On verge of championship, Neumann-Goretti girls try to ignore controversy

A silver staircase gleamed in the bright sunshine behind Neumann-Goretti High School on a recent day. But in the gym, a lighting failure turned afternoon to twilight.

Defying the dusk, the nation's No. 1-ranked high school girls' basketball team, including Nigerian stars Felicia Aiyeotan and Christina Aborowa, never relented. For 90 minutes the N-G Saints raced noisily, joyfully, and determinedly through a dimly lit workout.

The murk seemed an apt metaphor for the fog that has clouded the accomplishments of this South Philadelphia juggernaut, rolling now toward a possible second straight Catholic League championship title Monday at the Palestra.

With eyes fixed firmly on the prize, team members have tried to ignore the simmering controversy that includes widely circulated anonymous e-mails alleging recruiting and other infractions; an investigatory report by the archdiocese, the existence of which it won't even confirm; the puzzling departure in November of head coach Letitia "Letty" Santarelli; and a libel-slander suit she initiated against two former coaches and others whom she says have defamed her.

While the Saints are focused, they are not oblivious.

"Of course we hear the things people are saying about us," Aborowa told The Inquirer. "It makes us stronger. That's why we play every game like it's for a championship."

Contemplating a repeat as Catholic League champs, and maybe winning the state title that eluded them last year when they lost to Pittsburgh's Seton-La Salle, Saints point guard Ciani Cryor put it bluntly: "We want to do all that for our coach who had to leave."

Details of Santarelli's departure are unclear. She was coming off a 29-1 season and a spot in the state finals, and ready to make history with a team she'd nurtured, when suddenly she was gone. She is represented by her husband, attorney Frederick Santarelli, who did not respond to repeated Inquirer requests for comment.

Saints supporters say the team is the target of a vicious "poison letter" campaign that uses unsubstantiated allegations by jealous opponents who hide behind e-mail pseudonyms to cast doubt on the eligibility of 6-foot-9 Aiyeotan and 6-foot-4 Aborowa.

The two were discovered in Nigeria, trained at a famous youth-empowerment and sports camp there, and came to America on a State Department program that lets them live with a host family while studying in the United States.

Aiyeotan and Aborowa, like other students at Neumann-Goretti, get tuition assistance, "made at the local level by the school," said archdiocese spokesman Ken Gavin. "Just as we would not be able to comment on the academic performance of individual students," he said, "we are not able to comment on financial status."

The Nigerian students also play for the Philadelphia Belles, a Nike-sponsored travel team that is part of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), a century-old extracurricular league. Created in 1978, the Belles team is run by Michael Flynn from an office in Bensalem. "It gives the parent and athlete at an early age, a glimpse into the process of player development, the college recruiting process and the world of high level competitive basketball," according to its website.

One allegation circulated by e-mail is that Aiyeotan is too old to play at Goretti, although a 2012 document found online by The Inquirer shows she listed her date of birth as May 24, 1997, making her 17 today and clearly eligible.

Rules of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, which oversees District 12 - a geographical entity encompassing the Catholic and Public Leagues - state that "to be eligible in grades 10 through 12, you must not have reached your 19th birthday by June 30 immediately preceding the school year."

Another e-mailed allegation, while offering no proof, says the Nigerian players began living with their host family and then moved to a Southwest Philadelphia rowhouse where they lived alone, which would be a violation of their visa requirements. The e-mail was included as an exhibit in Santarelli's suit.

Maureen Tobin, the Philadelphia woman who in media reports has said she is their host mother, declined to be interviewed for this article.

One thing about which there is no doubt: The Saints, undefeated in 22 regular-season games this year, have a covetous record. Their average margin of victory is greater than 35 points. They beat one opponent by 88 points, three others by 63 each. They are tall, athletic, and as explosive on defense as on offense.

Five players are Division I signees and a sixth could be next year's most sought-after prospect.

Cryor, their feisty, emotionally charged, 5-foot-4 point guard, is Georgia Tech-bound. Aborowa, as swift as she is strong, is headed to Texas. Aiyeotan, a junior whose rawness is rapidly being refined, has not only learned to dunk, she can block shots flat-footed.

Andrea Peterson, who took over as coach after Santarelli left, is a fast-talking, hard-nosed Delaware Countian who insists on an intense, unselfish, disciplined style.

And yet, as is so often the case in the jumbled scholastic basketball landscape, all is not as it appears. The unbeaten Saints have upended traditions in Philadelphia's staid Catholic League and, in doing so, reaped a whirlwind of both praise and condemnation.

"Talentwise, they're on another planet from the rest of us," said one Catholic League girls' coach who spoke anonymously because, he said, league coaches had been instructed by the archdiocese to stay silent on Neumann-Goretti. "They play hard and they all appear to be really good kids. But things have been done differently there, so you're going to get these kinds of whispers."

