The Journal News: Mercy women's team on an upswing

Brian Heyman
The Journal News

DOBBS FERRY - Time had been called, and some pulsating soundtrack filled the gym as about 80 fans in The Masters School stands waited for the tense final seconds to unfold in front of their eyes.

Mercy College was sitting right there with the top team in the East Coast Conference, trailing New Haven by three, but it had the basketball and 24.8 ticks on the clock.

"Hey, listen up," Ashlee Kelly said, and then the Mercy coach showed her women the board with the diagram of the play.

Christina Baxter tried to inbound along the baseline, but, alas, no one could get open. The junior guard had to call another timeout. Then the ball came up top to Ashley Borofsky, but the freshman guard was pressured and lost it. The Mavericks would have to settle for a moral victory on this night last week.

But it was another sign of the distance Mercy has come since Kelly showed up in 2006 as a 24-year-old head coach, taking over a Division II program that was in ruins. The Mavericks had done a staggering amount of losing - 50 games in a row over two winless seasons and 75 out of 77 over three. She tipped off her reign with just four players on the roster.

The rebuilding is still a work in progress. Yet a young coach on the rise can see a program on the rise after ending the streak at 52 and winning seven games last season. And now, there's three freshmen starting for a senior-less team that's 6-14 overall but 6-8 in the ECC and playing much more competitively.

"It was an athletic program that needed to be broken down and built back up," Kelly said. "That's basically what I did. When I came in, I brought a few girls with me and really hit the recruiting scene hard in the last year to bring in more talented players."

Baxter knows what the "before" and "after" pictures look like. The Tuxedo High alum lived through the humiliation of going 0 for her freshman season - 0-25.

"It was pretty depressing," said Baxter, the team's leading scorer at 14.7 points per game. "I came from a high school that didn't lose much. All I knew was winning. When I came here freshman year, all I did was lose. It hurt, kind of heartbreaking.

"I am so ready to win."

The program hasn't seen a winning season since 1988-89. But Kelly, who's also the co-interim athletics director, has worked to build a winning mentality. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association tagged her as a "rising star" in the Division II ranks last month.

"She's a very intense coach," Baxter said. "She wants to win. That's what we need. ... Since we have that, we look so good, so much different from my freshman year."

Ashley Finnegan is another true believer. The 6-foot freshman forward from Worcester, Mass., is averaging 12.2 points and 8.0 rebounds per game. She said 90 percent of why she chose Mercy had to do with Kelly.

"She pushes you to the limit," Finnegan said. "The other 10 percent is I really wanted to turn a program around."

Delmara Reece came to Yonkers from Jamaica when she was 13. The redshirt freshman out of Saunders High led the soccer team in points in the fall season, and now the athletic 6-foot power forward has surprised herself by averaging a double-double - 13.7 points and a team-high 13.2 rebounds.

"I thought it was going to be tough, being a two-sport athlete," Reece said. "I've just got to keep my mental toughness and keep working hard."

Kelly could play the game rather well herself. The Pittsburgh native grew up to be a 6-foot center for Quinnipiac, finishing No. 2 on its scoring and rebounding lists. She led Divison I in rebounding at 13.5 per game as a senior in 2003-04.

After playing guard in Holland during her one pro season, she coached AAU ball in Connecticut and worked at various camps. The now-25-year-old Stamford resident's full-time job was in accounting.

The numbers add up better with her in this job.

"The peak in my eyes is to sit at the top of the league," Kelly said. "I have to keep recruiting and getting those players that are not only good players and athletes but are good people, to bring those to my program and have it build in a way that people will fear us. I think we've started to make that name for ourselves this year."