Norwin grad Mara Polczynski hopes to lead Grove City women's basketball to top of PAC

There usually isn’t a whole lot that can add further zest to a Grove City-Westminster sporting event. Separated by only 15 miles of Route 208, the Division III schools are natural rivals.

But Irwin’s Andrew Polczynski found another angle in the schools’ women’s basketball matchups last season. It was easy for him: His daughters — Magen, then a senior at Westminster, and Mara, then-freshman for Grove City — squared off against each other.

Mara said her father came to each game equipped with two baseball caps — one for each school — and would change depending on which team was winning. He had to change several times. The Titans and Wolverines split their season series, with Magen scoring 16 points in the first meeting, a 71-65 win by Westminster, and Mara posting 12 points, four assists and four steals in the rematch, an 87-50 Wolverines victory.

“My dad said those were his favorite games ever to watch because his two daughters were playing together,” Mara Polczynski said, “even though we were in different uniforms.”

This season, Andrew Polczynski needs to wear only one hat. With Magen graduated, he can focus his energy on cheering exclusively for Mara and the Wolverines. His younger daughter — and the team — has given him plenty to cheer about.

The Wolverines entered the weekend at 15-4 in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference, in third place and with a spot in the PAC Tournament safely secured. Sophomore Polczynski, meanwhile, continued her string of starting every game she has played since arriving on campus and has posted averages of 6.9 points, 5.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.7 steals.

The Norwin grad’s assists rank second in the PAC, and her steals are tied for third.

Polczynski isn’t one to wow with her scoring numbers — she has only seven double-figure games in GCC’s 24 outings — but she affects the game in many other ways.

“I think she’s extremely consistent in her effort and attitude every day,” said Chelle Fuss, in her ninth season as GCC’s coach. “We don’t keep that statistic of the defensive presence she brings. She’s always on the toughest ball handler that the (opponents) have. … She really expends a lot of energy on the defensive end and, in our, opinion, she’s one of the better defenders in the conference when it comes to on-ball defense.”

With more than 130 career steals already as she nears the halfway point of her college career, Polczynski is on pace to finish in the top three in program history in that category.

Polczynski said she can’t say for certain what gives her a propensity for pilfering the ball from opposing players. She credits some of it to the tenacity she developed competing against Magen her whole life.

“Honestly, I don’t even know where those steals come from,” she said. “I think it’s just deflections from my teammates, too, and then just being in the right place at the right time. And then just ball pressure, constantly, all the time. They happen to make mistakes on their own, and I’m just there to take it, I guess.”

But Polczynski has a significant hand in Grove City’s offense, too. She directs the show from the point guard spot, a role she was thrust into rather quickly.

When she came to Grove City, she said, there were no upperclass point guards on the roster to show her the ropes, so she and the other guards got a lot of one-on-one instruction from the coaching staff to get acclimated. She turned out to be a quick study, registering more than 100 assists last season, and she is on pace to do it again this season.

Still, she acknowledged she is far from a finished product.

“I think leadership in general and the standard that we need to keep, those are the ways I think I have been growing and need to continue to keep brushing up on,” she said. “Scoring has never been really a focus for me. I’ve always been either a point guard or looking to dish it off to other people.

“But looking for my shot this year is something I have been focusing on.”

Fuss said she believes Polczynski has the ability to score at all three levels of the offense. It’s just a matter of picking her spots and having the confidence to let it fly.

“We’ve been working on getting her to a point where she really wants to be somebody that is a threat scoring-wise,” Fuss said. “Read and react is something we’re working a lot with her, knowing when to get the layup and when to get a jump shot and when to pass it off to our shooters.”

While Polczynski’s full blossoming as a player might be some time down the road, she believes the Wolverines can contend for the PAC championship now. To do that, they will have to figure out a way to beat W&J and/or Saint Vincent, the top two teams in the conference.

Entering the season finale with the Presidents on Saturday, Grove City was 0-3 against those teams. Still, Polczynski is confident that once the postseason starts, it’s anyone’s game.

“I 100% think we’re capable of getting it done,” she said, “and every game we have learned something that we carry over to the next game. We never took a game off … and I think we continue to get more and more prepared.”