Competitive fun abounds in Rockville Centre's first women's basketball league

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A chipped tooth, some ripped pants and a torn calf muscle were the only slight setbacks in an otherwise great first week of the Rockville Centre Women’s Basketball League, which has provided players in the village, ages 35 to late 50s, with a chance they haven’t had before.

Competition tipped off on May 8, and more than 50 women have played three games, and will play two more before playoffs begin.

“I guess there really is a need for it,” Meryl Fox said of the league after her team’s third game on May 22 in the upstairs gym at the John A. Anderson Recreation Center. “I didn’t realize, ’cause you’re racing around doing a million things, you don’t realize what you’re missing.”

Fox, 42, a lifelong Rockville Centre resident, first thought of creating such a league years ago. It reaches a demographic beyond the Over-40 League formed in 1992, which her father, the late John Friedermann — a former CYO coach with a local basketball award and a court at Mill River’s Centennial Park named in his honor — helped create with friends Bob Bonagura, Tim Brennan and Bill Faraday.

Faraday, 71, recalled that Friedermann would have extra gym time at South Side Middle School after the youth team he coached finished its season. For several years, he and some other guys used the court time to play pickup games, until Bonagura had the idea to start a league. Friedermann died during the league’s first season, Faraday said, but it has continued to this day, often running from January to April. Players range from 40 to those in their 70s.

Although the league is not limited to men — former Iona basketball star Patty Basile has played in it — it didn’t offer women a chance to play exclusively against one another.

For a while, Fox was waiting for a convenient chance to start up such a league, but this year, she said, “I just decided there’s never going to be a good time. I have four kids; I work full-time. There’s never going to be an easy time.”

She contacted friends, and then posted her idea to RVC Moms, a popular Facebook group. About 90 women showed interest, Fox said, and more than 50 registered for the league. Player fees cover uniforms, referees, equipment, gym time and insurance. Faraday and his friends helped Fox get the league organized, she said.

“It’s amazing to me that she’s got six teams,” Faraday said. “I thought maybe she’d get on with just a couple.”

The league is a mix of women new to basketball and those who have played for much of their lives. Fox, a 1995 graduate of South Side High School, where she played varsity basketball, faced off against her friend Meghan O’Neill, who played for Sacred Heart Academy and then for four years at Adelphi University, where she scored over 1,000 points.

O’Neill, 40, who grew up in Floral Park before moving to Rockville Centre when she was 16, played CYO basketball with Fox for St. Agnes when the two were in high school. She whizzed around the court last week, draining several 3-pointers and finding open teammates to help lead her squad to a third victory in as many games.

“It’s been fun, it’s been competitive, there’s good camaraderie with the girls and I’m having a blast,” O’Neill said of the league. “It’s good to get back on the court.”

Her teammate Kelly Barry, a Rockville Centre Board of Education trustee, played basketball at St. Anthony’s High School, but hadn’t played since. “It’s been a great deal of fun,” she said. “I think it’s such a great thing that [Meryl’s] doing, and when I heard she was planning it, I had no doubt it was going to come to a reality.”

A mother of two daughters and a son, Barry, 39, hustled up and down the court as her children watched. Each game, Fox noted, seventh- and eighth-grade girls, some of whom have mothers on the team, run the scoreboard and clock to fulfill community service hours for the National Junior Honor Society.

“I think all the women are being role models for the kids and the neighbors and the friends who come watch,” Barry said, “and I think it’s a chance for us to be a positive example, especially for our daughters.”

Sarah Barbarotto said her daughters — ages 8, 5 and 2 — would be at her next game, when her squad plays the team that includes MaryHope Friedermann, Fox’s sister-in-law and 8-year-old Courtney Barbarotto’s second-grade teacher at Wilson Elementary School. Courtney was still deciding whom to root for, her mother said.

Barbarotto, 37, played CYO basketball and during her freshman year at South Side High, and wanted to try her skills again. Her father, John Gaffney, 70, was an original member of the Over-40 League, and she was happy to see Fox start a women’s version, whose players, she noted, have a wide range of skills.

“There are girls there that are like college superstars,” Barbarotto said, “and then there are people who are like me, who just played growing up.”

Like Barry and Barbarotto, Mary Prendergast, who is among the older members of the league, hasn’t played organized basketball in years. A 1984 graduate of Manhattanville College, where she played basketball and soccer, she said the league is a bit more competitive than she expected, but has been enjoyable so far.

“I was pleasantly surprised with how many women signed up,” Prendergast said. “I like to get out, meeting a lot of new people and getting some exercise. Getting a good run is always a good thing.”

Fox said she hoped to help the league grow, and to make the season longer than five games plus playoffs. She also wants to add one more way to keep alive the memory of her father. She pointed to the women’s basketball league logo on her shirt, which has the initials “JDF” semi-hidden within it.

“We’re trying to keep that a part of it as long as we can,” she said.