Mike Vukovcan The Hopewell girls’ basketball’s streak of making the WPIAL playoffs didn’t look very promising as the 2025-26 season was coming down the stretch.
However, this group of gritty girls never quit, and things changed and for once this season, things started going their way.
The biggest thing that happened was the return of senior Caylee Sundy, their leading scorer from the past two seasons. Sundy was sidelined the entire season following knee surgery, but she worked hard to return and was able to do so with two weeks in the season.
Sundy’s return really changed things since she was their point guard and main ball handler. It took a lot of pressure off her teammates and allowed certain players to go back to their natural positions, one of those being junior guard Avery Boyd.
Hopewell’s Avery Boyd
Hopewell’s 3-game winning streak to end the season coincided with Sundy’s return but also with the offensive production of Boyd, who was the Lady Vikings best offensive player down the stretch.
All of this meant that Coach Jeff Homziak’s program qualified for the WPIAL Girls’ basketball program for the 5th consecutive season. Their opening round matchup will take place tomorrow night as they travel to take on Elizabeth Forward. Hopewell enters the playoffs as the No. 12 seed, while Elizabeth Forward is seeded No. 5.
A&S Federal Credit Union are proud sponsors of Hopewell Boys and Girls High School, Junior High and Youth Sports.
Vikings Sports Now stopped over to Hopewell High School last week and talked with Boyd about her tremendous play as well as her teams late season performance.
“Our streak started on Senior Night, which is always a really important night for us, which is when we always play for our seniors and give our all,” Boyd tells VSN. “Once we won that game, it’s really given us momentum and confidence, and it carried on the rest of the regular season.”
Not many people thought we’d be talking about this team making the playoffs, but this group of girls didn’t listen to the outside chatter and continued to believe in themselves. With the losses continuing to pile up, it wasn’t easy to maintain confidence, but Boyd credits the entire team for keeping the faith.
“This whole time, we all tried to keep everyone’s heads up and make sure our heads were in it all the time because it’s been a long season and everyone is tired,” said Boyd.
“We weren’t winning a lot at the beginning of the season and instead of getting down about the losses we tried to make a team mindset of continuing to work hard but more importantly have fun. I think that by us having fun, it helped us to play better and really play as a team.”
A big ingredient for the success has been the offensive productivity of Boyd. Take a look at her last 5 games as Boyd has averaged 16.4 points per game.
Hopewell’s Avery Boyd
Boyd’s Last 5 Games:
vs. Beaver- 22 points
vs. Sewickley Academy- 9 points
vs. Lincoln Park- 19 points
vs. Central Valley- 19 points
vs. Ambridge- 13 points
“I really just think its confidence. At the beginning of the season, I was really nervous to take shots and miss them. Later in the season, I started coming out of my shell and started to take the opportunities to shoot the ball when I got them. My outside shooting is a key part to my game, but I think my ability to get to the rim has really been helping me in my last few games.”
“It’s been really fun for me lately,” said Boyd. “A key for me has been turning defense into offense, which is my strength. The fast pace of it all has been fun. My teammates have been so great as they’ve supported me so much, which makes it all so much better.”
Hopewell’s Avery Boyd
For Hopewell to get by a good Elizabeth Forward team tomorrow night, they’ll need not just Boyd but everyone to be at their best. This will be a rematch for Hopewell as it’s a rematch of last year’s first round of the playoffs when they were eliminated by Elizabeth Forward. This is a different team and after a solid week of practice, Boyd is looking forward to seeing what they can accomplish.
“Getting to the playoffs is always really exciting and we’ve really taken this last week of practice serious,” said Boyd. “Coach really believes in us heading into this game and he really wants us to believe in ourselves too. He’s pushing us hard at practice and I 100% believe that we’ll be ready to go on Monday.”
