Sense of purpose defines star guard
Aislinn Konig is in Grade 10 at Brookswood and on the radar of about 20 top U.S. schools
Neil Brown has been coaching high school basketball for decades, but absolutely nothing could have prepared him for the surprise he got this past offseason when his newest player showed up in the gym at Langley’s Brookswood Secondary School.
“She just drops on our doorstep, and all you can say is ‘Thank you,’” Brown said earlier this week talking about point guard Aislinn Konig.
“It was like Christmas came early. She will be the most highly recruited player in the history of B.C. girls high school basketball. Maybe she already is.”
For the record, approximately 20 NCAA Div. 1 schools have begun recruiting the 5-foot-10 Konig, including at least one from the Pac 12 Conference which has offered her a full scholarship.
All of that might seem to come with the territory for a high school senior with the kind of skills Konig possesses, but in her case, she’s still in Grade 10 and doesn’t even turn 16 until about a month after the upcoming Telus B.C. Triple A championships in early March.
We won’t waste words talking about how she performs every requisite skill, because grading Konig is pretty simple. Just tick off all the boxes. But what sets her apart is the purpose she brings to everything she does.
Watch her play and you realize that she doesn’t just defend well on the ball, she does it as if her life depends on it. Watch her shoot a three, and you know that kind of form and confidence doesn’t come without living in the gym.
“In the eighth grade she told me she wanted to play high-calibre basketball,” said her dad Frank, a longtime coach and currently an assistant with the Simon Fraser men’s team. “So I told her that if that was what she wanted, she needed to practise an hour a day, over and above her team practices.”
Added Aislinn: “If I was going to get there, I had to start taking this more seriously. I wanted to get a good education. It started off there, but it turned into a love for the game. My mom and dad have helped give me every possible opportunity, and with that, I have been able to grow into a player that, hopefully, will get to where I want to go.”
Konig, who started playing basketball in Coquitlam with the TriCities Youth Basketball Association at the age of 10, advanced so rapidly that by the time she was in Grade 8 she averaged just under 30 points per game as a starter with the junior varsity team at Dr. Charles Best.
Last season, in a move to expose her to a higher overall level play in the U.S., Konig played at Prairie High School, in Vancouver, Wash., on a team ranked in the top two in the state of Washington.
At Prairie, she not only started and made all-region as a Grade 9 student with the senior varsity, she did it at a position completely unfamiliar to her.
“We had bigger girls, so I was a little confused as to why I was in there,” she said of playing in the post as a quasi-centre. “Eventually I started to realize it was because I was maybe more athletic and they needed a runner in there. I did it because I love the concept of team. It’s like having another family. Plus, it really showed me how to play in the post.”
Her total immersion in the basketball environment — both her parents were point guards at the NCAA Div. 2 level, and three aunts played at Div. 1 — has given her a lot of shoulders to lean on for advice.
It’s also given her some wonderful childhood memories.
“I grew up in gyms,” she said. “I can remember being two feet tall and going in, and making my first layup and just freaking out.
“Now, if I get a letter or a text (from an NCAA school), I am freaking out. That is that little girl in me coming out and wanting to get that scholarship.”
Konig may be stretching the truth just a bit on her height at the time of her first layup, but knowing her, maybe not.
Either way, by teaming with the likes of senior shooting guard Jessie Brown and Grade 11 forward Tayla Jackson, she has made the No. 1 Bobcats so dominant that before Saturday’s 69-66 loss to Surrey’s No. 2 Holy Cross Crusaders in the Fraser Valley Triple A championship final, they had gone 36-0 on the season against B.C. competition.
But even the old-school Neil Brown will admit that Konig is about more than her talent. It’s her personality, he said, that has given the Bobcats a kind of kinship he can’t ever remember them having.
“Everyone has a different coaching style and I am confrontational,” Brown said.
“And I will tell you this, I am not a high-five kind of guy. I am the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, times 10. So then she comes up to me and she goes, ‘High-five, coach’.
“We’ve always tended to be more business-like here at Brookswood. But she has brought the camaraderie, which is a good thing. I think I’ve high-fived more in one season than I have in the last 35 combined.”