Soaring Like an Eagle the Courtney Moses Story

By Roger Lee Waters

Courtney Moses was always about basketball, from an early age playing AAU ball, up and through grade school. In the 7th grade, the high school coaches saw a girl with skills and moves that far out did other girls her own age.

What would possess a little girl from Sweetser, Indiana to dream about one day being Indiana Miss. Basketball.

Could it be that she was destined to become the greatest player in all of Oak Hill basketball history? Or was all this just chance? Being at the right place at the right time.

Courtney will tell you she knew from an early age she was going to be someone special with the basketball. But as fate would have it, God had given her a gift to play, and become one of the best, on and off the court. Now the only question was, will she do what it takes to become the best, or will she just do what is needed?

Her story is an inspiration to all, but her story is to all those young girls who were told they can't, because they are too small, or too short, or because they are a girl. Her answer is a simple one, yes you can.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450260848

Roger Lee Waters

Roger Waters has written sports for a local newspaper for six years, and has covered the Oak Hill Lady Golden Eagles basketball team for four. He has seen first hand how this group of girls evolved into a team that went beyond anyone's expectations.

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Copyright © 2010 by Roger Lee Waters

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-5766-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-6084-8 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 9/20/2010

For Oak Hill High School, Meir, Indiana

Contents

Preface

Chapter One

For the Love of the Game

Chapter Two

Building a Reputation

Chapter Three

Indianapolis or Bust

Chapter Four

Indianapolis Here We Come Again

Chapter Five

The Senior Year

Chapter Six

Anyone Up For An Award

Preface

In the early 1990s, there were some girls born in Grant County, Indiana, that would forever change the way Oak Hill High School would look at Girls Basketball.

There was the Hick sisters, Kristen and Heather, Ashley Pickering, Kasey Thompson, Marrisa Coolman, Lauren Meese, and Courtney Moses.

One wonders why people write books like this, and when you have experienced something so great like I have, you just have to write about it.

Up until 2005, Oak Hill was just another small school system, that was well known in Grant County, but not much farther than that.

They played their school sports in the Three River Conference, and didn’t do all that well at it except in Tennis and Swimming.

Then came 2006. That was the year everything changed, and the school’s reputation started to grow, and by the end of that year, everyone in the state knew about Oak Hill.

But what happened next was not supposed to happen to a small school that doesn’t get big time news media coverage.

This book is for all those small boys and girls that have been told that you can’t do something because you are too small, or you aren’t good enough.

This book is for all those who think they will never see their dreams come true.

For all of you, Courtney has a message, My dreams came true because of hard work, and so can yours with dedication.

Chapter One

For the Love of the Game

No one ever said it would be easy, but they did say that it would be worth every drop of sweat, blood, and even the pain. Anything worth having will always be a risk to get, but once you have it in hand, the pain is well worth it.

When a small handful of people take to something in such a way that stands out among the rest of us, then they are a rare individual. They have taken something they like, and have mastered their craft.

That makes them special to the rest of us, and most of us wish we could do what they do. But if it were that easy, then all of us would be doing it.

Such is the case for Courtney Moses. From an early age, everyone knew she was going to be in that competitive mode.

There were those who told her not to do that, or you can’t do it because you’re too small.

Courtney must have not listened to them, because from the first time she picked up a ball and started to bounce it on the living room floor, out the kitchen, and into the back yard, she was destined to play basketball.

Courtney wasn’t about to let anyone rain on her parade. She was having way too much fun, and she found out she could play the game of bounce the ball better than anyone else in her age group.

So when Courtney grew up all the way to six years old, she would go out back and play ball with her brother, and get beat every time. She would go running into the house, crying that it wasn’t fair, that she could never win.

Then, after hearing this for too long, her mom told her that if she wanted it to stop, she would have to find a way to beat him.

That got Courtney’s brain working overtime, and she came up with a plan. She would play AAU ball. That is what would happen, only if she could get her parents to agree with it.

So one afternoon, when the time was right, Courtney hit them with the idea of playing in the AAU league. It was a league that pitted you up within your own age group.

Courtney had to understand that this meant no summer vacations like other children, and the trips to the local swimming pool would be seriously hampered. But Courtney didn’t mind, she had this dream of playing basketball, and she wanted to be better than everyone else.

She fully understood that this was going to be a long drawn out process, but she was willing to put it in front of her as a challenge. One thing was for sure, she was hoping to get good enough to beat her brother, and beat him bad.

For Courtney, it was all about basketball. She played other sports, but she didn’t have that passion like she did about basketball.

She thought about all the former Indiana Miss Basketballs. She would lie on her bed, and look at the pictures of those who had won that title, and thought to herself what it would be like to win that.

