The Modern Era: Downer's Best Point Guard and the First Woman in the Hall of Fame, Part 4 of 5

From the time the best of the Ardmore Avenue Playground players had graduated in the mid-to-late 1970s, Aces basketball fell into a down period. Throughout the 1980s, the Aces had only three winning seasons.

Then Coach Gregg Downer arrived the Aces were reborn. At the same time, the women's basketball team began to establish itself as a force in Central League play since tipping off for their first season in 1975.

Two of the best players from the last decade were honored as 2010 hall of fame inductees.

2010 Hall of Fame Inductee — Mike Venafra, 2001

The youngest Ace from the boys basketball team to be inducted in the hall of fame to date had a brilliant flash of a two-year career with Lower Merion after transferring to the school from Archbishop Carroll.

Venafra started as a freshman at Carroll, but was demoted to JV after a fallout with a new coaching staff that nearly persuaded the young athlete to give up on the sport. Instead, Venafra moved in with his grandmother in Lower Merion and led the Aces to back-to-back Central League titles. With Venafra running the point, the Aces dominated the Central League with a 34-2 record. Fast-paced and free-flowing, Venafra scored 1,146 points in his high school career.

Venafra's close friend Matt Dougherty introduced the former point guard at the induction ceremony. "Mike was in a terrible situation at Carroll," Dougherty said. "Coach Downer gave him a second chance."

Downer said that when Kobe Bryant played for Lower Merion, he would draw up plays that essentially boiled down to "get the ball to Kobe." "When Venafra was on the team, we had plays to 'get the ball to Mike,'" Downer said.

"Mike was the best point guard of my era," Downer said. Venafra had an "old-school" game, his coach said. "He made his foul shots. He used the backboard. He never left the gym to go to the bathroom without asking permission," Downer said. "He was a great player with great moves."

Venafra went on to star at DeSales University, scoring 1,354 points in his collegiate career and earning Regional Division III All-American honors.

2010 Hall of Fame Inductee — Sarah Lowe, 2002

A quick-glance at Sarah Lowe's lifetime accomplishments looks like this: excelled in the classroom at Lower Merion High School, graduated in 2002, attended University of Florida where she was the Arthur Ashe Female Sports Scholar of the Year, NCAA Woman of the Year Finalist, SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year, youngest member of the Knight Foundation of Intercollegiate Athletics, two-time Rhodes Scholar finalist, Fulbright Scholar, co-founder of Kujali International, a nonprofit focusing on bettering the lives of impoverished orphans.

She graduated from college magna cum laude as a double major and a Phi Beta Kappa honoree. She has since hiked to the summit of Mt. Kilamanjaro, not once, but twice, and is currently studying as a first-year graduate student at Oxford University.

She is 26. She also played basketball.

And Lowe didn't just play basketball, she excelled at basketball. The first woman inducted in the Lower Merion Basketball Hall of Fame scored more points in her four-year career than any Ace not named Kobe Bryant — 1,676 points.

Lowe was a First Team All-Central League selection all four years in high school. She was a McDonald's All-American finalist, a Street & Smith Honorable Mention All-American, and by the time she had laced up for the last time as a Florida Gator, Lowe was among the top ten players in Gator history for assists, steals, minutes played, free-throw percentage and three-pointers.

"If Sarah were here having reached retirement, her accomplishments would add up to a full life for an average person," Tom Nerney, Lowe's former AAU coach said at the induction ceremony. "Yet when you list all of her achievements, the truth is, it does not fully portray the person I've come to know over the years. She is a great human being."

Lowe said she was grateful for two lessons that Aces basketball taught her—how to be part of a team and how to respond to adversity. "You don't choose your teammates," and adversity is an everyday part of life, the point guard said.

And in the midst of a rejuvenation of Aces girls basketball, Lowe said, "I know I am the first woman standing up here tonight, and I certainly hope I am not the last."

This article is the fourth in a five-part hall of fame series on Aces history. To continue reading about the coach, Gregg Downer and the rescue of Aces basketball, .