A man
of all trades

By Joe Mason
For the Times

Growing up, Tom Marshall was always one of the smaller kids on his basketball teams. So naturally he always ended up playing on the perimeter.
Some things have changed, others have not.
Marshall now stands 6-feet-4 and is the tallest member of the Archbishop Ryan High School basketball team. And though he’s the tallest, he still finds himself standing outside the arc.
"It doesn’t really matter, because on this team everybody shoots, everybody rebounds and everybody plays defense," Marshall said. "We just play within the system.
"We have a lot of guys who do a lot of things very well," he added. "We try to take advantage of that."
"As a coach, the ultimate goal is to get your team to play hard and unselfish," said Raiders coach Bernie Rogers, the all-time winningest basketball coach in Ryan history. "All of my teams have done that, but this team has done very well. They’re a very good group."
The Raiders’ strategy worked well this season, as the team finished with a 17-10 overall record and moved on to the championship game for the first time since 2002, a title match that they lost to St. John Neumann, 66-55.
On Monday night, history repeated itself for the Raiders. They lost a tough one to North Catholic High School, 51-45, in the Catholic League title game at the Palestra. The battle was the first all-Northern Division title game since 1970.
Ryan senior guard Andrew Rogers — the Northern Division MVP — had a team-high 13 points, with Chris Wilk sinking 11 and Russ Slawter contributing nine.
But the Raiders can take heart in what they’ve achieved this season. Marshall has been a big contributor.
In his first year as a starter, he ranked third on the team in rebounding, second in assists, and led the team in free-throw percentage. He also occasionally took the opening tap, and, like all Ryan players, set screens, picks and did whatever it took to ensure that the Raiders got off a good shot.
"It’s definitely the system," Marshall said of Ryan’s Princeton-style offense. "We all just picked it up and now we run it. It works really well."
Playing in championship games is nothing new for Marshall. During the fall, he and his teammates on the Ryan soccer team shocked the Catholic League by advancing to the title game, though the Raiders lost to Father Judge in overtime.
Not too many people expected the Raiders to advance to the finals in soccer or basketball.
But Marshall wasn’t that pessimistic.
"I knew we had a chance if we worked hard and things fell right," said Marshall, a defender for Ryan soccer coach George Todt. "I spent most of my summer working out, working on basketball, so I’m really excited about making it to the finals. It’s pretty cool going to two championship games this year."
Next year, Marshall will turn in the cleats but he hopes to keep wearing the sneakers. He’s currently looking at colleges like Gwynedd-Mercy, Cabrini and De Sales, with hopes of playing basketball and studying nursing.
"I would love to keep playing basketball, and nursing seems like a really good career," Marshall said. "I sat down with my parents and we decided that would be a great career for me. So that’s what I’ll most likely do." ••