Her parents and coaches suggested she wait just to be sure, so Kelli Kingma put off a public announcement for several months.
But on Tuesday Kingma revealed what she has long known in her heart — she wants to play college basketball at the University of Washington.
The 5-foot-9 Kingma, a sophomore guard on the Jackson High School girls basketball team, has committed to join a UW program led by first-year coach Kevin McGuff. Older sister Kristi Kingma has been a three-year starter at Washington, but is redshirting this season after suffering a summer knee injury and will return for her senior season in 2012-13.
“With the new coaching staff coming in, (Kristi) doesn’t stop talking about how excited she is to play for them and how the program is turning around,” Kelli Kingma said. “And I’d just love to be a part of that.
“I’ve always grown up knowing I wanted to be a Husky,” she added.
Washington State, Oregon (where her older brother Brett Kingma is a freshman guard), Stanford and California have also expressed interest in Kingma, but the Huskies were the first to offer a scholarship. That happened last spring when McGuff and his staff began recruiting top Puget Sound-area players shortly after he was hired on April 3.
“I’ve been really thinking about (the UW offer) a lot in the past year and I was really excited about it,” Kingma said. “But I also wanted to make sure that I looked at all my other options. Now I see no reason to wait any longer. I know I want to play there and it’s a perfect school for me.”
“While other teams have definitely shown interest in Kelli — and they’ll be ready and waiting if she ever does waver — she’s been so excited to go (to Washington),” said Jackson girls basketball coach Jeannie Boyer. “And I think it’s a great move for them to get a player from the local area of her caliber to commit so early.”
As much as Kingma resembles her older sister Kristi — “People are always saying we look so much alike,” Kelli Kingma said — the two are not identical on the basketball court. Kristi Kingma is a high-scoring shooting guard while Kelli Kingma sees herself more as a point guard.
“I see myself as getting other people involved and not necessarily being the first scoring option,” she said. “But I’ve kind of grown into more of a shooter having seen how Kristi shoots.”
“She’s got a good pull-up jump shot from 12 to 15 feet, but she also has the ability to go out to 3-point range,” Boyer said. “But even though she’s willing to look for her own shot, she’s also one of the best passers on the team.”
As a freshman, Kelli Kingma averaged close to 15 points a game. She has played in just one game this season after suffering a sprained knee ligament, but hopes to be back playing fulltime in the next week or so.
At Washington, Kingma will be reunited with two players from her summer AAU team — Katie Collier from Seattle Christian High School and Airashay Rogers from Renton’s Hazen High School. Both will graduate in 2012 and have committed to play for the Huskies next season.
Kingma cannot finalize her own commitment until she signs a national letter-of-intent as a high school senior.
“I will definitely be signing in the early (signing) period of my senior year,” she said, “and I can’t wait for that day. I would love to go to the UW, and I see no reason that I’d ever change my mind.”
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