Breen reaches milestones
CRANBERRY TWP — They are two milestones most high school basketball players can only dream of.
Sam Breen experienced both in less than two weeks.
The Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic girls basketball team’s senior forward became the Trojanettes’ all-time leading scorer with a 20-point effort in a win over Oakland Catholic Dec. 10.
Just 13 days later, she surpassed the 2,000-point milestone in a game at Burrell.
Current CWNC coach Molly Rottmann was the program’s top scorer before Breen came along.
“Before the season, she was talking about all the school records and said she wouldn’t have the scoring record for long,” said Breen of Rottmann. “She was joking around, telling me she was going to sit me so I wouldn’t break it.”
What Rottmann does not joke around about is how much respect she has for Breen, who led the Trojanettes to the PIAA Class A state championship last March.
“There was no part of me that wanted to keep that record, absolutely not,” said Rottmann, a 1989 North Catholic graduate who scored 1,874 points in her scholastic career. “My playing days are long gone and Sam has done a great job for us. She helped us win our first state title as a coaching staff. If I could think of a better situation (for someone to break the record), I don’t know what it would be.”
The top three scorers in CWNC history are currently part of the program.
“I’m one, Coach Rottmann is two and our junior varsity coach, Rachel Zimmerman, is three,” said Breen. “That’s pretty cool.”
Breen arrived on the varsity scene as a freshman in the fall of 2013. Her raw talent caught Rottmann’s attention.
“She has a nose for the ball and a remarkable capacity to finish around the basket,” she said. “You could see that back then. But she did not take any shots outside of the paint. We joke about that now. She would still be a good inside player if that was still the case, but she has put a lot of work in during the offseason to improve, first with her shooting and then with her ball-handling. She is not resting on just her physical ability and now has the whole game.”
“After my freshman season, I worked on my outside shot and that has helped me score more points,” said Breen. “I hit 1,000 points as a sophomore and I remember people saying that if I keep this up, I would have a shot at the school record. My attitude was, if it happens, it happens. But the closer I got, it started to sink in that I was going to do it.”
Rottmann sees similarities between Breen and herself as a player.
“She’s more of a lead-by-action type of player and that was me,” she said. “But what I see the most is her competitive nature. She wants to do well all the time, even in practice.”
The Trojanettes are off to a 7-1 start this season, but what happens in February and March will determine how this year’s squad is remembered.
“We definitely talked about our goals at the beginning of the season,” said Breen, a University of Dayton recruit. “We have the talent to win a WPIAL and PIAA title this year.”
