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01/17/2018 11:00 PMSadie Konstan has stepped into the starting point guard position with the Valley girls’ basketball team as a junior this season. Prior to this year, Sadie came off the bench to spell other guards, but now, she’s taken the reins as the Warriors’ floor general who’s finding open teammates for prime opportunities to score. Sadie has a unique perspective in that her father Geoff Konstan is head coach of Valley girls’ hoops. As such, Sadie thinks like a coach when she’s running the point.
Growing up in Essex, Sadie enjoyed watching the Valley boys’ basketball squad go on a big run of success, and it sparked her interest in the sport. The girls’ team wasn’t doing as well at that time, but Sadie feels proud to have played a part in turning the Warriors’ fortunes around after helping them win 14 games last year.
“I always looked up to the boys’ basketball team. The girls weren’t always as good, but the boys were really successful. Now, we’re getting the team back to a higher status,” says Sadie, who modeled her game after former Valley boys’ hoops star Jonathan Luster. “Now that we’re getting better, kids will be able to look up to the girls’ basketball players, too. I think this year, in particular, we have our best team chemistry, and we all share the same goals.”
Sadie enjoys distributing the ball and leading an offense. With her coach’s mentality on the court, she looks to read opposing teams and their strategies. Sadie likes to mix up the offensive attack between a fast-paced run-and-gun style and a slower half-court offense. It keeps the opposition guessing and sets up her teammates to score.
“One of my favorite things to do in basketball is to pass. I love to get an awesome assist by leading a player into a pass, rather than creating my own shot,” says Sadie, who’s averaging 3.4 assists on the year. “I love to mix it up between half-court and pace. I think I can pass pretty far. I can get us up the court, and that can lead to a quick basket, but I also like a methodical half-court offense...I love reading the defense and being able to adjust based on what they’re doing.”
Sadie knows the Warriors are successful on offense when she finds her teammates as they are heating up. Sadie looks to get everyone on the floor involved early and, when one of her teammates gets into a groove, she starts dishing to her more often.
“I’m inclined to run plays to get the ball to the hot hand. That will give us the best chance of competing,” Sadie says. “We’ve had a lot of different high scorers in our games, which isn’t common for a lot of teams. We know how to find players that are on. At first, we spread the ball, if possible. In that, you see who has a higher percentage and, from there, we work around that.”
Coach Konstan is seeing a transformation in his team with Sadie at point guard this winter. Last year, the Warriors used their athleticism to run teams down. This season, their offense has a more versatile array of scorers, and Sadie is helping everyone coexist harmoniously.
“She brings a different game. She’s calling out plays, reading the plays, reading the floor, and adjusting to it like a coach would. That’s her biggest asset,” Konstan says. “We have great scorers on our team. She really buys into the ‘Do your part,’ kind of thing. She’s becoming more vocal on the floor. It’s helping our team jell. I could tell we missed her the first couple of games. We didn’t have nearly the same kind of flow on offense that we do now.”
When she finishes high school, Sadie plans on following in her father’s footsteps by going into coaching. While she doesn’t plan on playing basketball in college, Sadie is thinking about going to a school where the sport is one of the biggest things on campus.
“I always imagine myself as a coach in the future. That’s one of the benefits of my position. I can lead on the court. I don’t think I’ll be playing after high school, but I do love coaching, and I think I could do that after high school,” says Sadie, who thanks her father, her AAU coach Shaun Russell, her middle school coach Matt Mesite, and Jonathan Luster. “I think I’ll stay in New England. I would like to go to UConn. I always loved watching their teams, and it would be great to watch them while going there.”