Cramb hoping to keep Bishop Guertin girls basketball at the top of D1

When Brad Kreick joined the coaching staff of the Bishop Guertin High School girls basketball team, it didn't take long for him to realize what kind of player the Cardinals had in Meghan Cramb.

Then a sophomore, Cramb was already one of the best players on the floor, and she did a little bit of everything at either end.

With that effort has come a nice resume, one that includes a spot on the Division I first-team and a championship last season, and in November, Cramb singed a letter of intent to continue her basketball career at Assumption College in Worcester.

But despite the accolades, Kreick, who is in his second year as the Cardinals head coach, hasn't seen any slow down from one of his top players.

"She has (improved) every season, both during the season and during the offseason, she's made strides and gotten better at every single stop along the way," he said. "That's a testament to her work ethic, her dedication to the game. She just is a kid who wants to get better every day."

When it comes to basketball, Cramb has had that drive for a long time. She started playing in third grade, when the combination of some cold feet and the urging of friends led to her dropping hockey and picking up basketball.

"I started playing (hockey) when I was really young and I got into it because my mom plays," Cramb said. "She said I used to complain too much about my feet being cold. Ever since I stepped on the floor, I've loved it, and I always had a dream of playing in college. I think that's pushed me to continue playing. In middle school, I really started getting serious about it."

That level of interest helped lead Cramb, who is from New Boston, to Bishop Guertin, where she's been logging a lot of varsity minutes since her freshman year.

It was around that time that the dream of getting to play college basketball started to really come into focus. A soccer player, too, Cramb tried to add playing for a travel team into her schedule, but when college basketball coaches started reaching out, she decided that's the direction she wanted to head.

"Soccer was my first love for sports, but as I got more toward high school, I focused more on basketball," she said. "I was starting to get college letters (for basketball) so I knew I had a chance to do that, so I wanted to focus on it."

As the Cardinals start their defense of last year's championship, when Cramb steps on the court, Kreick now sees more of a complete player leading the way for Bishop Guertin.

"Her maturity, her understanding of the game, the fact that she lets the game come to her now, she knows she is a critically important part of what we do," the coach said. "A couple of years ago, she might have tried to force that, but it's more natural to her now. She understands how to let if come to her and not force it.

"The thing that strikes you right away is that she has become a really, really good shooter. She's always been a decent shooter. She has such an attacking mentality and she's so hard to guard going to the rim, but she has really developed a mid-range shooting game and her 3-point shooting, which has really complimented her natural aggressiveness."

Cramb is hoping that that extra dimension will not only help her this year, but also benefit her next season when she gets to Assumption.

"I want to make an impact on the team (right away)," Cramb said. "I think I'm going to be able to do that.

"Coming in this year, we're going to get big game every single night. We're going to get everyone's best game. There kind of is a target on our back. I like it because I think it pushes us to work our hardest."

Bishop Guertin gets a big test early on, as the Cardinals host Bedford at 7 p.m. Tuesday night in a rematch of last year's championship game.