Athletes of the Week: Senior Basketball Players Brianna Mattessich and Bindi Parikh

The Athlete of the Week Award typically goes to someone who scores a lot of points, finishes first in a race or leads their team to an impressive victory.

But this week, the honor goes to two basketball players who made a contribution off the floor.  

On Thursday, the Fort Lee Lady Bridgemen held their senior day ceremonies where players in their final year compete in the last home game of their high school careers.

Most coaches will play all the seniors they can as a nod of appreciation, but some teams run into a problem of they have too many seniors and too few starting slots.

This was the problem that plagued head coach Stacie Zafiris and the Lady Bridgemen.

With six seniors on the team and only five players allowed to start, it appeared that one person would be left out.

But before the game began, seniors Brianna Mattessich and Bindi Parikh asked to take themselves out of the starting lineup so that the remaining seniors would all have an opportunity to start at least once in their career.

“[Bindi and I] came to the agreement that we would do it together,” Mattessich said of the pact by the top two scorers. “We want [the other seniors] to start because they haven’t started the whole year. We thought it was right for them to do it on their senior day.”

On a night when seniors tend to think of themselves, it was these two seniors who put the rest of the team first.

“Me and Brianna thought it would be better for us to sit down,” said Bindi Parikh. “We always start, so it was better and nice to give other people a chance to start too.”

This included players like Yamel Contreras, who rarely sees time on the floor but took advantage of the unique opportunity by sinking the first shot.

“One of the proudest moments was when she made the opening shot of the game,” coach Stacie Zafiris said. “[Bindi and Brianna] understood that there is a lot of seniors on the team this year and they both came up with the idea…It gave other girls an opportunity to hear their names being called in the starting lineup.”

And even before the seldom mentioned names were called, Brianna and Bindi leapt up to cheer on their fellow seniors. Both players lined up on the floor, clapped as each name was being announced and welcomed their teammates to the court.

It may have been something small to do at the time, but also something memorable that the other seniors can remember years from now.

As Bindi Parikh said, “it was one of the best days of the year.”