Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Carroll’s Mitchell named girl’s player of the year

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Saturday, April 7, 2001
Carroll’s Mitchell named girl’s player of the year

By Lee Goddard
Caller-Times

George Gongora/Caller-Times

The girls’ All-Metro basketball team is made up of (left to right, front)Delyla Hoodye; Sabrina Mitchell, Shantel Dennis, coach Beverly Barker. (left to right, back) Amber Davis, Becky Mata, Tamisha Hamilton and Monica Pena. Not pictured is West Oso’s Chanta Prince.

There is little room for doubt that Sabrina Mitchell was the premier girls basketball player in the area this year. There has been little question about that since her sophomore year at Carroll High School.
   But, having won the Caller-Times Girls Basketball All-Metro Most Valuable Player for three consecutive seasons, the question is not whether Mitchell has earned the yearly title of the area's best. It's whether she is the best all-time from the Corpus Christi Independent School District?
   While Mitchell, who will play for Texas A&M University this fall, admits she has never thought about her place among the best, she did think it would be interesting to see where people would rank her.
   Those who coached against her would say she is pretty high on the list.
   "She's definitely one of the top players that has come out of Corpus," said Ray head coach Dave Dunlap, who has been the girls basketball coach at the school for 24 seasons. "She's strong enough to play the post, and this year she moved outside and showed she can play there."
   That, of course, is part of the reason that Mitchell - who guided Carroll to three consecutive state tournaments and to the regional finals this year - has taken her third consecutive Caller-Times All-Metro Most Valuable Player award, as selected by the staff's sports department.
   Joining her as honors winners on the All-Metro team are Calallen's Beverly Barker, the All-Metro coach of the year, and Moody's Shantel Dennis and Ray's Becky Mata, the co-newcomers of the year.
   The All-South Texas Girls Basketball Team will be announced Sunday.
   Versatility has made the 5-foot-8¤ Mitchell perhaps the CCISD's best hoops player. While winning All-South Texas Newcomer of the Year as a freshman in 1998, Mitchell scored 15.6 points per game and grabbed 7.5 rebounds. Since her freshman year, those numbers have gradually increased, reaching 19.6 and 9.4 for her senior season.
   After remaining predominantly an inside threat for the first few years of her career, Mitchell - likely a small forward in college - showed the ability to play outside over this season.
   "Before I came to Carroll, I was a guard," Mitchell said. "Because of my size, and Carroll was a small team, I had to go to the post. It just so happened that guard skills I had were allowed to show."
   And while Mitchell was surrounded by veteran players in each of her first three seasons, this year saw her as the lone returning Tigers starter, who had to take more responsibility on her shoulders.
   While leadership ability can't be truly measured in numbers, her 6.6 assists and 4.1 steals show her added value as a teammate this season.
   Her career numbers are as impressive. She is the all-time leading scorer in Lady Tigers history with more than 2,360 points, and possibly is the all-time leader in CCISD history as well.
   Though whether she or King's Carey Owens (1991-94), who also attended Texas A&M, is the CCISD's all-time scorer is not known by Carroll coach Leticia Canales, former King coach Julie Medina or the CCISD athletic office.
   That doesn't matter to Canales, who chooses Mitchell as the city's best all-time.
   "She has the numbers for it," Canales said. "There are players that can control games and push their teams to the next level. Sabrina's one of them."
   Dunlap and Medina both said the drastic improvement of the girls game since the early 1980s likely means the best player would've come in the past couple of decades. Using that criterion as a guideline, in the past 15 years of Caller-Times All-Metro girls basketball teams, Mitchell is the only three-time MVP winner, and the only player to take an award all four years.
   So maybe some opponents can be matched up against Mitchell. Dunlap suggested his former player, 1994 All-Metro MVP Einabeth Nurse, may be a candidate.
   "Truthfully, those are the two best athletes to come through here," Dunlap said of Mitchell and Nurse. "They post up inside and can play outside. Sabrina is a little bigger than Einabeth. If she's not the best, she's as good as anyone that came through here since I've been here."
   Medina, who was head coach at King for 14 years before retiring after last year, offers a pair of former Lady Mustangs for consideration. There is Owens, who finished behind Nurse for the All-Metro MVP in 1994, and Stephanie Mack, the 1989 MVP, who led King from the point and played college ball at Colorado.
   But, Medina said, the trouble is comparing the guards to Mitchell, who usually roamed the baseline for Carroll, and evaluating different players at different positions.
   While it's a tough place to put Dunlap and Medina in rating their former players against Mitchell, others give Mitchell top billing.
   Richard Avila, the CCISD athletic director for the past eight years, is a former high school referee who has worked the state tournament, and even called games for women's college basketball - including the Southwestern Conference - for six seasons.
   He sides with Mitchell.
   "Sabrina's the best basketball player I've seen for 34 years," Avila said. "I wouldn't hesitate to say she's one of the best all-time. She can shoot from the outside, rebound, pass, dribble. She can match up with anybody, and if she's not ready to match up with everybody in college, it won't be long before she can."
   Mitchell herself couldn't offer an opinion. She would have been too young to remember when some of these players were high school stars. But did say she was flattered.
   "I think it's an honor to hear something like that," said Mitchell, who will major in communications in college. "I know a lot of good players have come out of the CCISD. I don't really think about stuff like that.
   "But when you stop and think about all the players, it's like - wow - when you hear things like that."

Contact Lee Goddard at 886-3613 or goddardl@caller.com

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