As a going-away present, a group of nine incoming freshmen at Warsaw Community High School are going very far away. Basketball teammates since they were in fourth grade, Alyssa Atkins, Abby Glass, Madison Graham, Dayton Groninger, MaryAnn Marandet, Madison Martz, Alli Miller, Mariah Rivera and Kenzie Welk will be joined by their coach Joe Graham, as well as family, are currently in Ireland to play some international competition. After leaving Chicago for Dublin, Ireland Thursday, the girls from Warsaw will face four Irish club teams today, then the U15 Irish national team Tuesday, followed by three games in Scotland against national teams next Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Despite all the games, Joe Graham says they aren't the main reason for the trip. "This has very little to do with basketball," he said. "No one's going to remember the scores we achieve. We're trying to do a lot of cultural things. We're going to go see some traditional Irish dancing, we're going to eat traditional Irish food and we're going on the north coast tour to see castles. To me, this has very little to do with basketball. I actually didn't want to play this many games, but the guy that was helping to organize this kept calling, saying, 'Hey, can you do this?' and you feel bad, because we did have him over there helping us." Graham received help in organizing the trip from a friend he met 25 years ago while working at a Grace College basketball camp. That friend now works for the Irish Industry of Sport, and is helping to give the nine girls one last chance to play together before entering high school in the fall. "This is the end of it for us," Graham said. "Because of IHSAA rules, we can't play together anymore. Once they transition to high school, they can only play with three on a team. So, we really wanted to do this last thing together before we pass them on to the high school." Along with playing for their elementary and middle school teams, the girls have been playing as a team outside of school, and been quite successful doing so. "Two years ago, they won the state tournament for school teams and also won the state tournament for AAU teams, which is like all-star teams," Graham said about taking part in tournaments at Fort Wayne's Spiece Fieldhouse. "Homestead has a tournament, and we've won that every year. Norwell has a tournament we've won every year. We've won several other tournaments at Spiece, but after we won the state tournament, we began playing above our level. So, we wouldn't play girls that were our age, or we would only play all-star teams, because playing school teams was not competitive for us." Playing up a level, the girls took part in a tournament in East Lansing, Mich. at Michigan State University this year, where they didn't win, but did fare well. "You have your group of girls from Warsaw and you're playing teams like West Michigan Drive, which is from Grand Rapids and the surrounding areas," Graham said. "Those teams beat us, generally by 8 or 10 points, but they didn't kill us. And the only reason they beat us is because they have two or three girls who are 6-foot-1 and our biggest girl is 5-10. There's no fixing that. Our girls play hard and they do what they need to do." With that kind of work ethic, Graham's eager to see what they can do at the next level, even if that means he'll no longer be coaching them. "This is an emotional time for me," he said. "I'm very sad this is the end, because this has been so much fun. It's allowed my daughter to connect with all these really cool kids. It's hard, but I'm old. I'm 47 and I believe in high school basketball more than I believe in AAU. So, we're excited to pass them off to (Warsaw Community High School girls basketball coach) Michelle (Harter) and her staff, because they were in the (Class 4A) Final Four. So, you know you're passing them off to great coaches who know what they're doing." But before passing them off, Graham has put a lot of work into their last competitions, but says it's well worth it. "The logistics of just finding hotels and how do you find stuff that's affordable, but not staying at some nondesirable place wasn't easy," he said. "But, honestly, all that work will be worth it once we get there and all the girls are having a good time. "This is a great group of girls," he added. "They aren't high-maintenance. We have not had a ton of drama in all of our time together. Most of these girls are Honor Society students. They're super good kids. They're from pretty driven families."
