By: Will Loggan, Alicia Lehman-Wood
The girls basketball team ended their regular season undefeated at 23-0 and were also Marion County Champions and the MIC Conference Champions. One of the pieces that helped that team to a undefeated regular season is 5’9” Sophomore guard Rikki Harris.
She is ranked 17th overall in the nation’s best players and ranked sixth in her positions that she plays. Harris has been on North Central’s women’s varsity basketball team since her freshman year where she has been a starter since.
Harris has been playing basketball for around 13 years. She started dribbling a ball while watching her older brothers play in the Panther Youth League. When Harris was old enough, she too enrolled in the same youth league playing with and against boys.
“I believe that I became a successful basketball player through working hard, listening to my coaches, and going to the gym,”Harris said.
Her parents knew that playing against the boys would only make her game stronger. As Harris was the only girl in that league it still didn’t make a difference as where she would still take it to the boys.
Harris attend Westlane middle school where she played with some of her teammates now. In middle school she played with Westlane and then she also played AAU basketball.
During the summer Harris spends two to three months playing AAU basketball. During her eighth grade summer, Harris encountered a minor setback.
She had a knee injury causing her miss the rest of summer, and also making her miss summer ball with North Central’s Girls varsity team.
“When I tore my ACL last year, I thought it would set me back for a while, but I worked really hard to get back. The hard work really improved my game,” Harris said.
When Harris returned from her knee injury she was limited to just play few minutes a game until her knee was completely healthy. Harris’s first practice back to basketball she was scared about her knee but was fine once she started playing.
Now she is one of the top players in the class of 2019 and one of the candidates for Miss Basketball in that class. Being one of the top prospects in basketball means that she has been recruited from top college programs where she has got multiple offers.
She says that being recruited is a great experience because you get to look at different schools and also you get to travel.
“I really like Big Ten schools. I’ve been interested in schools like Purdue, Wisconsin, and Kentucky, so hopefully I’ll go to one of those schools,” Harris said.
