By TED JANES

Daily Sports Writer

An icy chill filled the ocean air as shredded 

wooden boards lay broken on the streets of Point 
Pleasant, N.J. Winds ripped houses from their roots, 
and sand and water covered the ruined beach town. 
Hurricane Sandy’s victims tucked into a nearby 
school gym.

The evacuees inside stayed warm, avoiding the 

cold, treacherous weather. Those who lived in sight 
of the coast were forced out of their homes, leaving 
belongings behind, engulfed by the storm. 

One girl, who lived just outside the flood’s reach, 

always used to run outside, but her usual route on 
the shore’s boardwalk was destroyed, flipped and 
swallowed in the deluge. She ran wherever she 
could, away from the scattered debris and past the 
empty remains of one former house followed by 
another. Or when she wasn’t outside, she was down 
in the basement, dribbling in the dark for hours in 
a house without electricity. The now-splintered, 
desolate borough had taken the punch.

The girl had to be tough. She needed to run 

because she had to stay fit. Basketball season was 
coming, and soon, everybody was going to be 
impressed with Katelynn Flaherty.

***

Katelynn Christine Flaherty played her first 

organized basketball game as a kindergartner in a 
first-grade league, began playing against the best 
high-schoolers when she was 13 and, at that age, 
drew attention from then-St. John’s and current 
Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico. A younger 
Flaherty used to watch the best guards in the NBA 
on television — she’s a big Kobe Bryant fan — and 
dream of the opportunity to be like Connecticut’s 
Maya Moore on the national championship stage.

With two parents who played college basketball, 

her father at Seton Hall and mother at The College of 
New Jersey, sports were always Flaherty’s first love. 
She and her father would go out in the backyard and 
hit softballs or shoot around during the summers. 
Flaherty’s father Tom, a guard in his time, taught 
her from the beginning, and he was her AAU coach 
for all four of her high school years.

“You’re gonna be great at something,” Flaherty’s 

dad used to tell her.

Whether she succeeded in academics, with 

basketball or both, making a name for herself was 
just a matter of time.

If anyone was equipped for a career in 

basketball, it was Flaherty, with all the resources 
and knowledge about the sport at her fingertips. 
But even that couldn’t differentiate her from the 
abundant talent base where she grew up. To stand 
out from the crowd, Flaherty had to do it all from 
within. 

She had a “refuse-to-lose” attitude, as Barnes 

Arico put it. She was occasionally caught up in 
the finesse of scoring, but at a young age, Flaherty 
pushed to be a pinch tougher than the opponent.

Since Flaherty was an eighth grader, Barnes Arico 

watched her keep her game above the curve. She’d 
see Flaherty playing basketball on the playground, 
playing against boys, diving out on the concrete 
after loose balls.

“You’re from Jersey!” Barnes Arico still reminds 

Flaherty in practice, edging her star player to bring 
out the old-school, East Coast work engine that 
powers her.

She is one of those spot-up, lights-out, ‘get-her-

the-ball-as-soon-as-she’s-open’ kind of shooters. 
Opponents prepare for her so much that she was on 
their radar before she even showed up for classes 
her freshman year.

Michigan’s 
now-sophomore 
guard 
is 
now 

readying for another five-month-long grind after 
reeling in hype, highlights and accolades throughout 
her freshman campaign.

En route to being named the Big Ten Sixth Player 

of the Year, Flaherty appeared in every game of her 
debut season, knocking down 37.5 percent of her 
3-pointers. She set a new freshman record with 78 
3s to contribute to her 499 points, a team high that 
landed her in the top 20 for scoring in the Big Ten, 
one of just three freshmen on that list.

Her numbers attest to the praise, though while 

her teammates note she’s “a little 
shy” and “very humble,” it’s not 
just her pinpoint splash and Tim 
Duncan-esque 
modesty 
that 

make her such a great competitor.

This season, Flaherty won’t 

be able to rely on simply spotting 
up. She will be the focal point 
of a team that boasts just four 
scholarship 
upperclassmen, 

compared to nine underclassmen. 
Flaherty returns as the team’s 
leading scorer from 2014-15, and 
she wasn’t even a regular starter.

