THE LEGEND OF JESSICA CARROTHERS
Crown Point standout finishes with a state title, a Miss Basketball finalist selection and Post-Tribune top player honors for the third consecutive season
With her unyielding work ethic and never-ending will to improve, Jessica Carrothers continued to add elements to her game.
The guard has grown throughout her illustrious career. She arrived at Crown Point as a star and will depart having left a permanent legacy.
But Bulldogs coach Chris Seibert paid Carrothers perhaps the ultimate compliment when he described how she didn’t change over the years.
“The two biggest things with Jess: her consistency on a day-in, day-out basis and (being) someone who hates to lose,” Seibert said. “She’s an incredible competitor on the floor.
“Off the court, she still smiles and laughs and sings and laughs in the locker room and just has fun being a kid. That’s very difficult to find that balance, especially for a high achiever. But she was the same way as an eighth grader, just loving life and loving being around her teammates. She has great perspective. She never got too big. She never changed in high school. She was the same kid as a freshman.”
The accolades have piled up along the way. Carrothers, the 2021-22 Post-Tribune Girls Basketball Player of the Year, is the area’s top player for the third straight season.
The IUPUI signee was one of four finalists for Indiana Miss Basketball this season and finished as runner-up to Homestead’s Ayanna Patterson, a Connecticut recruit.
Carrothers undoubtedly will be named an Indiana All-Star after she was a Junior All-Star last season.
She also made the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association’s Senior All-State Supreme 15 after making the underclass list in each of her first three seasons.
And she was chosen as the Duneland Athletic Conference’s MVP for the third straight season.
“I don’t really expect or look out for any of the awards I’ve gotten over the past few years,” Carrothers said before the Miss Basketball announcement Friday. “Being
one of the top candidates for such a big award, against the top athletes in the state, it’s a really big honor.
“I know I wouldn’t be where I am without my teammates. I’m really grateful to everyone who helped me get to this point. The Region and the community at Crown Point has my back. They’ve rooted for me. That means a lot to me.”
Carrothers averaged 20.7 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 3.6 steals this season. After passing Anne (Kvachkoff ) Equihua on Dec. 3 to become the program’s leading scorer, she finished 16th in state history with 2,335 points.
“The amount of points I scored was a byproduct of the amount of hours and the amount of time I’ve put in trying to contribute to Crown Point basketball,” Carrothers said. “Besides the mandatory practices, it was staying after and working out, the stuff I didn’t have to do.
“I want people to remember not my individual stats and awards, but to remember me as a team player who put her team first: ‘She didn’t care how much she scored or how she played, as long as Crown Point won.’ That’s all that matters to me.”
Crown Point won at an extremely high level during Carrothers’ four seasons, including the Class 4A state title in 2021. Although the Bulldogs’ bid to repeat ended with a semistate loss to eventual champion Noblesville in February, she expressed pride in their effort.
“I did what I could to contribute to the team, and everybody else did what they needed to do to contribute,” Carrothers said. “It didn’t end the way we wanted it to. But we all did what we could to get as far as we could.
“I knew if we lost, I was going to be sad for a few days. But it was a lot more than a few days. I still miss it. I miss going to practice and seeing all my friends. Even the practices that weren’t the most fun, my teammates made it fun. I miss them.”
Carrothers will continue her career at IUPUI, which won the Horizon League Tournament on Tuesday to set up its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament. The Jaguars, who tied for the regular-season conference title and earned the No. 1 seed, also won the conference tournament in 2020 before the season was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’m so happy,” Carrothers said about the latest conference title. “I’m really excited.”
Seibert said it was “hard to believe” the careers of Crown Point’s five seniors, including Carrothers and Purdue recruit Lilly Stoddard, had come to an end. He called it “an honor to coach them and be part of their journey.”
“Whether it was a huge game or a Saturday morning practice, she was the same player, same effort, same leadership,” Seibert said of Carrothers. “As a coach, that is such a blessing to have a kid who will come in and want to work and want to make her teammates better.”