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Sunday, June 1, 2008
A Fairy Tale in High Tops
Greater Louisville, KY
By: Garry Gupton
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Photo(s) By: submitted
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Louisville’s basketball talent is showing in the girls’ All-Star Roster
This is a fairy tale in high tops. And Louisville’s Tia Gibbs is living it.
She just can’t remember the best part of the story.
Kentucky’s reigning Miss Basketball says she has almost no memory of Butler High School’s single-point victory over Franklin-Simpson in the final game of the Girls’ Kentucky High School Basketball Tournament.
“I don’t remember much,” recalled Gibbs two months after her Butler Bearettes laid claim to the top spot in Bluegrass basketball.
“I remember my teammate Kara Pile getting in my face yelling at me. And I just gave her a blank look,” said Gibbs.
That’s because the star of the team was seeing stars and shooting blanks. The player who averaged nearly 21 points per game as a senior was oh-for-everything in the first half of the state championship game.
Gibbs was escorted off the court at half-time and taken to a Bowling Green hospital where she was treated for a concussion. The 5’9” guard had banged heads with a player from DuPont Manual during the semi-final game that same morning.
“I remember that whole Manual game because I didn’t get hurt until the end of the game. We bumped heads, and I got the worst end of it,” says Gibbs who was sitting in a hospital bed when she was named the Most Valuable Player of Kentucky’s most legendary girls’ basketball tournament.
Gibbs’ fog had cleared by the time the next chapter of this fairy tale was penned two weeks later. That’s when Tia earned the title that is awarded to only the titans of this sport: Kentucky’s 2008 Miss Basketball.
“Being Miss Basketball was never a goal for me. It’s an accomplishment. My goal was to win a state championship. Getting Miss Basketball is just a blessing,” said the lady who once scored 35 points in a 32-minute high school basketball game.
And now Gibbs has only about an hour left in her high school basketball career. She will take the court two more times when she leads the Kentucky All-Stars against the Indiana All-Stars. The Kentuckians play at Indianapolis on June 13 and then cross the Ohio River for the finale in Louisville on June 15.
Those are games in which Gibbs wants to make a memory that no one forgets—especially her!
Indiana is dominating this series against Kentucky. The female hoopsters from the Hoosier State have won 24 of the past 30 games.
As the 12 best girl basketball players from the Commonwealth assembled for their first practice together at the Shelby County High School gym, their coach put the series into historical focus for her teenaged team.
“The last time we swept Indiana, you girls were one-year old,” said Kentucky All-Star Coach Sally Zimmerman. “And that’s our goal. And I’m not afraid to say it. We want to sweep Indiana.”
The shockwave from throwing down the gauntlet with such force could have sent Gibbs and her teammates reeling.
But these girls don’t do backing down.
“I don’t like to lose,” said guard Ceira Ricketts who scored over 3,000 points during her Fairdale High School career. “I like winning the big games. I’m so sick of hearing about Indiana beating Kentucky. I am ready to change that.”
And this just might be the gathering of girls that gets ‘er done.
“Chemistry is the key in an all-star event,” said former Western Kentucky University Women’s Basketball Coach Steve Small. “And these girls have that.”
“I’ve been playing with and against these girls all through middle school and in high school,” said Monique Reid, an All-Star from Fern Creek High School.
“We’d go play in the park against the boys,” said Reid who will test her game on the collegiate level at the University of Louisville. She’ll be joined on the Cardinal roster by all-star teammate Janae Howard from Owensboro. “Honestly, I think the best competition is here in Louisville.”
Reid isn’t the only one who has noticed the female talent level in Louisville. Jefferson County high schools failed to produce even a single player for the Kentucky Boys’ All-Star team. Yet, Jefferson and its bordering counties stocked half of the Kentucky Girls’ All-Star roster—six of the 12 spots.
DuPont Manual is represented by Brittany Wilson. She will take her 18 points per game high school average to Dayton University where she will use basketball to spark her dream of becoming an electrical engineer.
“I think basketball has helped me become a better person,” said the 7th Region MVP. “I am a very religious person. The thought of me getting to go to college and not having to pay for it is incredible to me. I feel that basketball is making a way for me to get to college. I feel I am so blessed.”
Lauren Jones honed her game to all-star level at South Oldham High School. She prepped for this All-Star series by helping her parents tear out an old deck at their home and hammer down a new one.
Her next building project is a basketball career at Austin Peay University and then a medical career in pediatrics.
“It’s a blessing to be able to go to college for free and be able to play basketball,” said the all-time leading scorer in South Oldham history. “I guess all those hours in the gym were worth it.”
Raechele Gray is only 5’5” but she casts a large shadow in Shelby County. Before she heads off to play college basketball at Marshall University, she will continue playing drums and piano at the Shelbyville church where her parents Kilen and Cassandra Gray are the ministers.
“My parents live out what they preach” said the Most Valuable Player of Kentucky’s 8th Region. “Being a pastor’s daughter can have a lot of pressure.”
Zimmerman, who is also her coach at Shelby County High School, is applying even more pressure by saying winning one of two games against the Indiana Al-Stars won’t mean much.
“It’s been 17 years since we’ve swept them,” says Zimmerman. “We need to win both games in order to get the emphasis back that Kentucky basketball is good, too. We’ve got to have a sweep. Winning one game is a good thing. But we need to sweep.”
And if this group of All-Stars can complete that feat, Kentucky’s Miss Basketball will finally have a fairy tale ending she will be able to remember.
“This year has been like a movie to me,” said the future Vanderbilt Commodore.
And the final scene of this fairy tale in high tops will be written this month.
Garry Gupton is a play-by-play broadcaster for Fox Sports Network, Insight Communications and Big Blue Sports, and an associate pastor at Highview Baptist Church.
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