“People will be all over me,” Flaherty said of the 

upcoming season.

Last year, the team’s ‘big three’ was comprised 

of former seniors Nicole Elmblad, Cyesha Goree 
and Shannon Smith, a trio that made up for over 50 
percent of the team’s total scoring, rebounding and 
assists. After the Wolverines fell in the 2015 WNIT 
semifinal, the main focus for Barnes Arico became 
finding a way to refuel a program that was losing its 
core. If the Wolverines were going to be successful 
when the 2015-16 Big Ten season began, they would 
have to find new talent.

Flaherty knows Michigan needs someone to step 

up, and that now is her chance. She’s the face of 
the program as a sophomore, and every opponent 
knows who she is. They’ll put two defenders on her, 
trap her wherever she goes and force her to give up 
the ball. But Flaherty has never been one to take 
adversity lying down.

It all boils back down to her roots, growing up 

and playing in northern New Jersey, a populous 
hotbed of athletic talent.

To put it into perspective, according to ESPN’s 

HoopGurlz, which ranks the top 100 women’s college 
basketball prospects, 10 players in Flaherty’s recruiting 
class came out of New Jersey — the vast majority from 
northern New Jersey — the third-highest among all 
states, trailing just California and Ohio.

“People love to compete up there,” Flaherty said. 

“I don’t know what it is, but everyone’s tough. You 
look at the people going places, and it’s all New 
York/New Jersey. It’s a pride thing. You want to 
represent where you’re from and show that you’re 
the best. Every time you step out on that floor, it’s 
a battle.”

Flaherty rose out of this bunch after throwing 

down uncanny numbers her junior year of 
high school, averaging over 30 points 
per game to lead her team to 

the top of New Jersey’s state rankings.

She worked day in and day out on her ball-

handling skills, endless dribbling, perfecting the 
art that her father instilled in her since birth.

Point Pleasant is a small town on the coast 

that fills with tourists and beachgoers during 
the summer months. Around the Ocean County 
borough, a younger Flaherty could be found jogging 
on the boardwalk, playing ball out on the blacktops 
or riding her bike to the shore, and since the local 
high school enrolled just a couple hundred kids, it 
was easy for some to get trapped in the “bubble of 
Point Pleasant Beach,” as she described it.

But nestled away on the Eastern tip of the 

country, Flaherty always had aspirations to make 
her way out in whatever way she could. 

So Flaherty spent endless 

hours on the court, and 
even when she was 
off it, basketball was 
always on her mind.

***

The first wind 

came in October.

It was 2012, 

and 
President 

Barack Obama 
had 
declared 

a 
state 
of 

emergency 
as 

Hurricane Sandy 
began 
flexing 
its 

muscle all across the 
Eastern seaboard. Eyeing 
coastal 
New 
Jersey, 

Sandy’s 
hostile 
power 

was heading straight for 
Flaherty’s hometown.

Flaherty, luckily, lived about two miles in from the 

shore, but nearly everything in between was ruined.

Point Pleasant was hit hard, and the super storm 

that caused over $70 billion in damages across the 
United States left homes filled with sand, demolished 
the boardwalks and yanked apart countless 
buildings.

“(Hurricane) Irene was a year before, and no one 

thought it was gonna be that bad,” Flaherty said. 
“People didn’t listen and stayed in their homes, and 
they had to be rescued. Even after it happened, the 

National Guard was there, and 
you couldn’t get past a certain 
point without ID because people 
were stealing from homes.”

One of Flaherty’s teammates 

completely lost her house as 
water 
reached 
the 
second 

floor. For the residents who did 
evacuate in time, Manasquan 
High School was the emergency 
destination. The school Flaherty 
attended 
her 
freshman 
and 

sophomore years was able to 

provide a few cots and drinkable water, but evacuees 
still had to bring everything they could.

“People were displaced,” Flaherty remembered. 

“Everything a mile in was gone.”

