McDonald’s Names Elizabeth Williams 2011 Morgan Wooten Player of the Year
Photo Caption: Elizabeth Williams (center) of Princess Anne High School, Virginia Beach, Virginia, was named the 2011 Wootten National Player of the Year award for female high school athletes. Joining Williams at the Chicago press conference announcing the winners of the awards on Tuesday are (left-to-right) legendary high school basketball coach Morgan Wootten, for whom the award is named; Austin Rivers, the boys’ Wootten Award winner for 2011; Boston Celtics coach “Doc” Rivers, Austin’s father; and Douglas Freeland, Director of the McDonald’s All-American Games. The 2011 McDonald’s All-American Games, featuring the nation’s top high school basketball players, are set to tip of March 30 at the United Center in Chicago.
Photo Credit: Courtesy McDonald’s All-American Games
By Lee Michaelson
Publisher
Douglas Freeland, Director of the McDonald’s All-American Games, and storied high school basketball coach Morgan Wootten named Princess Anne High School’s (Virginia Beach, Virginia) Elizabeth Williams the female recipient of the 2011 Morgan Wootten Player of the Year Award in Chicago, Tuesday.
Coach Wooten is the winningest basketball coach at any level, having accumulated 1274 wins The Wootten Award annually honors one male and one female McDonald’s All-American player for their accomplishments on and off the court. Previous female recipients have included the WNBA’s 2008 Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year Candace Parker (2004), last year’s WNBA Rookie of the Year Tina Charles of the Connecticut Sun (2006), the Tulsa Shock’s Ivory Latta (2003), and more recently two-time collegiate National Player of the Year Maya Moore of the University of Connecticut (2007) and PAC-10 Freshman of the Year Chiney Ogwumike of Stanford (2010).
Wootten Award recipients are selected on the basis of their performance on the court and in the classroom, as well as their exemplary calendar, outstanding leadership, and involvement in and contributions to their local communities.
Williams, who has committed to play for Duke next season, is one of the top-rated girls’ basketball recruits in the Class of 2011. The 2010 AP Virginia Player of the Year and first-team Parade All-American has led Princess Anne High School to three consecutive state finals appearances, winning state championships in 2009 and 2011. An all-around athlete, Williams also competes in the 400-meter dash and high jump, and volunteers at a local basketball camp in her community.
Williams, a 6-3 center whose style of play has been compared to that of NBA great Alonzo Mourning, led the USA Basketball U17 National Team to a gold medal in the 2010 U17 World Championships in France last summer with a team-high 13.5 points and 7.6 rebounds per game, icing the cake with two blocks per game. A highly efficient shooter, she also averaged a team-high 61.8 percent from the field.
Williams hopes to play for the National Team again this summer in the U18 championships in Chile, then take some time off to rest and “keep [her] body from burning out,” before heading to Durham to begin her freshman year as a pre-med major. She said she chose Duke because of its academic excellence as well as its reputation as an ACC women’s basketball powerhouse, and hopes to help her team to a national championship.
 | Photo Caption: Elizabeth Williams (right), winner of the 2011 Wooten National Player of the Year Award, and Ariel Massengale (left), a finalist for the honor, accept the 2010 FIBA U17 World Championship trophy from FIBA president Bob Elphinston on behalf to Team USA before sharing it with their teammates and coaches. Wootten Award finalists Cierra Burdick and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis also played important roles on the gold-medal US U17 team. |
| Photo Credit: Courtesy USA Basketball |
Williams credits her parents for instilling the strong work ethic that has helped her balance academics and athletics and advises young women to surround themselves with friends who will support their passion for both the books and basketball.
“I’ve had some great coaches who’ve challenged and pushed me throughout my career,” said Williams. “It’s truly an honor and a blessing to be recognized for this award and I’m thankful for all my teammates who’ve helped me get to this point.”
Williams beat out an impressive field of finalists that included Cierra Burdick (Butler High School – Mathews, North Carolina), Ariel Massengale (Bolingbrook High School –Bolingbrook, Illinois) and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis (Mater Dei High School – Santa Ana, California) to become the 10th female athlete to receive the prestigious honor.
