BALDWIN CITY — Iola graduate Kelsey Larson is having a busy week.
On Monday, the Baker University senior was awarded the Heart of America Athletic Conference’s Player of the Year, as well as being named First-Team All-Heart. Now for the rest of the week, she and her teammates turn their attention to going 3-0 in the Heart Tournament and try to check off item No. 2 on Baker coach Ben Lister’s to-do list.
“We have three goals every year: win the regular season in the conference, win the conference tournament and win nationals,” Lister said. “We’ve gotten one of those done and now our mindset is completely on trying to finish goal No. 2, which is something we haven’t done since I’ve been here… We need to get over that hump.”
Larson and the Wildcats got the first of the trio of wins they need by cruising past Grand View with a 84-52 victory.
Larson got the team rolling early with a three-pointer to open up a 12-2 lead in the opening minutes and the Wildcats only continued to pile on.
“Anytime you are playing a team you’ve beaten twice by double figures, you can take them out of the game mentally if you can jump on them early,” Lister said.
By the time the final 32-point margin was tallied, Larson had racked up 16 points, four rebounds and three assists.
Those are just run-of-the-mill numbers this season for the senior, who her coach says is playing with more confidence than he has ever seen from her.
“Kelsey’s growth as a player has come in her ability to be aggressive,” Lister said. “Kelsey can be a reluctant scorer. She can be a kid that will defer, but she has become more of a playmaker down the stretch for us in games. She has put the team on her back multiple times in big-game situations.”
After the Wildcats lost three starters from last year’s national runner-up team, they needed that type of play from their captain.
“Kelsey is the player of the year in the conference for a reason,” Lister said. “She has been extremely consistent and difficult to defend with her ability to score around the rim and shoot the basketball, and she is a tremendous on-ball defender.”
Larson and her teammates have been out to prove the doubters wrong all season.
“A lot of people in our league really thought that we were going to fall off, because we lost a lot of senior leadership last year,” Larson said. “So it feels good.”
Larson is quick to credit her former coach — Iola’s Becky Carlson — with helping to develop her into the player she has become.
“Its not just how Carlson coached me, but she made me have such a strong work ethic,” Larson said. “I have a lot of people behind me who have really helped me.”
Carlson says having Larson have the success that she is on the college level is a great example for athletes that hope to follow in her footsteps at the college level.
“(Our players) were so excited (when they saw that she won Heart Player of the Year), because she is somebody that they all look up to,” Carlson said.
UP NEXT
Baker will play against MidAmerica-Nazarene — who beat them in the National Championship Game last year — in the semifinals at 7 p.m., in Baldwin City on Friday.