She would lay there and go to sleep thinking about it, dreaming about winning it. But that was years off, and for now, she would have to perfect her game.

She was already good, but for Courtney, that was not good enough. She wanted to be the best she could be, and she was willing to do whatever it took to get that way.

So how did we come up with the game of basketball anyway?

In 1861, James Naismith was born in Almonte, Onterio, Canada.

As he grew older, he played a game called Duck-On-A-Rock. The purpose was to pick up a small rock, and hit another rock sitting on a huge rock. It took some serious eye-hand coordination.

It was played by most children in schools as a form of entertainment, and was a huge part of their growing up.

When James graduated from high school, he went to the McGill University in Quebec, Canada, and after graduating there, became the athletic director there for a few years.

Then, in 1891, James moved to the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was hired as a history teacher, and the head of athletics. His first job, to find a game that can be played indoors, in the harsh winter months, by a group of boys.

So James picked an assistant, and off they went to invent this new game. James and his assistant went into the barn, and looked for anything they could use, but found nothing.

Then they noticed a doorway that led down into a basement area. There they found a box, about two feet square, and a soccer ball, that hadn’t been used for a while.

They stood around trying to figure up how to invent a game. James picked up the ball, and started to flip it from one hand to the other. He saw the box, and for fun, tried to throw the ball into the box.

He missed badly, and the ball went rolling off into the corner of the room. His assistant picked up the ball, and ran back to the box, stopping just a few feet in front of it, and gently threw the ball into the box, but it bounced off one of the sides, and fell to the floor.

James thought just how hard is it to throw a ball into the box? He stood there, and started to underhand throw it making some, and then the assistant tried it.

The two of them stood there like little kids, trying to put a ball into the box, and his assistant said, How silly of us, and then James replied, Yep, but you know what? We may have something here and with that, James took the box and the ball upstairs.

His assistant followed, wondering what would happen next. James set the box on a double stacked bail of hey. It was about 5 feet off the floor. He stood about 10 feet away from it, and started to throw the ball. He told his assistant to try to stop him from throwing the ball into the box, but that he couldn’t touch him.

His assistant started to block his throws, and James then understood that the box would have to be higher off the floor.

He looked around the area that was open inside the barn. He saw that the floor was a large open area, and he started to measure it.

It was 92 feet long and 55 feet wide. So James got this idea. He took bailed hey and started to line it up along a line on each side of the floor. He then connected the two ends with bailed hey, and had a barn floor that measured 85 feet long, and 50 feet wide.

He then started to look for somewhere to hang this box, but the only place was just under the doorway, that led to the outside. So he nailed it up, and it was much better, it was eight feet off the floor.

James had his assistant take the ball, and throw it into the box, but it stayed in the box. Someone would have to stand there and take the ball out every time the ball was put inside the box.

There were a few students that walked by the barn, and James had them come in and play a game. He drew sticks to see who would be on the same team, and after the teams were set, James started the game by standing outside the area of play, and throwing the ball to one of his team members.

He threw the ball back to James, who threw it about 20 feet, and it bounced around and fell into the box. But now there was a real problem. The box had no hole in the bottom of it, and there was no one tall enough to get the ball out of the box.

James had to take the box down to retrieve the ball. This took a few minutes, and the other boys were starting to get impatient.

So James decided to take everything down, there was a dance that night in the barn anyway, so he would have to resume his newly made up game on Monday.

On Monday, James once again, took all the bailed hey, and lined up the outside part of the barn floor. He then told his assistant to go down in the basement to get the box. He asked James what he was going to call this new game.

James looked him in the eye, and with a smile, he said, Boxball.

The assistant smiled and went downstairs to get the box. But he was gone for a while, and James was starting to get a bit worried. Snakes were known to be around here, so James called down the stairs for his assistant, but all he heard was some whimpering.

James yelled out, What’s wrong? His assistant came back up the stairs, and with a sad look on his face, he said, There is no box.. James jumped back a bit and said, What

The assistant then held up a peach basket, and said This is all that was down there.

So James took the peach basket and looked at it, and thought, well, it will be harder to put the ball into this round basket, but we will try it. Then, James decided to rename his game, from Boxball to Basketball.

Later that day, the Dean of the WMCA came and watched as the teams from the last week were assembled again, and on this Monday afternoon, November 21, 1891, the very first game of basketball ever played took place.

The Dean seemed to like it, and adopted it for the school’s athletic game. James Naismith had the name of Basketball protected with the U.S. Government Patent Office, and the game was then official.

However, James knew that even eight feet was too low, so he raised the peach basket to ten feet. Rules were implemented and for the next few years, schools all over were trying this new game out.

