With one gold ball under her belt, Oktaha senior Ava Scott will be hoping to add a second this year as her Tigers take to the court for the 2023 season.

“She’s a naturally gifted special talent,” said her basketball and softball coach Kia Holmes. “I’ve been around Ava since she was in kindergarten and it’s been fun to watch her grow up and develop those talents, but she also spends a lot of extra time on her own working to improve.”

Although basketball has become her sport, Ava started out athletically in softball.

“My mom put me on a team of Oktaha girls when I was four or so and we played travel ball for a long time until I started concentrating more on basketball,” said Ava. But those softball skills came in handy for Ava as the Tigers won the Class 4A slow-pitch championship last spring.

“We were big underdogs going in and we played Pocola in the finals who had run-ruled us earlier in the season and I’m not sure I believed we could win because we had always had trouble getting past the first round. But I’ve been playing with these girls since pre-k and to win the title with all my friends was amazing.”

In basketball, Ava grew up watching former Tulsa Shock and WNBA All-Star Skylar Diggins-Smith.

“I used to go watch her play when she was with the Shock and I looked up to her a lot,” said Ava who is also on the Oktaha student council and in FCA. Now in her senior year, Ava has become a team leader much to the joy of Holmes. “When she first came into high school, she was so quiet, so it’s been fun this past year to see her become a lot more vocal as a senior leader and she works so well with the young players.”

Although she loves both basketball and softball and Holmes says she could play either one at the next level, Ava recently committed to play basketball at Cameron University next year. Her big goal this year is to find a way to boost her Tigers to a basketball gold ball in what Holmes describes as a loaded field this year in Class 2A.