Opinion: Let’s hear it for the girls: Local women achieve college basketball success

Jill Young sure is continuing a tradition of exceptional women’s basketball players from Mitchell who are doing well at college.

It’s hard not to think of Young as the baby-faced seventh-grader at Mitchell Christian, earning playing time alongside her older sister as her family — and especially her dad, Tom — watched nervously on the sidelines.

But Young’s all grown up now, and she’s just the latest Mitchell woman to show that this town is producing some of the best basketball talent, year in and year out, in the state.

“I think that people do appreciate the talent that has come out of Mitchell,” former MHS coach Deb Thill told me Wednesday as one of her physical education classes at L.B. Williams Elementary worked out in the background. “The people who follow women’s athletics here, high school and college, appreciate the female athletes that have come out of Mitchell. I just don’t know if they have been exposed as much as the boys are.”

It’s probably true. Mitchell is so very well known for a few of our native sons, who have brought untold attention to this region, and we may tend to forget some of the great achievements of the local girls who have excelled in collegiate athletics.

Minnesota Timberwolves guard Mike Miller is a real-life, jump-shooting billboard for the Corn Palace, which has reaped tons of coverage thanks to his exceptional basketball efforts. And Minnesota Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway may not truly be from Mitchell, but he grew up just a few miles from town, spends a lot of time working camps here and is embraced as a native son nonetheless.

Both are good ambassadors for our city, our state and region.

Somewhat off the radar, however, is the success of some of the women’s basketball players who have graduated from local high schools and who went on to quieter — yet still hyper-successful — college careers.

Young, a redshirt freshman at SDSU, is only the latest, but she’s become a media darling thanks to her small-school background (Mitchell Christian generally only has about a dozen per graduating class), her decision to come back home (she left Creighton to attend SDSU) and her long-range abilities on the basketball court (she is one of the best three-point shooters in the nation).

“I think Jill plays great team basketball,” said Thill, who was an assistant coach at MHS for 11 years before taking over as head coach for two seasons earlier this decade. “She’s just a great basketball player and she obviously gets the team aspect as well.”

That’s the key, Thill said. Mitchell players tend to leave town with a serious team approach that not only endears them to coaches and fans, but also allows for ample, and sometimes immediate, playing time in college.

Consider Beth Ommen, an MHS star in the early 1990s who went on to play in 115 games at South Dakota State. She’s seventh on SDSU’s all-time assists list, with 438, and still owns a school record for 13 assists in a game.

And Erin Olson, who had 131 assists during the 1999-2000 season at the University of Minnesota, which ranks seventh all-time at the school.

The Hoffmans — Jenna and Jeana — were exceptional ball-handlers, adept at both scoring and passing, and led the University of South Dakota to a 33-2 record in 2008. Jeana was a third-team all-American last year and finished her college career — including a stint at a school in Texas — with 1,331 points and 258 assists. Jenna had 866 career points and 354 assists.

Jodie Dierks owns the school record for assists in a game at Dakota Wesleyan, with 16. A teammate of hers there, Kelly Musick, was another outstanding passer and shooter.

Some great scorers have come out of Mitchell, too.

Randi Morgan was a three-time all-America selection at Dakota Wesleyan who scored a school-record 2,552 points for the Tigers. Her older sister, Ronda, was a two-time all-America who scored 1,843. Two other Morgan sisters, Robin and Raven, scored 1,511 and 1,302 points at DWU, respectively.

I’m sure there are others who deserve to be mentioned here but aren’t. The point is that there are enough great women’s basketball players to come out of Mitchell that it’s tough to get them all into a single newspaper column.

Thill credits longtime coach Gary Munsen for creating a disciplined and winning climate for the MHS girls’ programs of the late 1980s and 1990s.

Although she’s not an MHS graduate, Young is the latest from Mitchell to excel, and it sure has been fun watching her get acclimated at SDSU, which will play Texas Christian Sunday in the opening round of the NCAA women’s tournament.

“Obviously, (local) talent has been able to go on and play collegiately and contribute to their programs,” Thill said of the many Mitchell natives who have done so. “They’re doing something right.”

Tags: korrie wenzel, opinion