Mar 14, 2025 By Rob Burchianti 6 min read

Geibel Catholic’s girls basketball team continued its upward trajectory during the 2024-25 season, even if it didn’t end the way it wanted.

The Lady Gators made a four-plus hour trip to play Otto-Eldred High School at the Duke Center in the first round of the PIAA Class A playoffs Saturday and saw their season come to a close with a 65-45 loss.

Geibel ended with a 22-4 overall record.

“I don’t think anybody’s happy it ended on a loss but there’s only one team that doesn’t do that and it’s the one that wins the (state) championship,” said Lady Gators coach Sara Larkin who saw her team’s record improve for the third consecutive season in her fourth year at the helm.

Larkin stepped into a floundering program and Geibel went 2-18 her first year as head coach. The next year the Lady Gators finished 11-12 with a .500 regular season and qualified for the playoffs. Last year Geibe jumped up to 16-7 and made the postseason again.

They showed even more improvement this season.

“I think we exceeded expectations this year,” Larkin said. “When we sat down at the beginning of the season and talked about what our goals were going to be, our priority focus was to compete in the section and do better than what we did last year, which means get that section title, and win a playoff game. We were able to do both of those things.”

Geibel earned the Section 2-A championship with a 13-1 record, splitting two games with Clairton, losing the first meeting 67-51 but coming back to win the rematch at home, 65-62 in overtime. The Lady Bears also suffered a loss to third-place Serra Catholic, which allowed Geibel to claim sole possession of first place.

“I think after the first Clairton game most people wrote us off as far as the section championship is concerned,” Larkin said. “So for us to turn it around and get that win at home against Clairton and then finish out the season with just that one loss, that says a lot about who these girls are and how much they’re willing to fight and work in order to achieve our goals.

“I’m absolutely proud of them and happy with the overall results regardless of losing that state game.”

Larkin’s daughter, junior Emma Larkin, is the motor that makes the Lady Gators go. An outstanding all-around player, she averaged 27.6 points per game, which was second in the WPIAL behind Clairton’s Iyanna Wade (41.6).

The rest of the starting lineup consisted of 6-foot-1 impact freshman Mallory Clemmer, juniors Ava Henderson and Maddy Waggett and sophomore Janiah Darnell.

Geibel earned a first-round bye and defeated section foe West Greene in the WPIAL quarterfinals, 60-48, before losing its third meeting with Clairton, 52-32, in the district final four.

The Lady Gators lost a consolation game to Aquinas Academy before falling to Otto-Eldred in their first state playoff appearance since 1999.

While its starting five will be returning, Geibel does lose a pair of key pieces off the bench.

“We lose two seniors,” coach Larkin said. “Ava Partridge, who started for us the last two years, was our first player off the bench for us this season. Also Cortni Tinkey gave us minutes off the bench. She would get in there and work hard to get rebounds and play good defense.

“So we are pretty young. Minus Ava and Emma, who will be three-year starters come next year, the other three were basically freshmen. Mallory is a true freshman. Maddy Waggett is a junior who had only played two minutes in her freshman season before she suffered a knee injury that forced her to miss the next two years. Janiah is a sophomore who had an ACL tear in the eighth grade and missed her entire freshman season. For those two that was basically the first time they were on the floor for high school basketball.

“So there’s still a lot of opportunity to learn more with those three. The expectations are going to be high.”

Defenses know to focus on Emma Larkin and Sara Larkin stresses her team must continue to deal with that.

“The biggest difference, and I think is showed in that state playoff game on Saturday, is that other team was extremely balanced,” coach Larkin said. “There’s not one single player that stands out and they’re also deep.

“Hopefully, we learned from that and it showed them what we need to do. I know that Emma is always able to step up and she can take over a game if we need her to. But we don’t want to be in that situation. We want everybody to step up, play their position, play with confidence and put the ball in the hoop.

“That’s what we really are stressing now moving forward. Don’t rely on Emma. It’s not about Emma, it’s about the team, so step up, do your thing, be confident in who you are so that we have that better balance, on both ends of the floor.”

The Lady Gators may be improved next season even though there’s a chance their record might not reflect it.

“I think we’ve just got to focus on game by game and I do want to get some tougher competition,” coach Larkin said. “Our (non-section) schedule was less competitive than we thought it would be going into it and we had some lopsided games. We don’t want that.

“We have to go back to the drawing board and take a look at next season and see if we can have more competitive games to help us prepare for the playoffs.

“We’re going to work hard and the girls are going to take a look at the way we performed this season and set new goals for next year. It’s tough to continue to perform at a high level but that’s exactly what we’re planning to do.”