It was quite the week after Christmas for the Hilton girls basketball team as last year’s state Class AA runner-up was ranked first by the New York State Sportswriter’s Association in their first poll of the season and senior Mallory Heise broke the school record for career scoring on December 30 against rival Spencerport.
The Cadets won their third Section V title last season and advanced to the championship game before falling short, but have begun this season right where they left off. With a 53-37 victory over the Rangers, they improved to 5-0.
Heise set the school career scoring mark previously held by Cameron Graupman (1,557) on a baseline jump shot with 40 seconds remaining in the first quarter. The game was stopped for a brief celebration with her teammates.
“Definitely relief and just thankful for the Hilton community, my teammates and my coaches; the support they give me is unreal and I seriously couldn’t do it without them,” Mallory Heise said.
Heise, a St. Bonaventure commit for fall 2025 to play basketball, remembers being a water-girl in sixth grade when Graupman set the previous mark. “I always remember coming to her games, she was a really tough player so it was really cool to watch her.”
In the Spencerport game, Heise had a double-double with 30 points (giving her 1,580 career) and ten rebounds while adding two assists and one steal. Senior forward Ella Simonelli had seven points with six rebounds, senior guard Paige Siciliano six points, and sophomore Madison Murphy added three points with nine rebounds and a pair of steals.
“I like where our defense is at; I think we’re only giving up 34 to 35 points per game,” Hilton head coach Dave Heise (Mallory’s uncle) said. “They (the players) have their perspective. The focus is to concentrate on our work.”
The Cadets already gave 14th state ranked Penfield their only loss of the season by 19 points in their second game of the season helping justify their state ranking as of December 25.
“Our slogan this year is ‘work hard in silence, let success make the noise.’ It’s going to get pretty noisy around us being a defending champion and we know that. It’s my job to help put the blinders on and they’ve been really great about that in practice.”
“We are a little undersized at times, but we’re trying to share responsibility on everything. I know Mal is averaging 28 to 30 points per game, but it’s also about the little things. We chart loose balls; we chart deflections and putting a premium and value on all the little things that can make a big difference.”
The Cadets lost 1,000-point scorer Ella Clark and forward Leah Thompson, now playing almost ten minutes per game as a freshman at SUNY Brockport, from last year’s title-winning team, but are still embracing their early top ranking.
“We’re really grateful for that, but we also know that we’re not even playing our best basketball yet, so there’s a lot more achievements yet to come and it’s just one step on the ladder,” Mallory Heise said.
“I love wearing this jersey and I don’t want to miss a single second of this for the world, so I’m just really grateful for my teammates and everybody that surround me while I do it.”
