Future UA, NBA player among best at St. Mary’s
This is part of a series, listing an Arizona high school and finding its five alltime greatest athletes, male or female, a subjected list by The Arizona Republic. It's not just about what they did in high school but beyond that is taken into strong consideration when finding these Forever Five.
St. Mary's
The Knights have been around 100plus years, building strong traditions in sports and sending athletes to the highest levels. It's a hard task to narrow it down to five, but here they are:
No. 1 Jerryd Bayless, 2007
From the moment he stepped foot on the court as a freshman for his first varsity game, you knew he was special. His jumping ability was off the rails. An explosive guard from the start, he averaged a staggering 28 points during his varsity career and was a McDonald's All-American, before playing a season at the University of Arizona. After one year, he was the 11th overall player taken in the NBA Draft. He spent 10 seasons in the league with eight different teams. No. 2 Dallas Escobedo, 2010
One of the state's all-time greatest softball pitchers, she had 501 career strikeouts and was a high school AllAmerican her last three years with the Knights. She was just as dominant in college at Arizona State, where she led the Sun Devils to the 2011 College Women's College World Series championship with a 37-3 record and 326 strikeouts. She ended up with a 115-26 ASU career record and 1,222 strikeouts. Before this summer's Olympic were postponed to next year, she pitched Mexico to an Olympic berth in a qualifying tournament.
No. 3 Terry Kennedy, 1974
A catcher on the Knights' baseball team, it was easy to project where this left-handed swinging slugger was headed. He was a two-time All-American at Florida State and was named by Sporting News as the College Baseball Player of the Year in 1976. That same year, he made his major league baseball debut with the St. Louis Cardinals. In 14 big-league seasons, he had 113 home runs and 628 RBIs with a .264 batting average. His best season came in 1982 when he mashed 42 doubles, 21 homes runs and drove in 97 runs and hit .295 for the San Diego Padres.
No. 4 Davelynn Whyte, 2009
She was part of the greatest era in girls basketball at the school, becoming the Gatorade Arizona Player of the Year as a senior, leading the Knights to the state final. It was during her college days that she took off even more, becoming one of the greatest scorers in the University of Arizona history, a dazzling 5-foot-11 guard who ended her career with 2,059 points, which was second-most all-time at the school at the time. She started all 126 of her college basketball games, scoring in double figures in 100 of those. (The family, which includes her father, Devon, the Diamondbacks' first all-star selection in their 1998 expansion season, changed the spelling of their last name to Whyte. The name was changed to White when Devon's family immigrated from Jamaica.)
No. 5 Andre Ethier, 2000
He left his incredible high school baseball career in 2000 on a high note, hitting .527 for the Knights. After hitting .468 at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, he really left his mark at Arizona State. The outfielder hit .363 his sophomore year and made firstteam All-Pac-10, only to follow that up by hitting .377 with 68 RBIs and again making first-team All-Pac-10. He ended up playing a 12-year major league career all with the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he had a .285 lifetime batting average that included 303 doubles, 162 home runs and 687 RBIs.