Rhodes tops the O-D charts
HAMLET — Not even a pandemic could stop Mercedes Rhodes.
Sure, it slowed her down like it has all high school sporting events for almost a year now, but the senior standout for the Oregon-davis girls basketball team etched her name onto the top of the record books
Thursday night.
With 26 points against Argos,
Rhodes became the school’s alltime leading scorer — boy or girl — surpassing Ashley
Campbell’s 1,867 career total set in 2014. Rhodes stands at 1,871 and counting.
“She’s just a gym rat,” said
Oregon-davis head coach Terry
Minix. “She plays all of the time and wants to get better. Sometimes she gets down on herself, but I tell her that even Michael Jordan missed shots.”
The smooth-shooting Rhodes doesn’t miss much and if the outside shot is not there, she is a threat to drive as well. If she gets fouled, it’s almost an automatic two from the foul line. She was the third leading scorer on O-D her freshman year and put up 298 points that season. So was she already eyeing this record back then?
“I never thought I’d be in this position,” said Rhodes, whose is leaning towards continuing her academic and athletic career at West Virginia Tech. “I weighed about 90 pounds and was getting tossed around a lot. Coach Minix told me at the end of last year at regionals where I stood (as far as the record). I realized that I was pretty close and could get it. I set my mind to it. I knew what I had to score per game to get it.”
Five hundred eight points her sophomore year really put her on the map, followed by a junior year scoring 647 and being selected as a Junior All-star. The mark seemed like a sure thing, then we all know what happened next. All spring sports were canceled and at that point who knew what would happen in the fall and beyond.
“I didn’t get my hopes up too much (on breaking the record) though (with the pandemic) because if we didn’t have a season I didn’t want to be heartbroken,” Rhodes added. “I just played it game by game and did the best I could.”
And her best has been very good. Five more games are scheduled, maybe six, depending on how the Bi-county tourney goes next week before sectionals. So, any more goals?
“I’m going for 2,000 points and we want to at least win the sectional,” she said.