Delco Christian's Lady Knights Are Headed to State Quarterfinals

The Lady Knights knew this level before. It was the same familiar scary edge they were on last year, looking down and around, moving inch-by-inch in striving to do something no other Delco Christian girls’ basketball team ever accomplished—reach the PIAA Class A state quarterfinal round.

The Lady Knights remembered the dour, droopy faces on the seniors too. The teary-eyed expressions that silently screamed, “This is it, no more high school basketball.” It’s something the Lady Knights vowed to themselves would not be repeated this year.

After surviving some tense moments, it was Wednesday night that the Delco Christian girls’ basketball team grabbed a piece of school history in becoming the first team to reach the PIAA Class A state quarterfinal round by beating Reading Central Catholic, 36-25.

The victory helped the Lady Knights improve to 26-1, while Central Catholic played its last high school girls’ basketball game, since the school will be disbanded and merge with another school in the Reading area after the school year.

The Lady Knights now advance to Saturday’s state quarterfinals against the winner of Tri-Valley and Lourdes Regional at a site and time to be determined.

Against Central Catholic, Delco was led by sophomore guard Stacey MacArthur, who squeezed through Central Catholic’s zone defense to score a game-high 18 points, followed by 12 from Emily Homan, Delco Christian’s 6-foot-3 senior center who’s the school’s all-time leading scorer and headed to Lafayette on a basketball scholarship.

“This was a goal since the beginning of the season,” Homan said. “We lost to Tri-Valley in this round last year, and the memories of that weren’t too good. We got this far the last two years and lost. This is a nice reward to see this happen my senior year.”

Homan can thank her sophomore guard tandem of MacArthur and Jocelyn Chavous for getting the Lady Knights here. MacArthur sliced her way up the court for fast-break points, while Chavous provided excellent defense and great feeds inside to Homan for easy layups.

“We were a little jittery in the beginning,” MacArthur said. “We were forcing passes into Emily early on, but we once we calmed down, we were fine. I had a feeling this was our game to win.”

Despite being down 22-21 early in the fourth quarter of a game where points came at a premium, and just as suddenly as Central Catholic had its second lead of the game, Delco Christian struck back with 13 unanswered points for a 34-22 lead and firm control of the game.

“We knew we had to work the ball and be patient,” Chavous said. “Once we calmed down and took good shots, we started taking over. This was important for us. I was on the court last year when we lost in this round. It was heart-breaking to see the seniors walk off the last time. We didn’t want that happening again to this year’s seniors.”