Practicing against football coaches helps Liberty girls basketball team

Lauren Milburn should be too jaded to plead for foul calls from referees.

She is, after all, the Liberty girls basketball coach who pits her players against football coaches during practices. Those sessions are more physical than any games the Liberty Eagles play.

Nonetheless, Milburn spent plenty of time last Thursday trying to convince referees that her center Bri Croushorn was consistently being fouled.

“They were hanging all over her,” Milburn said after her team beat Warren County, 53-17, to win the Evergreen District tournament title. “I felt so bad for her. It must be hard to be 6-4 and nobody feels sorry for you.”

Maybe the referees had seen the Eagles’ practices, and thus they were jaded.

Liberty’s girls have practiced against men on the Liberty football coaching staff the past two seasons. Those practice sessions include plenty of hanging onto and bumping into the Liberty girls.

“There’s generally a lot of violence followed by a lot of laughing,” said Scott Girolmo, who was the Liberty football team’s running backs/outside linebackers coach this past fall. “We try to play within the realm of sportsmanship, but test the boundaries as far as possible.”

The rough play, however, is not one-sided.

“They play very, very physical right back,” David “Tank” Bowman, who was an assistant football coach/freshman coach this past fall, said of the Liberty girls. “I’d imagine that when you get to someone your age [and gender] it has to make the game a little bit easier.”

That’s the idea.

With the benefit of such practices, the Eagles won a state tournament game last season for the first time in program history, and they went on to win the Group AA Division 4 state championship.

Practicing against male players has long been standard for the majority of teams in NCAA Division I women’s basketball especially the elite programs like Connecticut, Tennessee, Duke, North Carolina, etc. Many elite high school girls basketball teams across the country also practice against players from boys teams.

High school girls practicing against football coaches, however, is a bit more unique. The coaches, anywhere from two to five of them, try to participate every day that the Eagles have a practice.

Along with Girolmo and Bowman (5-foot-9, 308 pounds), some of the Liberty football coaches who participate in girls basketball practice are 6-2, 250-pound acting head coach Mike Potts, who was the assistant head coach/defensive line coach last season; Sean Finnerty, who was run game coordinator/offensive line coach; Bryan Scopelliti, who was co-defensive coordinator/defensive backs coach; and the 6-0, 195-pound Nick Monaco, who was quarterbacks coach/special teams coordinator.

Their participation isn’t superfluous. It compensates for the weak Group AA Evergreen District in which Liberty plays. Excluding the Eagles, four teams in the Evergreen have combined for a 23-63 record. Warren County, a region-qualifier, has an 11-12 record. Brentsville, a region-qualifier scheduled to play Liberty in the first round Tuesday (after Times-Democrat deadlines), is 5-16. Kettle Run’s season ended with a 4-18 record and Fauquier ended at 3-17.

“We realize that risk of having a weak district and that hurting us later in the region,” Liberty senior star Liz Wood said. “Our male football coaches…they’re super athletic and a lot of them played basketball in high school, so they’re pretty knowledgeable. So it’s just like playing a really, really, really good girls team. It’s definitely harder.”

Liberty has played some tough non-district teams like Mountain View and Courtland, who gave the Eagles their only loss of the season, 60-47. Since losing to Courtland, the Eagles have won 22 consecutive games, including the 46-38 victory over Mountain View, a top team in the Group AAA Commonwealth District.

“That was a really big win for us,” Milburn said. “It was good to see where our kids were.”

With the exception of that game, Milburn has had to evaluate the Eagles via practices recently.

“So that makes us a little bit nervous just in our region,” she said. “And then when you get to states, you’re not always as familiar with the teams that you’re going to play.”

Regardless, the Eagles expect to do their best to defend their 2010-11 state title.

"I definitely think we can” repeat, Wood said. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but…the way we’ve been playing lately, even against really good teams, we can.”

Continued practices against the football coaches won’t hurt.

“It just picks up the tempo and speed for us and makes us more aware of our passing,” Milburn said. “It makes us better defensively from guarding guys. It does a ton for us.”

Such practice sessions particularly help Wood and Croushorn. Wood is an elite guard who will play for the University of Maine women’s basketball team next season, while Croushorn is a unique high school player. She was listed as the tallest player at the 2010-11 state tournament among AAA, AA and A teams.

“Bri gets as many blocked shots against us as she does against the girls teams that play against them,” Bowman said.

“At least double-digit blocks against Bryan Scopelliti,” Girolmo said with a sinister smile.

During practices, the football coaches typically play against the Liberty girls in half-court sets, during which they rotate between defense and offense.

“I have no idea how it helps them because we are horrible,” a self-deprecating Girolmo said. “It helps us get a good run.”

“I do it because I’m 300 pounds,” Bowman said, “and my goal is to see my abs before I die.”

Croushorn, however, had no problem extolling the benefits of playing against the coaches.

“It helps us a lot because they’re so much quicker,” she said. “And their athleticism. They’re so much faster and much stronger.”

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