Questions surrounding the program have proved so inflammatory that they have divided longtime Catholic League loyalists.

However it plays out, it is clear that these Saints are not your mother's Catholic League girls' powerhouse. And that, as much as anything, may be at the heart of their troubles.

Unlike most recent league and state champions, who have come from the suburbs, Neumann-Goretti is a city school. Its girls are so big and athletic that lopsided victories are the rule and not the exception. And most of its stars did not arrive via the feeder parishes that traditionally stocked league rosters.

"All that combined," said the anonymous coach, "has ticked a lot of people off."

Cryor and A.J. Timbers transferred from Prep Charter, a program that was dismantled after incurring penalties involving eligibility issues.

Though at least one league rival, O'Hara, has had experience with African players, it was the arrival of Aborowa and Aiyeotan that generated the most heat.

Thanks to a connection with a local AAU official, the two lanky Nigerians arrived in Philadelphia last year via the increasingly busy African pipeline. An e-mail included in Santarelli's lawsuit contends that official is Flynn, the Belles founder. He did not respond to repeated Inquirer messages seeking comment.

The African sports and empowerment camp, Hope 4 Girls, was founded in 2010 by Mobolaji Akiode, an American of Nigerian descent, who was a basketball star at Fordham University, graduated in 2004, and played twice on Nigeria's Olympic basketball team.

After working for a time as an accountant for ESPN, she moved to Nigeria to spearhead the empowerment initiative for young women, with the message that excelling in basketball could be their ticket to college scholarships and upward mobility.

For Aborowa, who got an unlikely start in the game, that dream is panning out.

"I was walking down a street in Ongo," her hometown, she said in an interview, "when a man asked me if I'd ever played basketball. I didn't even know what basketball was."

Jump ahead four years and she is an A student, headed to the University of Texas on a basketball scholarship. Aiyeotan, who was 6-foot-5 at 12, and so thin and weak she couldn't catch basketballs tossed to her, is fierce now under the boards and stands to be heavily recruited as a senior next year.

The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association and the archdiocese say their examinations of the girls' documents found no irregularities, but that hasn't stopped the rumors.

"Any student coming to this country to study in one of our schools is required to fill out appropriate documentation, and is vetted by the appropriate government agencies," said Gavin, the archdiocesan spokesman. "Any student from a foreign country playing on any sports team in an archdiocesan school would be of the appropriate age."

Earlier this month, after the website PhillyVoice reported that Archbishop Wood coach John Gallagher, whose teams won three consecutive state AAA titles between 2010-12, had sent anonymous e-mails to Texas' head coach questioning Aborowa's eligibility, Gallagher abruptly left his job.

The e-mails surfaced as part of Santarelli's libel-slander suit. An exhibit in the suit contends that the e-mail pseudonym - ktginpa@aol.com - can be traced to Gallagher's home address and telephone number.

Gallagher did not respond to a phone message seeking comment. His lawyer, William J. Fox, declined to discuss the circumstances of his client's departure from Archbishop Wood. Concerning the exhibit, which appears to tie Gallagher to some anonymous e-mails, Fox told The Inquirer, "We don't believe he violated any laws."

Also named in the suit is Stephen J. Skedzielewski, who was the Saints coach immediately before Santarelli. An exhibit in the case contends that the handwritten envelope for a letter attacking Neumann-Goretti's program for alleged recruiting violations matches Skedzielewski's handwriting. He was unavailable. His lawyer, David Temple, did not respond to an Inquirer e-mail and phone message seeking comment.

Santarelli's successor, Peterson, an Archbishop Carroll and Drexel star who left an assistant's job at Stetson University in Florida to become Santarelli's aide, said she'd never been around a more tight-knit unit.

"This is the best group of young women I've ever seen," she said. "They listen. They work hard. They're always wanting to get better. They're gym rats. You've got to turn the lights out to get them to leave.

"And you can't believe how close they are. They do everything together. They'll come to practice and leave together. They'll go to basketball games together to watch the teams we'll be playing. Everything. It's unbelievable."

For most of its existence, the Neumann-Goretti girls' program was a league bottom-feeder, the opposite of its perennially successful boys' teams. Things started to change at the tiny South 10th Street school when Santarelli arrived three years ago.

Using connections she'd established as an inner-city outreach worker for the archdiocese, she quickly broadened the Saints' recruiting base.

After a 14-12 rookie season, her 2013-14 team went 29-1 and reached the AAA state championship game. But she abruptly resigned after the archdiocese reportedly launched a probe into allegations that, contrary to league rules, the school was awarding athletic scholarships.

Asked about the outcome of that investigation, Gavin said there was "nothing to report."

With the championship looming, the last thing the Saints want is a distraction.

"All that matters to these girls is improving every practice and every game," said Peterson. "Nothing else penetrates their world."

@philafitz