Over the past 27 years of my sports writing career, I’ve been fortunate to watch and blessed to know many great athletes at the high school level. A countless number of them have gone on to play college athletics. A few have even gone on to play professional baseball and softball. Some have played in the NFL, but I can’t recall covering one who went on to play professional basketball.
That certainly could change with Spring Garden senior point guard Ace Austin.
The reigning Gatorade Player of the Year and Miss Basketball signed a scholarship Friday morning with the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Ace, who just recently led the Lady Panther volleyball team to their second straight volleyball title, also guided Spring Garden’s girls basketball team to their second straight championship last season. She averaged 20.2 points, 7.2 rebounds, 7.1 assists and 3.6 steals per contest for the Lady Panthers (33-1).
While Ace was signing on the dotted line at a table on the court that bears her father Ricky Austin’s name, I couldn’t help but remember back to one of the first times I saw her shooting a basketball. She couldn’t have been more than six years old, just playing around in the Gadsden State-Cherokee Arena (now Richard Lindsey Arena) prior to a Spring Garden game in the Cherokee County Tournament. I was sitting in the stands behind one of the goals with my jaw dropped in disbelief of what I was witnessing.
Ace was stripping 3-pointers on a college court. Even more impressive was a young former Sand Rock basketball player Eli Bates had a hand in her face.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed Ace’s talent at such a young age either.
“When my high school coach (Dale Welsh) saw her play a youth game here in the third grade, he said ‘She’s the best third grade player I’ve ever seen, male or female,’” Ricky Austin said. “I thought coming from him, that’s when it started resonating that she’s pretty good. Probably when she was in the third grade, that’s when I thought she’s a little bit different.”
Ace’s mother Dana said her daughter’s talent goes all the way back to the battles with her older brothers, Riley and Cooper, in their backyard.
“They didn’t take it easy on her,” Dana recalled. “They didn’t care if she was a little girl. They’d block her shot, knock her down. Riley probably nurtured her more like a big brother, but her and Cooper would get out there and have battles. I would say having two older brothers, that really started the whole thing. That really got her where she is. As she got older, everybody has just finely-tuned her.”
Finely-tuned indeed.
Another of my early memories of Ace is one night I was talking to her dad following a game at Spring Garden, and she casually wondered up to us. Ace was still around the same age, and she saw my digital recorder taping her father.
She curiously inquired what it was. I told her it records your voice. She asked if it would record her voice, and I told her it would. I think I even got her to say something on it.
I found it amusing during her press conference on Friday that Ace still remembers that moment. She even shared it with the media assembled in the locker room, with their recorders and cell phones taping her.
“I remember when I was little Shannon would be (taping) other people, and I was like ‘Can I do that?’ You were like ‘You’re going to have plenty of opportunities (to talk on it),” she said, flashing her trademark sheepish grin.
Ace is right. Her voice has been on my recorder countless times throughout her varsity career, both in volleyball and basketball. Her voice will be on there even more throughout the winter and spring months of her senior year, and, God willing, her collegiate years as well.
Maybe even beyond.
But no matter what she does from this point on, what future accolades she may earn, Ace will always be that little girl I saw years ago stripping 3-pointers on a college court, curious about what a digital recorder does.