Ava Lerman was hoping to reach the 1,000 point plateau in last year’s high school basketball tournament, and she was agonizingly close to achieving that goal.
But she fell 12 points short after scoring 13 in a 35-34 semifinal loss to Central Aroostook of Mars Hill. And then she wound up in the emergency room with an illness.
“At the tournament, I was kind of nearing it but then I slowed down. I fell ill at a pretty bad time in the tournament in that last game,” Lerman said. “I was really sick. I went to the ER after the game. So I ended that game with 12 points left for my 1,000th.”
So it meant a lot to her to be able to hit that 1,000-point mark in the first half of the first game this regular season.
“It is a great group of girls to get it with,” said Lerman, who is now hoping to conclude her basketball career with a state championship. She and her teammates from Wisdom High School of St. Agatha got off to a good start with Thursday’s 65-14 quarterfinal victory over eighth-seeded Easton.
Lerman wasted little time stamping her footprint on Thursday’s scoring 16 of her career-high 41 points in the first quarter.
She also finished with 11 rebounds, four steals and three assists.
Lerman is never going to be the tallest player on a basketball court at 5-foot-3.
But she is very noticeable by the way she plays.
The point guard compensates for her lack of size with her athleticism and tenacity. And the senior has led the Pioneers to an 18-1 record and a berth in the Class S semifinals against Ashland on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.
Lerman reached the 1,000-point mark for her career in the season-opening 61-13 victory over Madawaska. She had 25 points.
“She’s good, plain and simple,” said Easton coach Cody Humphrey. “She can hurt you more than one way. She can be a spot-up shooter, she can take it to the hole and finish or, if she doesn’t finish, she will dish it off to someone else on her team and they will put it up and in.”
Lerman has averaged over 20 points a game this season and has also averaged around five rebounds, four steals and four assists.
Lerman has worked on her game and feels her shooting has “really improved.”
She also feels her play off the ball has gotten better.
“You only have the ball 1/20th of the time so have to move without it and find what is available,” said Lerman. “You have to adjust to the other team’s defenses.
“If they pick me up, they have four other players they can’t sleep on,” added Lerman who is also very strong for her size.
Wisdom head coach Kayla Dionne called her a great leader.
“She’s the link. She determines the energy that comes on and off the floor,” said Dionne. “She is more confident this year. I can tell her what to do and she will go ahead and initiate it.”
Dionne said Lerman knows when to pass, when to take the ball to the basket, when to speed the game up and when to slow it down.
Her improvement stems from her work ethic, according to Dionne.
“She puts in hours beyond just practices. She does her own thing,” Dionne added. “You don’t see it that often.
Lerman was also a career 107-goal scorer in soccer and her 63 this past fall made her the third-highest career scorer in Eight-Person girls soccer. She scored 44 goals in three seasons in 11-player Class D. She was a three-time all-regional soccer player.
“She is an amazing athlete,” said Wisdom assistant and former two-year University of Maine basketball captain Tracy Guerrette. “She’s also a pitcher in softball.”
Guerrette said her growth on the basketball court has been “exponential in every aspect of her game” for the Pioneers.
“She handles the ball real well. She can shoot the three. She has worked on that real hard,” Guerrette said. “She can shoot off the bounce in her mid-range game. She loves to take it and finish at the rim with contact. She is able to see a play happen before it happens. And she is super gritty.”
Lerman is taking her basketball abilities to Bangor’s Husson University where she intends to study physical therapy. She will be happily reunited with former Wisdom teammate Lilly Roy, a sophomore guard who is currently Husson’s second-leading scorer.
“I’m really excited,” said Lerman, who noted that Husson was her number one choice. She called Husson coach Kissy Walker and her assistants “great people” and credited one of Roy’s recent scoring performances.
“I mean 20 points as a sophomore at a collegiate level is crazy,” Lerman said about her former teammate.
Roy had 20 points in Tuesday’s 76-58 victory over the University of Maine Fort Kent.
Walker is looking forward to coaching Lerman.
“She is very focused, very locked in. She is going to give you everything she has,” Walker said. “It’s very impressive.”
Walker said Lerman is fearless on the court and expects her to be “very coachable” at Husson.
“She’s a great kid,” said Walker, who has coached an impressive list of players from Aroostook County including Washburn’s Kenzie Worcester and Presque Isle’s Chandler Guerrette, who have both been inducted into Husson’s Sports Hall of Fame.
Lerman also played two years with older sister Abbie at Wisdom.