The on-court reunion was bittersweet for Brittany Webb.
The former St. Michael Academy and Exodus travel ball standout gathered with her former teammates and current Exodus players to take the court together in memory of former coach, Exodus founder and Nazareth head man Apache Paschall, who died of a heart attack in January.
“These are my sisters in a sense,” said Webb, who is headed to Seton Hall after two seasons at Brooklyn JUCO ASA. “It’s sad that this is how we have to come together. Last time I saw all of them was at the funeral.”
The first annual Apache Classic, at Rivington Court on the Lower East Side on Thursday, was about remembering Paschall’s legacy and fulfilling one of his dreams. Lauren Best, Nazareth’s coach and one of Paschall’s longtime assistants, said he had been trying to do an event like this for five years. It finally came together with the help of Best, Paschall’s cousin Thomas Davis, who is the co-director of Exodus, and L.E.S. Express CEO Brian Gardenhire, who played for Paschall in his early years of coaching.
“It feels like the family is back together,” Best said. … “I know he is somewhere looking down at us saying, ‘Thank you Lauren. Thank you Thomas.’”
Added longtime assistant Ron Kelley: “With all those girls on the floor right now past and present you can see his success all at one time.”
The game pitted a team of current and recent Exodus players including Bianca Cuevas, Tiffany Jones, Amani Tatum, Lisa Blair, Darius Faulk and Taylor Ford among others against an alumni squad highlighted by Shenneika Smith and Jennifer [Big Love] Blanding of St. John’s, Jennifer O’Neill of Kentucky, Webb and Anjale Barrett, who played at Maryland and is a current member of the Washington Mystics. The alumni pulled away for a 65-46 win.
“He would definitely enjoy it, cracking jokes just being himself,” O’Neill said. “He did a lot of good things for women who are in college. I know if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I’m at.”
Pascahall, who was 38 when he died, was one of the country’s most successful girls basketball coaches. He turned St. Michael Academy, a small all-girls Manhattan school, into a nationally ranked powerhouse. Pachall then oversaw the program moving to Nazareth after St. Mike’s closed for financial reasons. He helped win the Brooklyn Catholic school’s first-ever CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens Division I title and is one of five men to win at least two New York State Class AA Federation crowns, doing so with St. Mike’s and Nazareth. Exodus NYC was one of the nation’s top travel programs under his watch.
“He changed a lot of people,” said Cuevas, the Nazareth junior guard. “He kept a lot of people out of trouble.”
He also continues to bring his “family” together. Kelley felt it was sad that it took Paschall’s death to finally make an event like this happen. Like Webb, it brought him as much sadness as joy.
“It’s still very sensitive to me,” Paschall’s mother Elaine Bartlett said. “Any time I come to these things I look for him.”
She needs to look no further than his former players to see all that he accomplished.