By Tom Robinson, NEPASportsNation.com
The grueling process of rehabilitation from reconstructive knee surgery threatened to eliminate Ciera Toomey’s senior season.
Instead, a shortened season was all Toomey needed to produce the most glorious playoff run in the storied history of what had already otherwise been District 2’s most successful program.
With Ciera Toomey leading the way and her mother, Carrie Toomey, managing the delicate balance of her return to the lineup, Dunmore ended a 24-year title drought by District 2 girls basketball teams at the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Championships.
Monday afternoon, the Toomeys were rewarded for their roles in Dunmore’s first state title run when the mother-daughter combination was named Coach of the Year and Player of the Year in Class 3A in conjunction with the release of the all-state girls basketball team by Pennsylvania Sports Writers.
Carrie Toomey lands the honors in her first season as a high school head coach.
While Carrie Toomey was launching her high school coaching career, Ciera’s high school playing days were concluding.
Ciera Toomey, who is headed to the University of North Carolina for the next step in her basketball career, is a four-time, all-state selection. She was a third-team choice in Class 3A as a freshman and a first-teamer in Class 4A the past two seasons before the Lady Bucks returned to Class 3A.
The Toomeys lead a list of five honorees from District 2, including one who continued the Lackawanna League’s trend of producing prominent first-year players.
The three others honored include a freshman and two sophomores.
Mountain View freshman Addison Kilmer made the first team in Class A while Scranton Prep sophomore Maya Jenkins was named to the second team in Class 4A and Pittston Area sophomore Daniella Ranieli was picked for the third team in Class 5A.
Scranton Prep’s Rachael Rose in 2018, then Dunmore’s Moriah Murray and Ciera Toomey in 2019 and 2020, were all-staters as freshmen. All three became four-time, all-state players with Murray capping a four-year run as a first-teamer in 2022.
The biggest threat to Ciera Toomey becoming a four-time, all-stater as a senior was the torn anterior cruciate ligament suffered in the District 2 Class 4A championship game as a junior.
Ciera Toomey put in the work in off-court training and mostly solo on-court work. Then, Carrie Toomey slowly blended her back into the Dunmore lineup, bringing her close to full-time duty for the first time as the district playoffs were concluding.
In Carrie Toomey’s eyes, the mother-daughter relationship was “definitely an advantage,” rather than a burden as she balanced strengthening her team with preparing for and protecting Ciera’s future.
“It gave me an advantage to being a coach because I could actually see what she looked like at practice and I could get a sense of her mental state at home,” said Carrie Toomey, a former Dunmore standout who previously had served as a varsity assistant and had coached her own teams on the junior varsity, AAU and youth levels. “I could just kind of get a feel for how she was feeling both as a mom and as a coach.
“I don’t know if other coaches would have put her back in. It put me in a good position.”
Under Carrie Toomey, Dunmore extended its streak of Lackawanna League Division 3 championships to 10, won another District 2 title and made its fourth trip to a state final the first to produce a title.
Ciera Toomey’s 14 points, 21 rebounds, five steals, three assists and two blocked shots led a 42-30 victory over River Valley and completed a remarkable run in which the Lady Bucks were never behind at any point in five state tournament games.
“It was hard,” Ciera Toomey said of her senior year. “I can’t lie. You go from playing basketball at such a high level every day to not even being able to run.
“To work as hard as I did and have the support I did – my family was great throughout and my teammates were great. They just told me to keep going. We’ll be here no matter what. Whether you play or not, we’re going to work as hard as we can to get this done.
“Just to say that we did it and that I was out on the court with them, it’s just so exciting.”
Ciera Toomey was not just on the court with her teammates in the end. She became the dominant force in the state Class 3A bracket. She averaged 14 points, 13 rebounds, 5 blocked shots, 3 assists and 2 steals in the sate tournament after producing 11 points, 10 rebounds, 7 blocks, 3 steals and 2 assists in the come-from-behind District 2 championship game win over Holy Redeemer.
Kilmer also excelled in the state tournament. She concluded her first high school season with 20 straight double-doubles and three late-season triple-doubles.
The 6-foot-1 center led the Lady Eagles to their first District 2 Class A title, first District 2-11 Class A Subregional championship and a school-best trip to the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association state semifinals. They had never reached the state quarterfinals prior to this season.
Kilmer blocked more than 100 shots while averaging 16.9 points along with 15 rebounds and 5 blocked shots.
“I like to block shots,” Kilmer said. “ … But I don’t like to foul people because I don’t like to sit on the bench, so I just try to make sure I get the ball.”
Kilmer was outstanding in the state tournament. She had 23 points, 14 rebounds, 5 steals and 4 blocked shots in a 49-33, second-round victory over the Christian School of York. Kilmer made her first 11 free throws in overtime as part of a 16-for-18 effort while scoring 24 points, grabbing 14 rebounds and blocking 9 shots in a 41-26 victory over Meadowbrook Christian in the quarterfinals. In the final game against Lourdes, Kilmer had a double-double in the second quarter alone.
“It means a lot; it’s a really great feeling,” Kilmer said of the selection. “We have goal sheets that ts that we fill out at the beginning of the year and I think just about everybody’s goal was to win a district championship.
“We were like, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to work for’. Then, we got it and we kept going and got all the way to the semifinals in the state. That was crazy.”
Jenkins led a balanced Scranton Prep team in scoring with 13.4 points. She averaged 14.8 in the state tournament when the Lackawanna League Division 1 champion and District 2 Class 4A champion Classics advanced to the semifinals.
As she started the season, Jenkins was concentrating on fitting into a team that has made winning championships a habit.
“I just wanted to play my best basketball throughout the year,” Jenkins said. “If I got individual accolades, great, but I wasn’t really worried about that.”
The 5-8 Jenkins made 63 shots from 3-point range and hit 86 percent of her foul shots.
“I know that my main role is scoring the ball, but I also like to help out on the defensive end and try to give whatever my teammates need, whether it’s rebounding or dishing out the ball for assists,” she said.
Ranieli, the Wyoming Valley Conference Division 1 Player of the Year, led a division championship repeat, a District 2 Class 5A championship and the first state tournament win in school history. She averaged 16.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.5 steals while shooting 35.0 percent on 3-pointers and 75.6 percent from the line.
“In the offseason, I worked more on my left hand and mid-range and floaters,” said Ranieli, a point guard who was a first-team division all-star as a freshman.
