ST. MARYS, Pa. (EYT/D9) — Leave her open on the wing at your own risk.
Lucy Klawuhn will make you pay.
(Pictured above, Lucy Klawuhn is a three-sport star at Elk County Catholic/photos by Lou Milliard Photography)
She’s been collecting points, three at a time, for years now. The senior guard on the Elk County Catholic girls basketball team is showing no signs of relenting any time soon.
Her shot is smooth and on the mark more often than not, a product of years of practice and potent weapons around her — particularly in the post — that makes the sharpshooter’s job so much easier.
“Since I was younger, I’d always shoot around and take my shots from the outside and it just kind of evolved,” Klawuhn said. “I got better at it and that’s just kind of what I am for the team right now. A lot of my 3s come from inside out, from the post out to me. People sink down because our posts are really good and it’s hard to stop them. So once they sink down, they usually just pass it out to me and hopefully I hit the shot.”
Seniors Tori Newton and Emily Mouer are a formidable one-two punch in the paint for the Crusaders.
That leaves Klawuhn free to fire off uncontested 3s at will.
She’s made 167 of them in her career already, blowing past the school record.
“The previous record was like 124 or 125 or something,” she said. “I actually did it last year but just didn’t know it.”
That’s the thing about Klawuhn. Numbers matter little to her. Wins do.
She plays two other sports at a high level — volleyball and softball — and her stats don’t measure success to her as much as accomplishing those lofty team goals.
During the fall, Klawuhn was able to reach a mighty big one.
She was a key member of the ECC volleyball team which served, dug, passed and killed their way unrelentingly through the regular and postseason unscathed to win a PIAA Class A championships.
It’s still a little surreal to Klawuhn.
“Honestly, it’s still kind of unbelievable,” she said. “I always think about it. It’s just really weird to talk about and think about, that, hey, we did that.”
Klawuhn said when the season started no one on the team really thought they could — not because they felt inadequate to the task, but because they knew the road there would be long and difficult.
But as the season progressed, their confidence soared. By the time the playoffs rolled around, the Crusaders entered every match — even the state title one against the No. 1-ranked team in the state, West Branch — with the expectation that they were going to win.
And they did.
“At the beginning of volleyball we were like, ‘Oh, we’re probably not gonna make it.’ We weren’t as good as were were at the end of the volleyball season. At the end, we were a completely different team. We were 10 times better than we were in the beginning.
“It was just all the hard work we put in at all those tournaments against really good competition,” she added. “We played West Branch at tournaments and that was nice. We got to know that team. We all worked hard in practice every day and we worked at the stuff we needed to work on to get better and it just really helped.”
The wild celebration on the court at Cumberland Valley High School had barely ended before Klawuhn and her teammates shifted focus to the next big goal.
Bringing home a state title in basketball, too.
Many of the Crusader volleyball players also play basketball. They tasted that feeling of being champs and they desperately want to take another bite.
“We’re all still pumped and, honestly, I think we can do it for basketball, too,” Klawuhn said. “I think we have a good enough team and we have a good enough bench that I think we can go a long way and hopefully we do win the state championship.”
She sees the same pattern emerging as it did during the volleyball season.
“We were 10 times better at the end of volleyball and that’s how we’re going to be in basketball because right now, we’re playing well, but it’s not like how we were playing at the end of last season,” Klawuhn said. “We still have some weaknesses we have to improve upon. And I think we will.”
Klawuhn never really wanted to be a volleyball player when the Johnsonburg native came to Elk County Catholic.
But her friends did some aggressive arm twisting and convinced her to give the sport a try.
Klawuhn finally gave in. The rest is ECC history.
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to be a volleyball player and then I got talked into it. I’m very glad,” she said, chuckling. “It’s definitely crazy just to know how far I came and how much better I got and how much better the team got. We accomplished something amazing, the best thing you can accomplish in volleyball.”
There was no lobbying needed when it came to basketball for Klawuhn, who has been enamored with that game since she could first dribble and shoot.
“It’s always been my number one,” she said. “I’ve loved it since I don’t even remember how long.”
Shooting from the outside has always been her forte, even when she was timid and hesitant to pull the trigger as a freshman.
All that changed during her sophomore season when she emerged as a perimeter threat for the Crusaders.
Last season as a junior, she hit 62 3-pointers.
This year she’s starting off even better for undefeated Elk County Catholic. She drained seven 3s in a win over Kane on Monday on the way to 29 points.
Klawuhn has tried hard to not just be an outside shooter. She’s become much more than just a one-trick pony with the ability to drive around overzealous defenders coming out hard to defend her.
It has opened up her game and helped ECC become one of the best teams in the state in Class A.
Klawuhn credits her teammate, Sami Straub, with her development in that area.
“When we go live in practice, I have Sami Straub guarding me and she’s one of the best defenders ever,” Klawuhn said. “I have to do something different with her. I have to dribble better and make more moves and actually take the ball in. So her guarding me really helps me. If I can do something against her, I can do something against someone else.”
Klawuhn has set the bar high for herself in her senior season. That bar is also in the stratosphere for the Crusaders.
It’s very much state championship or bust in their minds, especially after the success they enjoyed during the volleyball campaign.
But that’s really nothing new. That desire to win a state title in basketball has been around for a while.
“Honestly, since sophomore year,” Klawuhn said. “We were always like, ‘We can do it.’ We’ve had this dream for a while now and we just want to be able to pull it off.”
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