Lynn’s Faieta has a grand accomplishment

Scoring 1,000 points at the high school level is no small feat. Repeating it at the college level puts a basketball player on a pretty short list.
Former St. Mary’s High standout Tori Faieta did just that when she netted her 1,000th career point for the Stonehill College women’s basketball team in a game against Caldwell College Saturday at Stonehill.
Faieta needed 27 points to hit the milestone, which would be a career high. She accomplished it with 12-of-20 shooting from the field and 3-for-4 shooting from the free-throw line. She’s the 27th player in the program’s history to reach 1,000 points and she did it early in her senior year.
?It was a pretty exciting night,” Faieta said. “It was a really good day to get it.”
It was a good day, Faieta said, because the school had just dedicated the court at the Merkert Gym in the name of coach Paula Sullivan, who retired over the summer after 43 years service.
Faieta said she didn’t really expect to hit the 1,000th given the fact it would take a career-high performance. But it happened with 3:32 left in the game. She also had a game-high 12 rebounds, two assists and two blocked shots, earning Stonehill Tip-Off Classic Most Valuable Player honors.
?I didn’t thinK it was going to happen (on Saturday),” Faieta said. “I was really lucky.”
Jeff Newhall, who coached Faieta at St. Mary’s, isn’t surprised by his former player?s success at the college level, both on the court and in the classroom. Faieta has had to deal with severe hearing loss since she was very young, making the accomplishment all the more impressive.
?For her to continue to be successful in both the classroom and on the court speaks volumes about her as a person and as an athlete,” Newhall said. “I would have been surprised if it didn’t go well. She was so driven and put in so much time to make it work (in academics and basketball).”
Newhall said once Faieta decided she wanted to pursue basketball at the college level, nothing was going to stop her.
?She played or worked out,” year round, he said.
Making the day even more special was the opponent. Sharell Sanders, her teammate at St. Mary’s when the Spartans won the state tournament in 2011, is a freshman guard for Caldwell and was her team’s high scorer with 12 points. Another former St. Mary’s teammate, Ann Marie Idusuyi, plays for Assumption, which was also in the tournament.
?It was kind of fitting she did it not only on her home court, but against a player she won a state title with,” Newhall said. “It took a monster game for her to do it.”