It didn’t take Wadsworth girls basketball coach Andrew Booth long to know the impact Christy Cingel can have on a team.

While she’s not a name that pops out of a box score or maybe even someone who would draw the headline of a postgame story, the senior’s play is a main reason for the Grizzlies success — and a reason why she’s a three-year starter for Medina County’s most-successful program.

Four-year player Christy Cingel has been a stable force for Wadsworth this season. (GAZETTE PHOTO BY RON SCHWANE)

“The summer before her freshman year, we would go to camps and shootouts and this little red head kept on popping up in JV games,” Booth said. “We didn’t even have her up on varsity, but by the end of the preseason (we did). She’s always been so fundamentally sound on both ends of the court.”

That solid play has made the 5-foot-6 Cingel a mainstay with her basketball sense and willingness to make the extra play to set up a teammate or keep a possession alive.

Whether it’s grabbing a key rebound, recording a crucial steal or just playing solid, fundamental defense, Cingel has more than handled herself and caught the attention of girls basketball followers.

“She’s not the quickest, she’s not the tallest, but fundamentally and in terms of basketball IQ on the defensive end, she’s one of the best I’ve ever had play for me in terms of knowing where to be, getting to there on time and knowing how to play team defense,” Booth said. “That’s what got her up with the big girls early in her career and since then … she’s a kid that can do everything well.”

While Cingel isn’t the center of a scouting report, every team must be aware of where she is or she’s going to set up the key play that does them in.

“I love to create opportunities for my teammates,” she said. “I love getting them open and getting good shots for them. Sometimes I don’t look to shoot all the time and I just look to get them a good shot.

I’ve always been that way and never been a ball hog or anything.”

Booth doesn’t take Cingel for granted because she was almost gone for good.

Coming into her junior season, Cingel tore her posterior cruciate ligament on a summer basketball trip to Chicago.

It was something Booth won’t forget.

“When I saw her, I thought she had torn everything,” he said. “We were happy when we found out it was just the PCL. But what I didn’t know at the time because I had never dealt with an athlete with PCL.
They don’t repair that. When it’s torn, it’s just torn. You can only rehab the muscles around. It’s not like an ACL where you can piece it back together or different things like that.

“This is a kid that plays every day knowing that it can go in-and-out or not be as stable and she plays as if nothing ever happened to her,” the coach continued. “She’s a pretty inspiring kid and has helped us win a lot of games in her career.”

Cingel didn’t miss a game that junior season, rehabbing almost daily to get herself back to where she was before the summer trip.

While she knew that she would play again, she wasn’t sure if she would be quite the same.

“I didn’t think so,” Cingel said. “I thought it was slow me down and I wouldn’t be as aggressive or anything, but I think I still am sometimes.

“(The injury) stopped me from playing soccer and I think that the physical therapy I did last year helped out a lot.”

That same tenacity the 18-year-old displays on the court, along with a little help from a teammate, moved the rehab process quickly so that Cingel would never have to miss a game — or lose the skill set she once had.

“I saw Sharlee (Bailey) go through what she did last year with a ton a knee problems and she was so strong through it,” Cingel said. “I admired her for that and try to get through it like she does.”

Cingel averages 7.1 points a night and is among team leaders in rebounds, assists and a number of defensive stats kept by the Wadsworth coaching staff.

“She’s a kid that’s never going to be in the spotlight because she’s so unselfish,” Booth said. “But she’s a kid who, for 5-foot-nothing, is second on our team in offensive rebounding, one of our leaders in charges taken, second on our team in assists … so she does a lot of little things that probably don’t get the headlines, but to be a good basketball team the more Christy Cingel’s you have on your team, the better you’re going to be.”

Contact Dan Brown at sports@medina-gazette.com.

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