Photo by Mike Frame Randolph’s Sydney Hvizdzak averaged 26.8 points per game for the Section VI Class C champion Cardinals this season.

“Every game this year, she was the best player on the court.”

Those were Randolph coach David Pihlblad’s words after Sydney Hvizdzak scored 34 points and grabbed eight rebounds in the Cardinals’ 56-52 Section VI Class C championship-clinching victory over Frewsburg in late March.

You’d likely be hard-pressed to find any Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Athletic Association girls basketball coach that would disagree with Pihlblad.

Hvizdzak dominated on the hardwood during this COVID-19 delayed and shortened season.

The Randolph senior averaged 26.8 points, 8.6 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 3.8 steals per game for the 18-0 Cardinals, en route to being named the CCAA Division 1 East Player of the Year.

With her 34-point final outing, the Daemen College-bound Hvizdzak surpassed 2,000 points for her career, ending with 2,029 in third place on the Randolph all-time scoring list among girls.

Ahead of her are a pair of Western New York legends. Mckenna Maycock, who played NCAA Division I college basketball at St. Bonaventure University, completed her Cardinals career with 2,947 points while her older sister Marah Maycock finished with 2,326 points before taking her volleyball talents to NCAA Division II Edinboro University.

Hvizdzak literally grew up in the shadows of the Maycocks.

She was a ball girl for the Cardinals when Mckenna was a star.

Now she’s a star in her own right.

As a senior, Hvizdzak reached 30 points in 10 of Randolph’s 18 games. Her season best came March 18 in a 61-50 victory over Falconer when she had 38 points, but that wasn’t her career best.

As a freshman, the 5-foot-9 guard-forward scored 39 points against Gowanda.

A season later, Hvizdzak terrorized the Panthers again with what would become her career-high 49 points.

Then as a junior, she eclipsed the 40-point plateau one more time with 44 against Clymer.

But as a senior, Hvizdzak had her highest nightly scoring average as Randolph ran through its 16-game regular season with a perfect record.

The Cardinals rarely even trailed in a game, and that was in large part due to their senior leader and star.

And with the program’s first sectional title since 2015 on the line on a Friday night in late March, Hvizdzak hit a pair of free throws to give her team a four-point lead it would not relinquish in the closing seconds.

“On the biggest stage,” Pihlblad said at the time, “the last game of her career no matter what, and she probably played her best performance.”

Hvizdzak, the best player in the area, played her best, in the biggest moment.

For that, Hvizdzak is the 2021 Post-Journal/OBSERVER Girls Basketball Player of the Year.

NOTES: Marah Maycock won the award outright in 2010 and 2012 while sharing it with Jamestown’s Ashley DePane in 2011. … Mckenna Maycock won the award in 2013 and 2015.