We Got Next: High School Girls Basketball Is Back

The success of a team lies not in the wins it achieves or in the records it sets, but in its impact on the community around it — in the inspirational shadow of the team’s collective determination and perseverance. The revival of the high school girls basketball program this year at Judah Christian School exemplifies just this kind of success. In their first season back after five years, the girls varsity basketball team stands as a model for the entire school of what it truly means to have “no quit.”

There were a substantial number of obstacles to creating a high school girls basketball team, including finding and recruiting enough girls to make a team. The difficulty in this recruiting lay in the fact that after five years of dormancy in the girls varsity basketball program, many high school students here had no experience whatsoever with the sport. 

In truth, the effort to rebuild began not with the high school but with the junior high. To create a high school team, Judah had to start from the ground up. The main driver of this operation was Judah’s late athletic director Dirk Miller. In 2022, after three years of having neither a varsity nor a junior high girls basketball team, Mr. Miller began coaching a junior high team in an effort to revive the girls basketball program to what it once was.

In implementing this junior high team, Mr. Miller began to slowly rebuild the foundation of our girls basketball program. By fall of 2024, the time was right for Judah varsity girls basketball to resurge. 

Although the girls started with just eight — later reduced to seven — mostly inexperienced players, by the end of the 2024–2025 season, the all-new girls varsity basketball team pulled off a win. Given the huge obstacles the girls had to overleap just to have a team, and the short bench that forced girls to play much of every game, most people would count the whole season as a win. 

Mr. Moxley affirmed this mindset in his comments throughout the season, continually praising the dedication of Judah’s lady basketball players. He said, “I must say that I have been so impressed by the valiant effort that our high school girls basketball team displays every game. This year is the first year of playing basketball for most of these young ladies, so they are usually outmatched by their opponents. But there is no quit in these girls. They have to play the entire game because we have no subs coming off the bench, but they are hustling and giving it their all the entire game, and that is incredibly impressive.” 

Mr. Moxley was far from the only person impacted, or at the very least impressed, by the effort the girls poured into their comeback season. Game after game, the girls had to compete with teams more than twice their size and maintain energy even when playing for the game’s entirety. Some teams might have seen this as a demoralizing disadvantage, but the Tribe saw it as an opportunity to rise to the occasion rather than fall through the cracks. 

So what would motivate these girls to form a team and stick out a season, knowing the massive amount of effort that would be required of them? The girls gave a unanimous reason: the importance of having a girls team. 

Senior Gloria Okeke said, “I joined basketball because I love the sport and I thought it would be a challenge. But not only that. I think girls basketball is important. Basketball is a difficult sport, and by having a girls team, it gives us the opportunity to get on the court and show our strength to the rest of the school.”

Freshman Masyn Miller, the inarguable star of the season, said she found her importance in having a girls team from family. She said, “Basketball is important to me because my dad really cared about basketball and having a team. Because of this, it was important to me that we not only had a girls basketball team but for me to play on that team.” 

To these girls, basketball is more than a sport. It’s a legacy that can continue for years to come. The willingness of these players to build a team from the bottom up allowed the varsity girls basketball program to regain its footing at the school.

Even further, the girls began to create something larger than a sports team; they became an example of the dedication and determination every Judah team should bring to the school. As Mr. Moxley said, “There is no quit in these girls.” We too should have no quit in our sports, our school, and our community.

—Liza Carder, class of ’26