was like they didn’t know how to react. Our assistant coach Jason Salls had to tell them they could celebrate and be happy. We gained a lot of confidence after that game. The girls knew if they could play with Greenfield, they could do well in our league.”
The victory kicked off a six-game win streak for Turners, and it suffered just two regular season losses from that point on. The Thunder then qualified for the Western Mass. Class D tournament, beating Granby in the opening round but falling to Hoosac Valley — who is playing in the Div. 5 state championship over the weekend — in the semifinals.
Turners then made the state tournament, blowing out Rising Tide in its opening game before losing to Saint Bernard’s in the Round of 32.
“At the beginning of the year, Jason Salls and I gave them our goals,” Cadran said. “One was the win the league, one was to make the Western Mass tournament and the other was making states. We got to Western Mass., we got to states and got to experience that. The girls were excited about that. We saw growth as a team.”
Cadran credits the buy in from his players for the success this season. He felt this group was a coaches dream, executing whatever gameplan he had. He wanted his team to play strong defense all year, feeling like they would be in every game if they could keep the opponent in the 30s, and the Thunder responded by playing tough defense all season long.
The culture built this season is something he hopes the JV players and middle school players see and that it can continue for years to come.
“The whole thing is they bought into what we were selling,” Cadran said. “We said this is how we’re going to do things and told them how we wanted to play and they bought into it. If they didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have had the season we had. They did everything we asked of them all year.”
The future is bright for Turners, with Emily Young the lone player who won’t be back next year after graduating. The Thunder hope to continue building off the success and make winning seasons the norm.
“It was a very bright year for our team,” Cadran said. “It was a good time coaching them. We’ve had some down years. This was a step in the right direction. Hopefully our numbers rise a little bit and hopefully the girls keep playing some basketball in the offseason so we can keep this thing going.”