The advantage with the peach basket was that there was a whole in the bottom of the basket, and you could knock the ball out with a broom stick.

Having to always take the ball out of the basket after a ball was thrown in, is why today we have the term, Taking the ball out after a basket is made.

Because the very first games were played in a barn, and there was no electric heat, and barns and buildings that basketball was played in, needed to be heated with a fire or fire place, we have the term. "Barn burner

The iron rim didn’t show up until 1906, and when they did, players realized that after hitting the rims, the ball would bounce farther that as it did off the peach basket.

In 1893, colleges were picking up on the game, and in 1908, the very first Pro league started, called the National Basketball League, but it only lasted a few years.

In 1893, the University New Brighten played Geneva College, and there was 99 people present to watch the game. There were no TV cameras, no radio, and no electronic scoreboard.

Also in 1893, a woman named Senda Berkenson adopted the men’s rules and formed a woman’s league. It lasted just a short few years, but it gave birth to the idea a future league in the 1990s.

Then in 1915, a group of investors saw potential in the game, and invested their money in the Boston area, and the Boston Celtics were born.

In 1922, from Harlem, New York, came the Harlem Globetrotters, who started playing for schools, and at fairs, and added a comedy act to their games.

In 1946, the National basketball Association was born, and a whole new way of playing basketball was born. The crowds were getting larger, and ticket sales were going off the roof.

In 1967, the newly formed ABA, the American Basketball Association started play with just seven teams. In 1967, two more were added, and the league had adopted a few different rules.

They had a three point shot, and three to make two on foul shots. But the fan base started to grow, and by 1970, the ABA was drafting top notch players that the NBA thought was their players.

The Indiana Pacers won three, ABA Championship, and was the elite of the ABA. But in 1976, the ABA folded, and four of the teams joined the NBA.

On April 4th, 1996, the old idea that women can play basketball was realized when the WNBA was formed. In 1999, the Indiana Fever joined the WNBA, and this is when Courtney realized she could have a chance to play at the highest level.

She went to see a few games in Indianapolis, and was totally hooked on the idea of playing pro basketball. But that was something that would have to wait for another eight years at least.

Courtney did play with the Indiana Elite, and even won a championship. But her passion was at Oak Hill High School.

For whatever reason, athletes have these strange visions. They all want to be the player to hit that last second shot to win the game, and they all want to be the one that steals the ball to keep the other team from scoring and winning.

Courtney was beating her brother now, and it was becoming a bit crazy. They were older, and a bit wiser, and they played each other to practice, and not to just beat the other.

Courtney will tell you that beating her brother was worth all the sweat, blood, and pain it took to do it. But don’t think bad, they are as close as you can get, and they support each other to the hilt. They each give themselves credit for what the other has accomplished.

Chapter Two

Building a Reputation

A person’s reputation is something we all have, good or bad. It takes a while to build that reputation, and just a few short moments to have it all torn down.

While some have a great reputation on the basketball court, their reputation off the court may be in shambles. Others are the complete opposite; they have a bad reputation on the court, but a good one off the court.

Then you have those that have a bad reputation on and off the court, or the opposite, in a good one both on and off the court.

Courtney understood that a good reputation would be mandatory for her if she had any chance to win the things and awards she wanted to win.

Miss Basketball isn’t just given out to someone by accident. You have to earn that award. It isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination.

So when Courtney was playing basketball in the lower grades, she had worked to become a better than average player. She did that by playing her brother at home, and playing with the boys down at the park.

She played pick-up games at school, and she always tried to play someone bigger and better than her. She didn’t want to win because it was easy for her. She wanted to win because she earned that win.

She also noticed that by playing people bigger and taller than her, she was picking up some moves that others didn’t do. She may have seen it on an NBA or College game, and then implemented it in her own game.

Courtney was turning into a basketball wiz, and everyone she played against didn’t seem to have the answer on how to beat her.

Even the boys started not to want to play her. She was simply beating just about everyone on the court.

But her grade point average in school wasn’t so shabby either. She was in the upper 8% of her class, and she was turning in more homework than what was required. She was a stand-out student.

She didn’t however spend a lot of time with friends from her classes because she was working on her basketball game. Some didn’t understand why she would do that, but she knew she would either become the best she could be, or all this was for nothing.

When her eighth grade year was over, she hit the driveway working on her skills. She would work tirelessly on dribbling and running and cutting while dribbling.

She would think in her mind that she was being guarded by the state’s best defender, and how she would get around her. She would step to the right, then without hesitation; bounce back to the left while dribbling the ball, then scoop up a lay-up. Ah, just hit the winning shot.

