Be like Caitlin?
That’s the plan, Chris Lancaster said Wednesday.
“Oh, yeah,” the information technology professional mused. “Interest in girls’ basketball and women’s basketball are both at all-time highs right now.”
Thank the aforementioned Caitlin Clark for that.
Clark is the rookie WNBA phenom who is bringing fans back to the female version of the sport, while making it look easier than a sweet jumper off the glass, in the process.
When Lancaster isn’t doing IT, he’s busying himself with the North Central West Virginia Girls Basketball League.
That’s nonprofit, hardwood enterprise he co-founded 10 years ago with the help of Michelle Bechtel, a Morgantown attorney, and Adam Henkins, the safety officer for Monongalia County Schools who was a teacher and coach in the district at the time.
It’s open to girls from 5 to 15. It has teams, games and a March Madness-styled bracket just to make it interesting.
The league draws players from Mononglia and Marion counties. Taylor County, too.
On the basketball court, it faces teams from Washington, Pa., and Oakland, Md.
Lancaster’s daughters played in the league when they were younger. His motivation then, he said, was to get his kids off the couch and away from video games.
He was a three-sport athlete in high school back home in Braxton County. He knew he wasn’t going to advance the college level as a student-athlete — but he also knew he had a blue-chip experience just by being on the team and playing in the game.
“You get so much out of team sports,” he said.
“There are the fitness benefits and the benefits for emotional health. There’s the socialization.”
There’s also Caitlin, he added: the rookie pro with the media cachet.
“Hey, if she gets more kids interested, we’ll take it,” he said. “Anything that can motivate kids into being more active.”
The girls’ league was a big success that first season in 2014. Then, it trailed off a little. Then, came another newcomer with notoriety: COVID.
“The pandemic changed everything,” he said. “We’re getting it back, but we still aren’t fully back.”
Registrations are currently open for the 2024-25 fall and winter season and will run to around the end of October, Lancaster said.
Visit https://www.ncwvgb.com/ to sign up your daughter and for the history of the league and other particulars.
You don’t have to be a Caitlin Clark, he said — just a kid who wants to give it a try.
“Our girls over the years have gone to play in college,” he said, “and they like to come back and contribute as coaches. That’s a nice thing.”
The best things, he said, are the spin-off factors.
He’s talking about the confidence that comes from the hard work during practice, which, in turn, translates to solid, and even superstar, contributions against the other team.
There’s that once-shy kid who powered her way up to point guard by discipline (and nurtured talent, too).
And that fierce rebounder, who started out being afraid of her own shadow.
How about that other player who went from dribbling the ball off her foot during practice — to achieving amazing feats during the game?
Call it character, he said.
Character, as he said, which translates to success: long after uniforms are outgrown and folded away.
“They light up,” he said. “That’s what we want to see.”
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