‘Celebrate our youth’: Wichita unites to play middle school basketball all-star game
It’s not hard to be overlooked as a middle school basketball player.
The pageantry and acclaim on the hardwood typically comes in the years after at the high school level.
Robinson Middle School girls basketball coach Jen Pillich saw a need, crafted a vision, enlisted the help of Wichita basketball legend Lynnette Woodard and brought it to life this past weekend with a middle school basketball all-star game that featured talent from all over the Wichita metro area.
“It’s very important that we celebrate our youth and let them know that they are appreciated,” Woodard said. “We wanted to encourage the young people and show them that this is just a step on the ladder. If they continue to work hard, success can come their way.”
After moving to Wichita from Texas six years ago, Pillich always wondered why Wichita didn’t have some sort of all-star game for its basketball players. It wasn’t until this year when she decided to finally take action.
Pillich, who was teammates with Lisa Leslie on the USC women’s basketball team in 1993, has been in the same basketball circles as Woodard, Wichita’s most famous women’s basketball player, for years. After the two connected on the phone, Woodard was immediately bought in to making Pillich’s plan a reality.
“I didn’t want it to be just (Greater Wichita Athletic League) kids, I wanted to celebrate kids from Derby and Maize and the private schools too,” Pillich said. “In a world of participation ribbons, we wanted to try to find the cream of the crop and give them a true all-star experience.”
That meant booking a special venue.
Pillich was actually discouraged when her first attempt to book a high school court failed. But she reached out to Heights athletic director Traci Nigg and the idea of hosting at East High was quickly spawned. This time, the host was on board with East principal Sara Richardson and athletic director Jay Crayton committed to putting on a first-class event with Woodard’s name attached.
The next challenge was deciding which players would be picked for the event. For that, Pillich consulted with Chris Tyler to choose 14 girls players and 20 boys players — all eighth graders — from different schools all around the area to play in the game. To avoid the show-boat nature of so many all-star games, Pillich made sure no MVP trophy would be rewarded. Instead, organizers wanted to make the game about the experience.
“I talked with a lot of parents who shared with me how excited their child was to come home with a note saying that they made the all-star team,” Woodard said. “They wanted to know what color the uniforms were so they could coordinate their shoes. You could tell it just really meant a lot to them. It was something the whole family could be involved with, the whole community. Anytime you can help your home community, that’s what it’s really all about.”
.jpg "f410d7c5-28dd-4add-8016-7ea7d34ac4b6 (1).jpg")
The boys selected for this year’s all-star game were Markeece Addison (Robinson), Armani Brown (Curtis), Deaven Carr-Cooper (Robinson), Trace Dodd (Holy Savior), Sammie Fisher (Holy Savior), Jordan Granados (Allison), Junior Hunter (Wilbur), Braxton Jones (St. Thomas Aquinas), Rylan Junker (Christ McAuliffe), Xavier Lattimore (Central Christian), Jason Maingu (Holy Savior), Bryson Mattingly (Andover), Syior McGairty (Allison), Amari Parga (Curtis), Kyler Price (Maize South), Canyon Tartler (Robinson), Manuel Villagrana (Horace Mann), Jovan Welch (Allison) and Jaxen Young (Stucky).
The girls picked for the all-star game were Daisy Barrera (St. Peter), Maliyah Catalan (Horace Mann), Paris Ellison (Allison), Brooklyn Harper (Curtis), Samarah Ingram (Maize), Seven Love (Christa McAuliffe), Alea-Rayne Mason (Brooks), Kyla McClellan (Stuckey), Alysha Pierce (Andover), Jacquell Porter (Gordon Parks), Zariah Reed (Robinson), Raniya Scott (Stuckey), Mallory Simon (St. Francis) and Kenzie Stewart (Marshall).
Former WSU women’s basketball standout Angela Buckner, who runs the Lynette Woodard Recreation Center, was a coach for the girls all-star game and saw first-hand this past Saturday how much the experience meant to the players.
“It’s going to give kids something to work towards now that this is going to be an annual event,” Buckner said. “When they’re in sixth and seventh grade, they have something to shoot for now. High school coaches and AAU coaches are going to come out and watch, so it’s going to make these kids work harder to achieve that goal of being out there on that court. This was just the first year, so it’s only going to get bigger and better.”
With the first edition of the middle school all-star game such a success, Pillich is already thinking of ways to grow the event and improve the experience for the players. Those interested in volunteering or sponsoring the event can reach out at jjpillich@gmail.com.
She hopes that some day the event can grow big enough to host a similar all-star game at the high school level. But for now, she is focused on continuing to make special things happen at the middle school level.
“I’m still so elevated,” Pillich said after the event. “It was so much planning, probably too much planning on my part because I really didn’t want to screw this thing up. You have all the little doubts and you overthink things, so for it to go as well as it did, it makes me feel so good. It’s a humbling feeling. I need another two weeks before I’m ready to come down off that cloud nine.”
.jpg)