BOALSBURG — It is only a bit over halfway finished, but Saint Joseph’s Catholic Academy’s Naomi Crispin has already had quite a remarkable 2024-25 season.
And it appears as if she and her WolfPack teammates have much, much more to come.
Crispin is a junior point guard and one of the leaders of the SJCA team that is now 13-1 overall and in first place in the Tri-Valley Conference with a 7-0 record.
Crispin has already scored 319 points this season, and on Dec. 27, 2024, at Bishop Carroll, she surpassed the 1,000-point milestone in her high school career.
That game, ironically, turned out to be the only loss so far for her team, but she nonetheless went over the 1,000-point mark early in her junior year, which is an imposing feat.
So far in the new year, Crispin has had some impressive games that included 24 points against Greenwood and Susquenita, 27 against Upper Dauphin and a season-high 40 against Williamsburg in an epic matchup on Friday, Jan. 17.
She has seven games in which she was over 20 points, and she has not been held to under double digits in any game.
Against Williamsburg, an exciting 75-72 victory over one of the best Single-A teams in the state, Crispin scored 13 of her 40 points in the fourth quarter as the WolfPack overcame a third-quarter deficit to overtake the Pirates and take the win.
“We went into the locker room after the Williamsburg win,” St. Joseph’s head coach Bethany Irwin said. “We’re excited because we beat this team that had such an outstanding history, and I look at the book, and see one of their players [Leanna Royer] scored 30 points, and I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’
“Then I looked again and saw that Naomi had 40, and none of us knew because we were so focused on getting the job done. It wasn’t like she had gone off and scored 20 in one quarter or anything, but none of us had any idea.”
Not only is Crispin the team’s scoring leader, but as point guard she guides the team and is like a coach on the floor.
“She is very good at communicating with me and telling me what’s going on, on the floor,” Irwin said. “She is definitely a student of the game, and she does enjoy watching films. She will come over and I’ll say, ‘What about this?’ She will be like, ‘I think this will work.’ ‘You’re the one on the floor,’ I’ll tell her, ‘so let’s see if it works.’
“She is easy to coach, and she is a coach’s dream because she really is a great kid.”
Saint Joseph’s still has conference games left on its schedule and will be fighting for the top seed in the upcoming District 6 Tournament.
It’s not unreasonable to think the team might finish the season with only that one loss, but there is always the specter of seeing that Williamsburg team again, next time possibly in an elimination game.
If that were the case, the WolfPack wouldn’t mind seeing Crispin chuck in another 40.