Austin Rivers of Winter Park High School in Winter Park, Florida, the son of Boston Celtics coach and 1980 McDonald’s All American Glenn “Doc” Rivers, received the 2011 Wooten Award for the boys. The pair represents only the second father/son duo in the event’s history behind Milt Wagner (1981) and son Dajuan Wagner (2001). “Doc” Rivers surprised his son by traveling to Chicago to congratulate him at the official press conference Tuesday.
The 2011 McDonald’s All American Basketball Games will be played on March 30 at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, with he Girls Game tipping off at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, 6:30 Central, and will broadcast live on ESPNU. The Boys Game will follow at 9:00 p.m. Central and will be broadcast live on ESPN. It is the first time in nearly 40 years that the Games will be held in Chicago, which last hosted the event in 1982.
Tickets for both games are still available and can be purchased at Ticketmaster or charge-by-phone at 1-866-
909-GAME. Proceeds of the Games benefit the Ronald McDonald House Charities in Chicago and northwest Indiana. The local chapter will use those funds to help build the nation’s largest Ronald McDonald House in
downtown Chicago. The Ronald McDonald House Charities provide a bridge to accessible health care and
allow families more time together, which helps in the healing process. Millions of dollars have been raised for the charity since the first Game was played in 1978. During Game Week, the 2011 McDonald’s All Americans will have a chance to visit a local Ronald McDonald House, an event that in year’s past has marked the beginning of a lifetime of service to children in need by the young athletes participating.
Originally published Wed, March 16, 2011
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Winning: It’s a Family Affair for New Nike Champ St. Mary’s of Phoenix
By Lee Michaelson
Publisher
Though it is nearly 7:00 p.m. and just two days before Christmas, the Hamilton High School gym in Chandler, Ariz. is packed to the gills. An enthusiastic crowd spills out of the stands designated for fans and into the area set aside for the college coaches from across the nation who had come to scout the talent. As those bleachers, too, fill up, some are forced to stand in the doorways, hoping to catch a glimpse of the proceedings. They are there to see the best of the best in girls’ high school basketball.
Welcome to the Nike Tournament of Champions!
In this, the title game of the elite Joe Smith Division, where many of the top-ranked girls’ teams in the country had pitted themselves against one another over the past four days, St. Mary’s High School and Riverdale Baptist would lay it all on the line for the unofficial national championship of girls’ high school basketball.
There is little question which team is the crowd favorite: St. Mary’s, located in nearby Phoenix, Arizona, are clearly the local heroes.
Riverdale Baptist, which has journeyed to the tournament all the way from Upper Marlboro, Maryland, has brought along its own contingent of family members and supporters, but understandably has a decidedly smaller cheering section.
Still, in the eyes of most of the journalists who follow the sport, a St. Mary’s win would be a major upset.
Riverdale Baptist entered the competition with a 5-0 record, ranked No. 1 in the country in the “Xcellent 25” girls’ high school basketball rankings promulgated by Full Court’s former publisher and continuing columnist Clay Kallam for MaxPreps.
The Crusaders had finished last season with a 30-5 record and ranked No. 10 nationally. They have a solid core of seniors returning from that campaign, three of them already signed with Division 1 programs in major college conferences—6-0 wings Jennie Simms (West Virginia) and Jonquel Jones (Clemson) and 5-10 guard Kelila Atkinson (Wake Forest). To that nucleus they have added two senior transfers—6-0 center Brittany Jenkins-Murray (LaSalle) and 5-6 point guard Dominique Johnson (Towson). Even some of their younger players are nationally watch-listed.
Across the board, they are bigger, more powerfully built, and more athletic than their opponents from St. Mary’s. Six of their players (as opposed to just three for St. Mary’s) stand six-feet or better. They play a hard-nosed, physical, blacktop style of basketball. And the Crusaders arrived at the Nike hot off an East Coast tournament in which they had totally pummeled the competition, which included Regis Jesuit, another of the top-ranked teams in the country. There is a reason the pundits have them ranked at No. 1.
St. Mary’s seems to be more of a question mark. Though both the Xcellent 25 and the Powerade Fab 50 have them at No. 2 in the rankings, USA Today’s Super 25 pegs them as low as No. 20. In years past, they have competed in the Nike’s Joe Smith Division and seemed a bit over-seeded, taking more than their share of pastings.
