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Sports

Squan's Flaherty Reaches 1000 Points

Sophomore girls basketball player hits career milestone in just two seasons

Manasquan sophomore Katelynn Flaherty, and those who knew of her basketball talents before she enrolled at Manasquan High School in 2010, had in mind a career steeped in accomplishments, one of which would be to score 1000 points over the course of her career.

The 1000-point plateau is a benchmark for only the best high school players on a team, and while the Warriors’ two-year starting guard thought she would find her way there, not even she expected it to happen in February of her second season.

Flaherty joined the 1000-point club with 25 points in the Warriors’ 71-34 win over Monsignor Donovan last Thursday, joining teammate Michaela Mabrey, who is only 28 points away from 2000 heading into Manasquan’s Shore Conference Tournament semifinal game against Neptune on Tuesday.

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Flaherty entered Thursday just six points shy of the mark and quickly took care of the feat during the first quarter. After her 25-point night and a nine-point outing in the Shore Conference Tournament quarterfinals Saturday, she currently has 1,028 points.

“It has gone by so fast,” Flaherty said. “I remember scoring my first two points like it was yesterday, and now to have 1000 points is crazy. I’m just glad I’ve been able to play with my friends and do it while playing for a winning team.”

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Flaherty has been a starter for the Warriors from day one and has played with Mabrey since she was six years old. With a rapport already in place between her and Mabrey, Flaherty knew she would be able to fit-in and contribute right away, but still never imagined she would become such a proficient scorer this quickly.

“I didn’t really know how long it would take,” Flaherty said of her pursuit of the 1000-point milestone. “It was something that I wanted to reach sometime in my career, but coming in as a freshman, you don’t know what to expect, whether you’re going to get the shots to do it or whether it’s going to take a while to start scoring a lot.

“After last year I knew I was within range coming into the year, so it wasn’t that unexpected, but now that I think about getting to a thousand and I still have two years left, it’s pretty crazy.”

As a sophomore this season, Flaherty is averaging 20.4 points per game after averaging 22.3 as a freshman last year. The Warriors are 23-1 heading into Tuesday’s Shore Conference Tournament semifinal and with Flaherty and Mabrey’s younger sister, freshman Marina Mabrey, in the fold for two more years, the Warriors are set up to win now and in the future.

“We knew when we were younger that we all wanted to play together in high school,” said Flaherty, who joined the team one year after Michaela Mabrey’s first season after playing her freshman year at St. John Vianney. “When we were picking schools, we wanted to have a chance to play together and win championships and Manasquan just felt like home.”

Flaherty’s per-game scoring averaged has decreased slightly this season, but that has been a result of adding another talented scorer in Marina Mabrey, who is averaging 15 points per game herself. Regardless of the scoring distribution over the next two-plus seasons, with some good health, Flaherty should set her sights on 2000 points at some point.

“I’m sure I’m going to have more chances to score when Michaela leaves just because it’s one less scorer and I’ll have the ball in my hands a little more,” Flaherty said. “At the same time, she is a reason Marina and I get a lot of our points because she is such an unselfish player and a great passer.

I’ll have to take on more of a distributing role with her gone, and that will be a good challenge. I’m just looking forward to the rest of this year and knowing I get to play two more years with Marina and the other girls we have here and coming in.”

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