Stepanian-less Glendale women’s basketball takes silver at Pan-Armenian Games

Four years ago, an injury to the top player on the Glendale women’s basketball team left the local squad wondering what would have happened if its full team competed in the Pan-Armenian Games.

Four years later, Christine Kepenekian, who was out with a torn ACL in 2011, was back at full strength and ready to lead her team to the gold medal in Yerevan, Armenia.

But in a cruel twist, an injury and a battle with a fever and sore throat sidelined a star Glendale athlete before the championship game of this year’s tournament.

Glendale’s Ella Stepanian, a Crescenta Valley High graduate, was forced to sit out her team’s gold medal game with health issues. Without Stepanian, Glendale lost to Los Angeles, 84-70, on Aug. 10.

“Before the game, I was extremely weak physically and mentally I was very down,” Stepanian said. “I had waited four years to come back to play in the championship game and I couldn’t play. I was very upset. It was hard to watch.”

Stepanian and Kepenekian led Glendale to the finals with stellar performances throughout the tournament.

Glendale went 3-0 in its pool-play contests, winning each game by an average of 55.3 points.

It started pool play with an 89-24 win against Ararat (Armenia) and blew out its second opponent, Alexandria, Egypt, 101-11, before closing out pool play with an 81-70 win against Stepanakert, the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

Its first-round game was a rematch of the gold medal game from four years ago.

Tehran defeated Glendale, 86-67, in the finals in 2011, and Glendale was out for revenge. Glendale got its revenge with an 81-70 victory against Tehran in the first-round game.

“There was a group of girls who were returning and that was a big game for them,” Glendale Coach Martik Ghookasian said. “We knew we would win the game. We knew it was going to be a hard-fought game.”

Glendale left the game with a scare, though.

“During the quarterfinal game, I grabbed a rebound and when I turned around, I accidentally butted heads with another player,” Stepanian said. “I was blind-sided and our heads collided and then blood started gushing out of the left side of my head.”

Stepanian said she probably should not have played in her team’s semifinal game after losing “a lot” of blood, but she wanted to be a leader on her team.

Glendale defeated Antelias, Lebanon, 77-72, to reach the finals.

The night before the final game, Stepanian knew she would have trouble playing the next day.

“The night before the championship she left the hotel because she didn’t want to get anyone else sick,” Ghookasian said. “I spoke with her in the morning and she was not able to play. I thought that made a huge difference.”

Without Stepanian, Ghookasian said his team “ran out of gas.”

“Ella is so versatile, when you lose a player like that, you can’t replace her,” Ghookasian said. “We did everything we could. But we weren’t big to begin with, so losing her took away from us defensively, as far as our preferred matchups. Offensively, it took away from us as well. She had been scoring from the perimeter, inside the paint; she was doing a lot for us.”

Glendale left unsatisfied with a silver medal, and realized it had to wait four more years for another chance to win an elusive gold medal.

Stepanian plans to return in four years, with a full team that is healthy.