When Molly Knight graduates after this school year, Providence coach Eileen Copenhaver will have to find a new point guard.
And for the first time in a long time, it won’t be a member of the Knight family.
Before the season, Copenhaver did some calculating and realized that Molly and her older sisters, Kelly and Lauren, have been running the offense for quite a while.
“Nine years,” Copenhaver said. “I counted. This is the ninth year. It’s been very reassuring that a Knight girl was going to bring up the ball and help me out. I’ve never had this before. Never nine.
“Maybe four or five. Nothing like this. This is fantastic.”
As the girls basketball season opens Monday, Knight joins Morgan Park Academy’s Tiara Williams, Marian Catholic’s Taylor Bolton and Mother McAuley’s Quinn Arundel on a short list of returning area players who were named all-state by the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association.
While Knight, an Illinois-Springfield commit, was an honorable mention selection last season, Copenhaver thinks her point guard could land a spot on either the first or second team this time.
“When Molly talks about the top players in her class, she puts them up high,” Copenhaver said. “She has a lot of the same traits. She doesn’t have to come out and say she is better than they are, but I want her to realize that she can play with them.”
All three Knight sisters will be playing competitive basketball again this winter, but that will change when the season is over.
After four years at Carthage, Lauren is bidding the sport farewell after playing a graduate year at St. Francis in Joliet. She’s averaging 11 points in her first four games for the Saints, who coincidentally have Copenhaver’s son, Jimmy, on the coaching staff.
Kelly, a junior guard at Coe, recently scored nine points against Knox.
All three support each other and try to attend as many of each others games as they can. But it wasn’t long ago that getting the three together might not have been a great idea.
“They were tough on me for sure, but it was kind of nice because it was my motivation to be better than them,” Molly said of her older sisters. “We were always very competitive, and when we played, it always ended up in a fight.”
All battling aside, Molly confirmed she learned a lot about the game from her sisters, including how to stay positive and staying focused when things are not going right.
Their father, Matt, was a guard for Sandburg and shared his love of the game to his three daughters at an early age.
The 5-foot-8 Molly averaged 12.5 points, four rebounds, four assists and two steals as a junior. This season, she’s looking on taking on more of a scoring role.
“I’m a lot more confident now and I understand my role better,” Knight said. “Not only in bringing up the ball and handling it but getting to the rim and being more aggressive.”
The Celtics have an interesting schedule ahead, but one of the highlights of the season is going to be the third Super Celtics Special Needs Camp on Jan. 2-3 hosted by Providence in New Lenox.
Players become buddies to special needs children and teach them basketball skills. Knight has participated from the beginning when she was a sophomore.
“It’s always a feel-good moment and it makes me happy whenever we work with them,” she said. “When the coaches started it, I was a little bit nervous because I didn’t know what to expect.
“But when we got into it, it was a lot of fun and it made us all feel good working with them.”
