The Hillbillies’ girls basketball team has had a rough start to its 2011-2012 season, dropping games to Cedar Grove and Jonathan Dayton high schools before topping Caldwell in the Caldwell College tournament last night.
Through it all, senior Julieanne Mascera has remained a consistent leader on the court. She had nine points against Cedar Grove, and against Dayton she had seven points, six assists, and three steals. Both this season and in previous seasons of her Verona High School career, she has been a consistent threat from the three-point range. For all of these reasons and more, Julieanne Mascera is is this week’s Verona Sports Boosters Senior Athlete of the Week.
Mascera plays hard on the basketball court and even harder on the lacrosse field. Last year, as a junior, when she was credited with 90 goals and 14 assists, she was named first team in the New Jersey Junior Girls Lacrosse League Freedom Division and to the Super Essex Conference first team, and All Essex County Tournament Team. Earlier this year, at a time when most of her fellow students in the Class of 2012 were only contemplating college, Mascera had already committed to play lacrosse at Fairfield University.
Though Mascera was recently tapped by VHS to talk to incoming eighth graders and their parents about being an athlete in high school, she has pulled for Team Verona in many different ways. In the last school year, she was one of the juniors selected to be a mentor in the Heroes & Cool Kids program, in which high school kids talk to middle schoolers about sportsmanship and life skills needed to resolve conflicts and avoid drug and alcohol abuse.
She also has participated in the Youth Group at Our Lady of the Lake, going with them to New Orleans to rebuild homes there devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
During the 2011-2012 school year, the Verona Sports Boosters will be recognizing a different senior athlete at Verona High School every week. The Boosters support male and female athletes in all VHS sports through a variety of fundraisers and recognition events.