Of course, St. Mary’s is not without assets of their own. The team has just two seniors, but both—lithe, willowy 6-3 forward/center Cortnee Walton (Louisville) and studious-looking guard Shilpa Tummala (Harvard)—have signed with D1 programs. Courtney Ekmark, a 6-0 sophomore guard, is a watch-listed prospect. They finished last season 25-2, winning the Arizona state championship while playing in Division 1 of Class 5A (normally reserved for schools with more than 1,200 students), even though their small size, an enrollment of approximately 775, would ordinarily place them in Class 3A. They were state runners-up in the previous two years.
Though more of a finesse team than Riverdale Baptist, the St. Mary’s Knights like to run the basketball and does it well.
And as Riverdale Baptist is about to find out, the Knights also own a special kind of chemistry. Part of it may come from playing together year-round, not just in the regular high-school season. Part of it may come from the fact that their coach has never shied away from competition, but instead has sought out challenges, pitting them against some of the best at the Nike and other elite tournaments year after year.
But there is little question in the minds of Coach Curtis Ekmark and his charges that a big part of it comes from the fact that the St. Mary’s squad is both literally and figuratively a family.
The St. Mary’s roster of 12 players features no fewer than three pairs of sisters. Cortnee Walton plays alongside her sister Brandee, a junior forward (5-10). Then there are twin guards Danielle and Dominique Williams, both 5-9 juniors. Coming along behind them, and promoted from the junior varsity for the Nike Tournament of Champions, are sophomore Aunesa Evans, a 5-10 forward, and little sis Ariah Evans, a 5-11 freshman, and also a forward.
Add to that Ekmark’s daughter Courtney, a 6-0 guard and one of the team’s leading scorers though just a sophomore.
Many of these teammates have played together since they were seven and eight years-old. Watch this team on the court—their nose for the basketball even in transition, the ease with which they seem to find each other, their deft and on-target (at least for this level) passes—and you’ll have an idea of the advantage this familiarity gives them.
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US Teens to Participate in First-Ever FIBA Invitational 3x3 Youth World Championships
By Lee Michaelson
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FIBA, the International Basketball Federation, will continue its push of 3x3 basketball with the first-ever Invitational 3x3 Youth World Basketball Championships to be held in Rimini, Italy, from September 9-11, and USA Basketball will be there, fielding both boys and girls teams composed of athletes 18 years old and younger.
Representing the United States girls 3x3 team will be four members of the 2011 USA U16 National Team who just recently helped the U.S. claim gold at the FIBA Americas U16 Championship in June: Kaela Davis (Buford H.S./Suwanee, GA), Rebecca Greenwell (Owensboro Catholic H.S. /Owensboro, Ky.), Linnae Harper (Whitney M. Young H.S./Chicago, Ill.), and Taya Reimer (Hamilton Southeastern H.S. /Fishers, Ind.).
According to FIBA, the 3-on-3 format is the most popular variation of the game played by youngsters and adults on playgrounds throughout the world. FIBA also sees the 3x3 game both as a learning tool and a form of “basic training” for future 5-on-5 players and as a means to popularize the sport worldwide.
In the case of women’s basketball, what FIBA hasn’t said publicly, but was a clear theme underlying its promotion of the concept during the International Congress on Women’s Basketball held concurrently concurrently with the 2010 FIBA Women’s World Basketball Championships in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, last September, is that the 3x3 format also holds the potential for equalizing the international playing field in the face of U.S. stranglehold on the 5-on-5 women’s game.
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Hoop Troop: Maya Moore to Host Shot Clock Shopping Sweepstakes for Kids, Teens; Enter Now
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NEW YORK – One lucky fan, aged six to 14, will have a chance to win a shopping spree with No.1 draft pick and All-Star Maya Moore in her home town of Atlanta following the end of the 2011 WNBA season. Kids across the country of eligible age can enter the Shot Clock Shopping Spree between Aug. 24 and Oct.13 online at NBAHoopTroop.com when they sign up to be an NBA Hoop Troop member.
Moore will invite the grand-prize winner the winner to Atlanta to celebrate in the latest edition of the nationwide Shot Clock Shopping Spree, a basketball-themed shopping spree. The grand prize includes a three-day, two-night trip to Atlanta, including air fare and hotel accommodations, for the winner and one guest (parent or legal guardian). Once in Atlanta, the randomly selected contestant will team up with the All-Star to learn shooting tips from the pro and win as much basketball merchandise as they can shoot together into an oversized basketball hoop in 24 seconds.
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