Lauren RabainoDuring the fall, while working for the Kansas City Chiefs, I witnessed an athletic performance for the ages, and it had nothing to with football. I attended a high school basketball game in which Kansas’ five-time defending state champion played a team with only six players.
The only catch was the team with just six players had the No. 1 junior recruit in the country. The performance I witnessed was one that I will never forget, and the way I view athletics will never be the same.
This player was on an entirely different level – dribbling left, dribbling right, fade-away 3s, finger-roll lay-ups. From no-look passes to a silky smooth shooting touch. Though double-teamed every possession, this player’s ability to split two defenders and score was unlike anything I have ever seen on TV, let alone in person.
With 10 seconds remaining, and the game on the line, there was no question where the ball was going. It wasn’t six players against a five-time defending state champ – it was one player on a mission.
And 44 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists later, the team with six players led by one superstar sent a tornado through Kansas high school basketball.
One fact I left out is that this player was a girl, playing in a girls high school basketball game.
I had heard the hype, so I figured I better go check her out. Major universities like Tennessee, Connecticut and Stanford were all battling for her services – the three most dominant women’s collegiate programs.
Simply put, this girl was an absolute stud. She would start for Cal Poly and be the Big West Conference Player of the Year right now, and I can say that without hesitation.
Too often, female athletics are overlooked, and I’ll admit I have contributed to this problem. There have been countless opportunities for me to write about female athletics at this school, and I have dropped the ball.
While I love writing about the NFL draft, 40 times, vertical jumps, the NBA playoffs, the NBA draft lottery and any other topic regarding male-driven sports, don’t think I don’t know a good female athlete when I see one.
We have a volleyball team at Cal Poly with perennial All-Americans, and one of the best coaches in the country. Cal Poly has dominated the Big West, winning it twice, and having the conference player of the year two years running. While Cal Poly hosted a regional in 2006, it advanced to the Sweet Sixteen this past season. This team plays everyone who is anyone, and is on the cusp of becoming one of the elite programs in the country. Let me put it this way for guys – if volleyball were football, our coach would have gotten the UCLA job last season.
Sharon Day, a two-sport athlete at Cal Poly, is on the verge of becoming an Olympian in high jumping. She seems to win every collegiate meet she attends, and makes every other competitor in the Big West look inferior. She’s easily one of, if not the greatest, female athletes to ever step foot on this campus. Whether she makes the Olympics or not, her legacy is already etched in stone at Cal Poly.
And while Cal Poly might not be the elite platform in track like several of the Pac-10 schools, Day has helped this program creep closer with her immense talent.
Last but not least, I can’t forget about the softball program. Its head coach, Jenny Condon, has taken this program out of obscurity to the national spotlight in less than four years. In 2007, she led the program to its first Division I NCAA tournament appearance by winning the Big West. Averaging 34 wins over her first three seasons, Condon has this team headed down a winning path, and has beaten several highly-ranked teams in a short time at Cal Poly.
So while the men tend to grab the headlines in my articles, it’s definitely not due to a lack of female talent at this school.
John Middlekauff is an agribusiness senior and a Mustang Daily sports columnist.