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Berkshire Mountaineers Head to AAU Nationals
By Shannon Boyer, iBerkshires.com Sports
02:02PM / Thursday, June 25, 2015
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“All joking aside” seems to be the perfect idiom for the 11th grade Berkshire Mountaineers girls AAU team in the 2015 season.
 
After winning the Massachusetts Division 3 State Championship, they proved that it was no joke and that a trip to Nationals in Florida was in order for planning.
 
“Jon [Frederick] and I had an ongoing joke with the girls that if we won this tournament we would go to Florida and play in the national tournament,” head coach Frank Field said. “Well, I thought it was just a joke until about 60 seconds after the finals match and one of the girls came up to us and said ‘Okay, let’s start planning our trip to Nationals.' ”
 
The team; made up of 10 players from Northern Berkshire County -- seven from Hoosac Valley High School, two from Mount Greylock , and one from Drury -- qualified for Nationals after defeating four teams in the State Tournament. They competed against Mass Evolution, Metro Boston, Central Mass Shooters, and Team Providence, who they beat, 63-51, in the finals.
 
When the program was started back in 2009 by Hoosac Valley boys head coach Bill Robinson, the goal was not only for the girls to develop their basketball skills, but to form friendships that will last them a lifetime. And with this 11th grade team, Field can’t speak highly enough of the bonds they have built and the effort they have put forward to be a better team.
 
“The girls are an extremely competitive bunch, that understands the benefits of hard work,” he said. “We have an ongoing theme that we talk about with the girls and have for years and that’s how they can overcome anything if they are willing to out-work their competition.”
 
Field continued that this team isn’t one that always plays a perfect game, but that is something that was never a set goal. It’s ambition is always to be the hardest working team on the court. Being the underdogs in the tournaments they play, Field said they thrive on that and it motivates them to work hard and overcome their challenges they are faced with on the court.
 
”We are team that makes mistakes, but these girls all have a way of being there for each other to make up for it,” he said. “We’ve learned to laugh at our mistakes and spend the next crucial seconds working as hard as we can to overcome them.”
 
The Berkshire Mountaineers have proved that no mistake is one that is going to stop them after pushing through the state tournament and qualifying for Nationals in July.
 
The team participates in five or six tournaments throughout the season and they practice twice a week. The team still has time to prepare for Nationals as it takes place July 8-13 in Kissimmee, Fla.
 
“Our goals will not change as we are in Florida, we will compete as hard as we can and won’t be out worked,” Field said. “At the end of this tournament hopefully they all will have grown as basketball players and more importantly put themselves in a position to have learned something more about them. When basketball comes to an end I hope that they have all created experiences that they can look back on and say, ‘Ya know what, I can work through this and overcome anything in life,’ and if they do then all of this was worth it.”
 
The team's roster includes: from Hoosac Valley, Madi Ryan, Cassidy McMahon, Fallon Field, Kailynne Frederick, Skylar Case, Elli Field, and Alie Mendal; from Mount Greylock, Ari Waldon and Lauren Howard; and from Drury, Liv Carlson.
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