The Crusader Newspaper Group

Gary’s basketball star shines at Emporia State

By Carmen M. Woodson-Wray, Gary Crusader

The family of Kelly Moten is extremely proud of her. Not only because she will be graduating from Emporia State College in Kansas City in May, but because she is the Player of the Year in basketball at Emporia.

Moten, a 2012 graduate of Roosevelt High School, has plans to hopefully play professional basketball overseas for five years, then return to the states and study law.

The star athlete plays guard on the Emporia State College wo- men’s basketball team. In the last game of the season she scored 27 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds.

She holds the title of 3rd in scoring for the school.

Emporia defeated Oklahoma in the Division AA MIAA Tournament with a score of 62 to 56, and now moves on to the NCAA on March 10.

Jeffery Tucker and other members of the family traveled to Kansas City last weekend for Moten’s game. Tucker said his cousin has been playing basketball since she was a little girl. He said, “She used to walk down the street bouncing a ball and every time you would see her she had a ball with her.”

The second of eight children, Moten started playing basketball at Norton Elementary School, went on to play at Pulaski Middle School, and then to Roosevelt.

One of the opposing basketball team coaches once said this about Moten, “We’ve got about 14 players on our team that can’t wait for her to graduate because they don’t want the ball when she’s guarding them. She is just phenomenal.”

According to Moten’s cousin Tucker, she will be entering the upcoming NCAA Tournament as the fourth-leading scorer in her school’s history after four years of making things happen from baseline to baseline. He said, “She has shown stunning accuracy from beyond the arc, as well as the ability to drive to the hoop with career marks of 44.7 percent from the field and 33 percent from long range.”

Moten maintains a Grade Point Average of 3.4.

 

 

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