Without electricity or power for the following 

few weeks, Flaherty’s home remained intact, but 
still not in ideal shape. Somehow, Flaherty didn’t 
miss a day of practice.

Gyms were filled with stranded townspeople, and 

the basketball courts near the beach were lost under 
blankets of sand, but Flaherty couldn’t wait. If she 
wanted to be the best — and she so badly did — not 
even Sandy would bring her down.

The grounds outside were covered with litter, but 

she ran anyway. Her basement was dark and cold, 
but she dribbled anyway.

Flaherty just kept running, avoiding the wreckage 

and refusing to give up the basketball touch she 
had perfected since day one. When the weather 
was too much, Flaherty withdrew to the rug of her 
basement, ball in hand, and she’d sit and dribble for 

hours.
Many 

residents of 

Point Pleasant 

had to sleep and 

shower at the school 

for months afterward, 

and 
even 
now, 
three 

years removed, Flaherty still 

knows of people who haven’t 

been able to go back to their 

homes. 

Looting and crime were abundant, 

and the setbacks of Sandy, both direct 
and indirect, were evident. Still, there was 
Flaherty running outside, routinely dodging 
everything beneath her feet, sidestepping the 

storm to earn every ounce of respect she could 

muster up.
She takes pride in her hard-nosed, view-from-

below mentality. It’s where she comes from, and how 
she envisions success. She wants that challenge, to 
build a team from the ground up, to be an underdog 
who nobody expects to come out on top.

In the world of women’s basketball, it’s all about 

the Tennessees and the Connecticuts, but Flaherty 
wanted to create something new. She craved what 
Michigan had: the sense that it was almost there. It 
was, and is, a time when just a few right moves could 
push the program over the edge.

When Barnes Arico came to Michigan, the same 

year that Sandy hit, she told Flaherty that she would 
turn the program around, which enticed the then-
junior point guard. She wanted to lift the unproven 
team higher, something she had always done.

Back 
at 
Manasquan, 
Flaherty 

remembers 
when 
her 
sophomore 

year team didn’t just set a goal, but 
they made a claim: They were going to 
win the Tournament of Champions, a 
tournnament between the winners of each 
high school division in New Jersey. It’s the 

highest competition that a high school team 
can reach, and they were going to do it.

No one really believed in them, and after a 

loss for the Shore Conference title, the preseason 

statement seemed distant. Dejected and angered by 
the loss, the team turned it around.

The Manasquan Warriors made it all the way to 

the TOC finals, and in a game that strung close all 
through the fourth quarter, Flaherty rallied for 
over 20 points, and the team broke away for the 
championship. Flaherty was be named the final’s 
MVP.

It was the highlight of her high school career, an 

inconsistent four-year era.

Things didn’t work out for Flaherty at Manasquan, 

so she left for the nearby Point Pleasant Beach High 
School, just a short drive down the highway from her 
previous stomping grounds.

Midway through her senior year, after just two 

games at Point Pleasant, Flaherty had to switch 
high schools again, this time moving an hour north 
to Metuchen. Further away from her hometown, 
Flaherty lived with her grandparents for the second 
half of her senior year. But soon, her basketball 
devotion was tested again, just three quarters into 
her first game at her new school.

Flaherty leaped for a rebound and fell down 

awkwardly, crushing her foot.

“I strained all the ligaments in my foot,” Flaherty 

said. “I was out for the whole season. In my first 
game there, I jumped for a rebound and that was it.”

Flaherty had played fewer than three games 

in her senior year. With a few months remaining 
before she left for Ann Arbor, Flaherty rehabbed 
as she finished out school, but she couldn’t play the 
game she loved.

She was committed to Michigan, but grounded on 

the bench.

Few minds are as tough as Flaherty’s, though. If 

a hurricane couldn’t stop her, the injury couldn’t 
either. On a broken foot, she went back down to 
the basement. She took a seat on her chair, with a 
basketball on her side and four years at Michigan 
straight ahead, and she started to dribble. 

Ready for the challenge

“People were 

displaced. 

Everything a mile 

in was gone.”

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Thursday, November 12, 2015 — 7A

