Credited to: Lonnel Cole, Argus Sports
Straight-A’s : LaShonda Albert and Albert Thomas, seen below in an Argus file photo from a couple of summers ago at the Wohl Recreation Center, adult men’s basketball league, where Thomas was the operations director, carved out a pretty impressive reputation themselves as players. Albert helped lead the Lady Trojans of Wellston High to the Missouri Class 2A state championship in 1994, while being one of the area’s leading scorers. Wellston became the first all-black girls team to win a Missouri state championship. Albert would go on to star at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, where she eventually became that program’s career scoring average leader at more than 20 points per game and was inducted into that school’s Hall of Fame in 2023.
Fast forward to last week, Albert can be proud of another all-black, girls state champion, the Lady Hawks of Lift for Life ,who trounced Mary Institute of Country Day, known as MICDS 60-41 for the Missouri Class 5 crown. But they have gone two better by becoming the first all-black girls team to win three straight state titles by virtue of that triumph. Despite losing star player, Amaya Manuel, prior to the season with a knee injury and her twin sister Cara midway through the campaign with a shoulder injury, Lift for Life still managed to the three-peat, amid a double-digit loss regular season mark. Returning veterans Zha Viara Harris and Diamond Polk keyed the postseason push, with Harris scoring 16 points, grabbing six steals and pulling down five rebounds in the title clincher. Meanwhile Polk added 13 points.
As it turned out, Lift for Life wasn’t the only inner-city, all-black girls team that returned to St Louis this week with some hardware. The Lady Lions of Cardinal Ritter fell just short in the state semifinals, 55-52 to eventual champion Strafford of making it to the Class 4 title game, but they rebounded to beat St Joseph’s Benton 65-60 in the third-place consolation game, as Trinity Jackson scored 21 points, with Alanah Howard and McKenzie McCann playing key roles down the stretch of that triumph.
Speaking of the aforementioned Albert Thomas, the former two-time metropolitan area scoring champion at Sumner High in the late 1980’s and a subsequent star guard at both Moberly Junior College in Missouri and the TCU (Texas Christian University) Horned Frogs, was more directly and personally linked to an aspect of the state basketball tournament last week: the DeSmet Spartans won their second state title in the last three seasons when they captured the boys Class 6 title with a 78-61 rout of Blue Springs South, which had eliminated Cardinal Ritter’s boys in the semifinals. Albert Thomas’ connection to that title? The Spartans’ attack features his nephew Ian Thomas. Along with his childhood friend and longtime youth basketball team Jordan Boyd, the senior tandem combined for 47 points to power the victory, as Boyd had a team-high 26 points and Ian Thomas added 21 points.
“We built a culture, now it’s up to these (returning ) guys to continue it,” Ian Thomas said in his post-game comments.
Like his uncle Albert Thomas who averaged over 30 points per game at Summer,in 1987 and 1988, his nephew Ian will continue as a guard at the next level, having signed with Indiana State University.
Left to right photos: LaShonda Albert and Albert Thomas, the winning Class 5 state-champion Lady Hawks of Lift for Life, Lift’s Diamond Polk dribbling around a defender in the eventual state championship victory over MICDS and (below) Ian Thomas, nephew of Albert Thomas, PHL legend and the former two-time scoring champion for the region from Sumner High and operations manager for the Wohl Summer League as well as a teacher and coach in the county school district. Lift for Life and Ian Thomas photos courtesy of social media.
