CB West, 2014-15 season still an influence for Nicole Munger

To paraphrase an old saying, you can take the player out of West, but you can’t the West out of a player.

Whether it was hundreds of miles from home playing for Michigan in the Big Ten or her new path as an assistant coach at Fordham, Nicole Munger never let go of her roots at CB West. The “West way” permeates through all the school’s athletic programs and during a special season in 2014-15, Munger and her teammates showed what it was all about.

That squad, the No. 2 seed in the Reporter/Times Herald/Montgomery Media girls basketball team of the decade bracket, remains one of the best in West history because of that mentality.

“We were just dogs, we just tried to work as hard as possible in the gym so many hours every single week,” Munger said. “If you look back at our junior year, sophomore year and even freshman year, we had dealt with a lot of disappointment that came from things we could definitely control better.”

The 2014-15 squad was a juggernaut, going 32-2 while winning the inaugural SOL tournament title and rolling to the District 1 4A title before advancing to the PIAA championship game. In Hershey, the Bucks would fall a few possessions short of their ultimate goal of a state title to Cumberland Valley but they had put the program on the map.

West, which went 0-21 in the 2008-09 season, improved steadily as the decade began and was a district playoff team by the time Munger and the rest of her class arrived as freshmen in 2011-12. That class, which also included Mackenzie Carroll, Corrinne Godshall, Peyton Traina, Dana Zimmerman and Meghan Tilger, would lead the program to new heights with plenty of motivation.

“We knew what had happened before but also understood the growth that had gone on so when we came in freshman year, we knew we had something special,” Munger said. “We were looking to take it to the next height and even then, we were already talking about taking the team to the state championship and dreaming then of those goals that we finally got to see that fourth year.”

Two things in particular would define the 2014-15 squad. First was their dedication and relentless mentality and the second was the seniors’ charge to create an inclusive culture that treated every player on the roster equally. The seniors brought freshmen from the team in to eat lunch with them and made sure anybody who needed a ride got one.

The four seniors who started – Munger, Carroll, Godshall and Traina – were all Division I caliber players but they knew they not only needed a supporting cast for that season, but they could leave their mark on years to come but instilling that togetherness.

“It was different, we knew it was our last opportunity to do it and the focus was different,” Munger said. “We were in the gym every single day together from the time the school bell rang to about nine o’clock at night. Whoever could drive, we’d drive the whole team down to WaWa, come back to West, eat our WaWa together then fight for gym space. We were just so cohesive and together, that was the difference.”

They were plenty talented, with Godshall signing with Binghamton and Carroll going on to Colgate while junior Makenzie Mason just finished up an All-American career at Division III Scranton, but they also played hard. In the first round of the district tournament, a game the Bucks would win handily, Munger threw herself into the scorer’s table to save a loose ball, something she brushed off as something she would have expected any other player on the roster to have done in the same situation.

It’s hard enough to beat a good team and that task only gets tougher when said team plays with the mindset it has to prove it belongs on the floor at all. Again, it was something Munger chalked up to the players who came before her class like current West assistant Jen Fabian, for giving them a path to follow.

“That was the defining quality of that team and it took us to the places we needed to get to,” Munger said. “It was much deeper, it was a mindset that we understood where this program had come from and what we were doing that year wasn’t just for us.

“I think that’s what the West way is, controlling what you can control, leaving no stone unturned, diving for every loose ball and doing whatever it takes to win.”

While they didn’t bring home a state title, the journey to reach the championship game is what resonates more with Munger now. She recalled Godshall making a statement after the loss saying she was more upset they wouldn’t be together as a team again which stands out more five years later.

Munger left Doylestown for Ann Arbor, Michigan but brought a heavy influence from back home with her. Her hustle plays and fearless attitude quickly endeared the PA transplant to the Wolverines faithful, even as a freshman trying to find her place in one of the nation’s toughest conferences.

“Even when I wasn’t playing as much, (Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico) would always tell me ‘Munger, I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re a fan favorite,’” Munger said. “It was just a product of the way we played and that West way that had stuck with me. It became second nature and it became habit, but everyone on that team at West just had fun playing that way.”

In four years at Michigan, Munger helped the Wolverines win a WNIT title in a triple-overtime thriller where she played a key role late as a sophomore, back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances as a junior and senior, was one of the nation’s best three-point shooters and scored 1,000 points. It was a career, which ironically began with a game against her longtime teammate Godshall and Binghamton, Munger wouldn’t give away a second of.

She has her framed Michigan jersey hanging on a wall in New York, right next to a framed Bucks jersey from her last game at West, siblings from two different but equally influential stops along the way. It’s why when things got tough at Michigan, she always broke out some old West tape.

“Being able to play for West represented something where you were almost playing for your town,” Munger said. “It was cool to see us growing up together and playing in Doylestown, then at Lenape (Middle School) and at West, there was that sense of family. When you ask our team about senior year, we didn’t have many fans freshman year or sophomore year, but by senior year, the whole town really started to come out.

“We’d walk around and people would recognize us, so it was cool to do it with that sense of community and with the people I grew up next to and my best friends.”

The team stayed close even as they went their different ways and as the coronavirus pandemic has spread, most of them have wound up back in Doylestown. Munger joked whenever the virus is dealt with and quarantines are lifted, they’re going to find a court and play pick-up.

Even now as her playing career has transitioned to a coaching one, the West way is still present.

“From where I’ve come from, with my West experience, I think it’s set me up for something great moving forward,” Munger said. “I can look at high school kids and think back to the way we operated, which, selfishly, I think is the best way to operate, so when you see a team like that, you know that kid is special and has been taught the right things and has that ‘it’ factor.

“You want to find programs like that and kids like that and try to get the best out of them.”

Munger only got to see this year’s Bucks team play once in person, but she got a similar feeling to the 2014-15 season in the way the 2019-20 team played and had that sense of togetherness.

“The most special feeling we got from that program was just being together,” Munger said. “Whenever we get together, we still feel that way. We’ve been talking a lot recently since all this has been going on and it’s only gotten stronger.”