Time after time, day after day, she would practice moves like that, and then when she played in a pick-up game, she would pull one of those moves out of her bag, and see how it worked against live players.

Throughout the summer, she became a better player than she was before. She was already a standout in her class, and Todd Law, the high school coach couldn’t wait to get her on his team, because all he could see was good things coming down the road for Oak Hill.

But as the summer drew to an end, Courtney wasn’t satisfied with her play. She was always thinking she was being out done by someone else, and she could not let that happen.

So even when school started, she was still hitting the basketball courts, practicing over and over all those moves, and never becoming satisfied with her play.

Always in the back of her mind, out there somewhere, there is someone who is working harder than she was, and that was unacceptable.

She was starting to shape her work ethic to a place of being unmatched by anyone else in the school system, and there was just no way that she would become a second rate player. If she was going to play this game, it would be all out, or she would sit around and tittle her thumbs.

After the school year started, and as a freshman, Courtney was not looking at what was in store as a newbie. But to her surprise, she wasn’t treated like she thought.

There was the sophomore, Lauren Meese, whom she had played with in the lower grades, and her friend, and with Lauren’s help, she was shown the ropes.

But everyone knew who Courtney Moses was, because there were boys in high school that told those horror stories of how they didn’t pick Courtney to play on their team down at the park, and she made them pay.

They would be telling everyone how good she was, and before long, she has a bit of superstardom. This didn’t set well with her, because as everyone quickly learned, Courtney wasn’t a bragger, and she didn’t go around telling everyone how bad everyone else is.

Courtney kind of stayed back behind the scenes, and didn’t like the spotlight. She did her work in class, and her homework at home, but her mind was all on becoming a better person, which would translate to becoming a better player.

When basketball practice started, Todd Law gave his pre-season speech, and he wanted the players trying out that there would be a core unit of this team, and that they would see most of the playing time, but that everyone would get to see playing time.

Some took that as Courtney was going to make the starting five just because she is Courtney. As they quickly learned, that was not the case.

Everyone had to endure the same old drills, the running the lines, the things you go through, and they hadn’t even shot the ball yet.

There was one thing Todd new right off the bat. Sitting in front of him were players who had the ability to run other teams right off the court and right into the showers. They were quick, and fast.

He knew that if he could get this team used to running, no one would be able to stay up with them. And if you get the opposition in a state of tiredness, they can’t shoot well, and that’s when you have a chance to win the game.

In the couple of years before, Todd had seen his team struggle with shooting and turnovers. He was bound and determined that would not be the case this year. He had some real experience on his bench.

When the first week of practice was over, he saw something in this team that he had not seen in a long time, desire. These girls were not out there just to have fun, and for the prestige of being on the school’s basketball team.

These girls had a desire to win, and they wanted to win in a big way, not just by a couple of points, but convincingly.

So the time came when the practice was over, and time for the starting lineup, and everyone wanted to know who would be starting against Northfield.

Courtney looked with intent, and she found her name on the list as a starter. This meant that she was now officially, an Oak Hill Lady Golden Eagle, and her high school career was about to begin.

She knew that there was a long way to go, but the journey was about to start, and that was something coach kept stressing, enjoy the journey.

It was now November 6th, 2006, and the team was set. They were ready and couldn’t wait to get the first game out of the way. The nerves are always worse on the first game. Besides, everyone wanted to know just how good this team would be.

I went to Oak Hill high school to get a roster of the teams. I was informed that even though Eastbrook was the team to beat, due to their returning seniors and juniors, Oak Hill didn’t have a bad team either. I was curious, as to how good they would be.

At this time, I had not met anyone from this team personally; I had always covered football and boys basketball. But in 2005, I did cover the Girls Grant Four, and saw Oak Hill soundly defeat Madison Grant 57-33, but then go down in the Championship game to Eastbrook, 55-52 in double overtime.

It was a heartbreaking loss for the Golden Eagles, and they had worked so hard for this tournament. But it wasn’t to be. So now there is that element of revenge they talk so much about in the sports world. Oak Hill may have that chance to redeem themselves.

But first, there is 10 games on their schedule before the Grant Four even shows up. So it was on to Northfield.

It was November 10, 2006, and I traveled to Northfield high school just north of Wabash, Indiana, to watch Oak Hill play their very first game of the 2006 season. Everyone I had talked to said Oak Hill would have a better than average team, but they lost three seniors from last year’s roster, so how could they be better than last year?

When I arrived to the gym, I noticed right off the bat, that Oak Hill seemed to have more people than Northfield, and it was their gym. Then I noticed the varsity team sitting behind their bench area. Boy,