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By Joseph Staszewski
Brooklyn Daily
Warm-ups were out of the question.
Bianca Cuevas sat nervously on the bench with Nazareth assistant coach Dwight Shaw watching the McDonald’s All-American selection show on his phone moments before tipoff against Mary Louis.
“I thought they weren’t going to pick me,” Cuevas said.
But nerves quickly turned to pure joy for her and the rest of the Lady Kingsmen. Cuevas screamed and was mobbed by her teammates when her name was called among 24 of the nation’s top players who will compete in a nationally televised all-star girls’ basketball game at the United Center in Chicago on April 2.
Tears rolled down Cuevas’ face as her team congratulated her.
“My whole team ran and jumped on me and they all were screaming,” she said. “You probably would have thought we won the championship game.”
Brooklyn native Sierra Calhoun of Christ the King was also selected. It marks the first time two players from the Catholic High School Athletic Association Brooklyn/Queens league were selected in the same year.
It was an honor that the South Carolina-bound Cuevas — a four-year varsity player— was destined to achieve. Former mentor Apache Paschall, who died in 2012 at the age of 38, used to tell her that. The 5-foot-6 point guard played for his Exodus travel program since she was 11 years old, was moved to his top team as a seventh grader, and played two seasons with him at Nazareth. She helped lead the team to a state Federation title in 2011 and recently scored her 2,000th career point.
“I believed it because he believed in me a lot,” Cuevas said. “He saw a lot of potential in me. He was the only one who saw potential in me.”
Lady Kingsmen coach Ron Kelley, who also coaches with Exodus, said Paschall knew right away what he had in Cuevas. Paschall always pushed her to strive to be the best when others doubted her.
“When Bianca came to us he was saying that this girl has the potential of being a pro basketball player,” Kelley said.
Cuevas feels she wouldn’t be here without Paschall’s guidance and the talent he surrounded her with. Cuevas has played with five different McDonald’s All-Americans during her travel and high school career. She is the third All-American to play at Nazareth in the last three seasons after the school nearly shut its doors in 2012.
Competing with and against the likes of Samantha Prahalis (New York Liberty), Bria Hartley (UConn), Jennifer O’Neil (Kentucky), Brianna Butler (Syracuse) and Sadie Edwards (Blair Academy) left her battle-hardened and confident.
“I’m not scared to play against anybody because I played with the best before,” Cuevas said.
Now she is officially one of them.
Cuevas said she was able to focus enough to take on Mary Louis, but she couldn’t get being a McDonald’s All-American out of her head.
“It was like a dream that just came true,” Cuevas said.