First-year duo tackle 13th season together
Sophia Jonas and Livi Boily have played 13 consecutive years of basketball together, begining in third grade. The duo from Hudson, Wis., are part of the young team’s six- member 2025 recruiting class. CSB will graduate one senior at the end of this year.
First-years Sophia Jonas and Livi Boily, both from Hudson, Wis., finished their 13th year playing basketball together earlier this year.
Jonas and Boily met when they were placed in the same kindergarten class and also played on the same basketball team that year, making for a quick friendship.
“We played together for the first time in kindergarten, and then we didn’t start playing travel basketball until third grade. We’ve played together ever since then,” Jonas said.
The pair have had a long journey to St. Joseph, making all the stops one might expect on the way to playing college basketball.
“We ended up on the same AAU team, and then high school came around and we were again on the same team for that, and then we ended up going to the same college and continuing to play together, so it’s been super fun,” Boily said.
Continuing to play together at St. Ben’s wasn’t necessarily always as clear a plan as it is now.
“We didn’t plan on going to the same college either; it just kind of happened where we were both getting recruited and we both liked it,” Jonas said.
The pair added that they were happy things ended up working out in a manner which allowed them to continue playing together.
“We [consulted each other] a lot. We were getting recruited by different schools, and St. Ben’s and St. Kate’s were the only kind of similar ones, and then I made the decision that I was going to St. Ben’s,” Jonas said.
Boily, who was still debating a number of schools, made the decision to commit to CSB shortly thereafter.
“She committed before me, and I realized that St. Ben’s was one of the top schools remaining on my list,” Boily said. “I knew I wanted to continue to play basketball, but I also wanted to find the best academic fit, and that was St. Ben’s, too.”
The decision to recruit two girls from the same high school class was an unprecedented one for head coach Mike Durbin, as Jonas and Boily are the only such instance during his tenure.
“[Durbin] asked me about it a couple of times, and I was like “duh I love it; it’s Livi’,” Jonas said.
Durbin learned during the recruiting process that not only were Jonas and Boily close but also that the Jonas and Boily families were particularly close.
“Our families are really close, too; we always do family dinners and stuff like that,” Jonas said.
It would be difficult for their two families not to develop a close bond, as the pair also played soccer and tennis together growing up.
“We became friends in kindergarten and then played a lot of the same sports growing up, so we just spent a lot of time together,” Boily said.
