Get back into it.”Īlong with Raymond-Young and Austin, some of the other Lightning players include former Rock Valley College standout Cierra Morris, former Auburn standout Bri Davis, former East standout Kalea Kruser, former Jefferson star Crystal Lambert, and former Harlem and UW-Milwaukee standout McKaela Schmelzer. It’s really good to get back on the court and oil up my knees a little bit. I wasn’t ready to hang up my shoes for basketball. “I kind of wanted to prove to myself that I can actually do it at my age. Most recently she has been playing professional football as a quarterback with the Chicago Blitz of the women’s Extreme League, but her love for basketball is still intense. She spent a year in the WNBA with the Chicago Sky. Raymond Young was an All-State player in high school at Rockford Lutheran, then an All-MAC player at NIU. There is a lot of talent on this team,” said Lightning player Stephanie Raymond Young. “A lot of us still had the competitive edge and can get up and down the floor, and then we just were like, ‘We should start a team”. “We were playing open gym twice a week, and we were being very competitive,” said Austin. Former Auburn standout Tierney Austin is one of them. The Rockford area has a lot of women who fit that mold who still have a love for the game and a desire to compete. The players must be at least 18 years old, and they must have finished playing college basketball to be eligible to compete. It has 18 active teams in cities that include New York, Atlanta, Tampa, Richmond, Pittsburgh and St. The Lightning compete in the WABA, the Women’s American Basketball Association. “We have a lot of entertainment and a lot of things going on here (in Rockford), but we don’t have any professional basketball, and for the women to, you know, to be able to come out, sacrifice and play the game that they love, it’s just exceptional,” said Kent. It took the court this past Saturday evening at Rockford University’s Seaver Gymnasium for its first game under head coach Tiffany Lambert Kent. Just like the old CBA men’s team, this team also has taken on the Lightning name. The most notable one was the Rockford Lightning CBA team, but there hasn’t been a women’s professional basketball team in Rockford until now.Ī new women’s professional team has just started up. (WTVO/WQRF) - Rockford has had its share of men’s professional and semi-pro basketball teams over the years.
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