Joliet Catholic’s Allie Quigley was a 5-foot-8-inch freshman and barely weighed 100 pounds when, as coach Dan Drye puts it, she had “her coming-out party.”
A weak team in the powerful East Suburban Catholic Conference in girls basketball two seasons ago, the Angels were not expected to give power Marian Catholic any problems.
The girls basketball program at Joliet Catholic began after the school merged with St. Francis Academy in 1990. It struggled and had gone through a three-season span with three victories.
Then Quigley arrived. She scored 17 of her 19 points in the second half to lift Joliet Catholic over Marian and put the school, long a football power, on the girls basketball map.
“When Allie got here, things were pretty desolate,” said Drye, whose team upended No. 20 Lincoln-Way East 58-53 Thursday behind Quigley’s 29 points. “That was our first big win.”
They’ve had more wins since, including a recent victory over once-ranked St. Viator in which Quigley scored a career-high 48 points after making nine three-pointers–tied for seventh best on the IHSA’s list. The Angels are 13-10, 3-4 in the conference, and accomplishing it all with a roster of fewer than 10 players.
“We’re doing better than we thought,” said Quigley, now a 5-10, 115-pound junior. “But there’s lots of room to improve.”
Quigley, whose freshman sister, Samantha, serves as the team’s point guard and is averaging 16 points, has had some of her best games this season against the area’s top teams. She scored 41 points against Fenwick, 35 against Marian Catholic and 29 against Marshall.
The sisters’ mother, Christine Quigley-Strle, played for Joliet Central back in the late 1970s and against former All-Stater Cathy Boswell (Joliet West). But she won’t take the credit for her daughters’ basketball development.
“That’s a misconception,” she said. “They’ve always been involved in sports–enjoyed them without being pushed. They have some natural ability and they work hard.”
Allie Quigley has taken more than 400 shots so far this season and is nailing about 50 percent of her two-point attempts and 45 percent from beyond the arc.
Her sister is averaging 5.5 assists per game, and 5-9 freshman Katelyn Ruettiger–the niece of former Joliet Catholic football player Dan Ruettiger, whose story was featured in the movie “Rudy”–is vying with Allie Quigley for the team rebounding lead. She’s averaging five points and eight rebounds and, like the Quigleys, is on the court virtually the entire 32 minutes.
Drye said illness and a club volleyball commitment have basically taken the varsity roster down to seven players, “so we don’t have to worry about complaints about playing time.”
And, one suspects, there are few quibbles about the Quigleys.
