After a two-year hiatus, Jakayla Kirk returns to the court for Jefferson College’s women’s basketball team, bringing joy and determination to her comeback.
Jakayla Kirk will never know if she would have been of a girls state championship basketball team at Hazelwood Central High the winter of 2020. With her Lady Hawks on the brink of playing for the Missouri Class 5 title by advancing to the state semifinals following a 79-60 victory over Troy Buchanan in the state quarterfinals, a few days the Missouri State Activities Association called off the rest of the postseason games due to the rising Covid-19 pandemic virus.
For the remaining large schools still in a chase for a state title, March Madness became school sadness, as all extracurricular activities were halted and eventually the schools went to virtual learning the rest of the school year. The club had gotten hot at the right juncture to finish with a 21-8 mark, including a convincing 14-point late regular season win over Kirkwood, which had advanced in the other semifinal.
Hazelwood Central was set to play Columbia Rock Bridge in one semifinal, while Kirkwood would be pitted against Blue Springs in the other matchup. But those games never came to pass.
 “Of course I was proud of our team for making it that far because everyone doubted us (earlier in the year),” recalled Kirk, a 5-11 star player at Jefferson College, a two-year community college institution in Hillsboro, about 30 miles south of St. Louis.. “Of course I wish they would have let us go play because we really had a good chance to win it all under Coach (Chantel) Polk.”
Polk, is now the coach of a 21-3 Lift For Life Academy program, which fell just two points shy of beating John Burroughs, a regional powerhouse in West County. Meanwhile, Kirk, after taking some time off following high school, is quite the ‘power’ player herself with the Lady Vikings in Hillsboro. She has averaged as much as 22 points per game and eight rebounds and three assists this season, in helping the lead to a club to a 15-7 mark.
Jefferson College coach Cornelius Walker, a former Vashon High standout, who averaged over 18 points for the storied Wolverines program in 2007, said Kirk’s dedication to refine her conditioning in the offseason has paid dividends now.
“She did a great job in the summer to get in better shape,” noted Walker. “She’s a big combo forward (who can play small or power forward). Being an older player as well has helped her. It has helped become more of a leader because she’s more mature.”
With regards to her versatility, Kirk respectfully begs to differ with on she arrived there. She attributes more to her ‘will’ than the attributes, although she does acknowledge she puts in a lot of hard work to get better.
“It just has more to do with having heart, having the heart to know you can do anything you want to do if you work for it,” she explained.
Then again she’s no stranger to success, given what she accomplished at Hazelwood Central. The current coach at Hazelwood Central, James Holloway, didn’t coach her then but he was coaching at Cardinal Ritter and certainly followed her exploits. Now as the Hawks coach, he has access to old team records and remembers her impact and the scouting reports on her. He called her a “multi-force weapon” back then as well, though .She averaged 18.9 points and 8.97 rebounds.
“She could handle the ball under pressure, shoot the 3-ball, post up,” said Holloway. “She made it hard on other teams to guard her. If a coach played a post player on her, she could take that post player away from the basket and score. She was an opposing coach’s nightmare.”
Jefferson College, which resides in the Missouri Community College Athletic Conference of regional junior colleges, have produced two really big-time star athletes on the highest professional level. For Chicago White Sox left-handed pitcher Mark Buehrle was the ace of the staff of the 2005 World Series champions, who swept the Houston Astros in four games. Buehrle also threw a perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays in July 2009. The college also produced All-Star right-handed relief pitcher mike Henneman of the Detroit Tigers in the late 1980s to mid-90’s. But they haven’t produced a women’s basketball player of national prominence-yet.
One thing’s for certain, Kirk knows success and her family has experienced athletic success, from siblings to her father Larry Kirk, a football star defender on the once-legendary Sumner Bulldogs program, which still stands alone as the only Public High League team to win a state title in football.. The Bulldogs did four times and reached the championship game nine times. They also produced James Gregory, a defensive line starter on Alabama’s 1992 national championship team and Hollis Thomas, a longtime defensive line starter in the Philadelphia Eagles, including the 2005 Eagles team which lost to the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
“With the success I already had at Hazelwood Central it’s not really much of an adjustment now,” she said. “I have to get used to playing before smaller crowds at some games (compared to high school). But the biggest adjustment is not being far from home, staying focused on what I’m at school for (an education.).”
Below: Former Hazelwood Central High girls basketball coach Jakayla Kirk is now lighting things up for the Lady Vikings of Jefferson College, 30 miles south of St. Louis in Hillsboro, Missouri. Photos courtesy of Jefferson College.
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