Freshman Geiman to start for South Western
Geiman is already a well-known last name to opponents of South Western sports teams.
Senior Brock Geiman has been the starting quarterback for the Mustangs football team for two seasons, and he led the basketball team in scoring last season. His mother, Shannon, coached the varsity girls' basketball team to five winning seasons from 2003-2010 after multiple years as an assistant.
Now there's another Geiman — a freshman — in the high school ranks, and girls' basketball teams around York and Adams counties will become familiar with her name when the season gets started on Friday.
Taylor Geiman learned the game as a young girl hanging around the gym while her mom coached South Western, and by playing — often losing — competitive sibling-rivalry games with her big brother. She started playing AAU basketball with the Maryland Belles when she was in fifth grade and will start for the Mustangs immediately this season, according to coach Kevin Klunk.
She'll already be the tallest player in the starting lineup, standing close to six feet tall, and Klunk described her as a true wing player with the skill set to handle the ball, shoot from the outside or play near the rim.
“Her IQ on the court is top-notch," Klunk said of Geiman. "That’s really where most people who are seeing her play for the first time will tell you right away, they can just tell how she sees the floor. She’s an unselfish player.”
Geiman also enters her first high school season accustomed to playing in pressure-filled situations and in front of large crowds. The Belles class of 2019 team — made up mostly of players from Maryland, but also including Central York freshman Katie Fabbri — won a U.S. Junior Nationals championship two years ago, and has played in many AAU tournaments in front of watchful college basketball coaches, including some as far away as Chicago and Orlando.
“In Chicago, we played in a convention center that had 41 courts," Geiman said. "There’s so many people in the crowd and a much higher level of competition than you would have in a high school game, so it’s easy to get prepared. People are more physical in high school, but the speed of the game is the same as AAU. It’s not that big of a difference.”
She's already shown the ability to quickly make an impact for a high school sports team, as she played for the Mustangs soccer team in the fall and led the team in scoring. In both sports, her biggest concern at the high school level wasn't physical, but rather being accepted by her older teammates.
“I was worried about being a freshman, I didn’t know how some of the upperclassmen would react," she said. "But I’ve gotten along with the upperclassmen really well, I haven’t had any problems.”
Geiman joins a Mustangs basketball team looking to replace three starters from last year's team after losing two to graduation and senior Lauren Gough to a knee injury sustained playing soccer. Lauren's sister, Taylor, is back along with fellow senior Jacey Shipley from a team that went 8-13 last year.
"I think we have a lot of potential," Geiman said of this year's group. "I'm excited, I'm ready to play. I think we can win a lot of games that we’re not supposed to.”