The Parkland High School girls basketball team’s historic 2023-24 season came within just one win of its ultimate goal of playing in the final game of the year and winning a PIAA State championship.
The Trojans fell to Cardinal O’Hara 51-32 Monday in a state semifinal game at Norristown High School
Parkland fell behind by double digits in the first half and was unable to mount a comeback.
The Trojans finished the year 29-3 overall and had won 13 straight games before the season-ending loss. They stormed through both the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and District 11 tournaments, winning gold in both.
They made it further than any other Trojans girls basketball team in more than a decade, and head coach Ed Ohlson was almost at a loss for words with how special this season and the group he coached was.
“It’s been amazing,” said Ohlson. “Wins are great, losses stink, the record’s great and all that. But I can’t tell how great it was, and you can ask any one of those coaches, to go to practice every day, it was phenomenal.
“They worked hard every day. I couldn’t tell you one bad practice that we had. And for a coach, that’s unbelievable because you usually get those dog days of January and everything. Never. Not one time.”
Two individual student-athletes certainly will be remembered and will go down in the program’s record books for their performances, Talia Zurinskas and Madi Siggins.
Both seniors went over 1,000 career points this season and both will be continuing their basketball careers at the collegiate level with Zurinskas going to Lafayette and Siggins East Stroudsburg. They will currently finish second and fourth, respectively, in the program record books for career points.
Ohlson compared them to a famous superhero tandem for all they did for the team.
“Together, they’re Batman and Robin, but they change suits all the time,” Ohlson said. “One night, somebody’s Batman and the other one is Robin and the next night, it’s the other way around. That’s how I’ll remember them.”
The Lions, the District 12 runner-up, were a formidable foe. After the Trojans scored the game’s opening basket, Cardinal O’Hara responded by using a 10-0 run in the opening quarter to go ahead by double figures and never allowed Parkland any good chance at a comeback.
The Trojans pulled to within 19-17 with just under six minutes left in the second quarter after a three-pointer by Delaney Chilcote, but they wouldn’t find the basket the rest of the period.
The Lions outscored Parkland 16-9 in the third quarter and then 8-6 in the fourth.
Parkland will graduate a successful group of five players, including Zurinskas, Siggins, Lauren Ervin, Sophie Frank and Olivia Wynn.