The 14U and 15U team took to the hardwood in the 2011 Gym Rat Challenge Tournament and proved themselves as emerging stars and incredible competitors. Both teams played extremely hard as the 15’s played the championship game (42 teams and almost won the entire tourney) and 14’s went to the final 4 (36 teams) This is a huge accomplishment for both teams as this is a very competitive tourney and will certainly set the tone for the summer season.

The team play did not go unnoticed by the tourney organizers as the following received All-Tourney Honors:

15: U All GymRat CHALLENGE TEAM

Taylor Rooks (6-0 F) Ring City/Nichols School: Great size with fantastic low-post moves. Can drive from the perimeter and also has a nice turnaround jumper. Ability to finish with both hands. Tough on the glass. Outstanding rebounder and intimidating presence inside. Nice athleticism yet plays under control. Played her best against strong competition here.

Denisha Petty-Evans (5-9 Wing) Ring Cit/Bridgewater-Raritan H.S.: Silky smooth wing player that makes the game look easy. At her best in transition and when attacking thehoop. Showcased a high hoops IQ here as she rarely forces the issue and is always looking up the floor for open teammates. Excellent floor vision. Excels at grabbing the defensive rebound and leading the break.

Aliyan Huland-El (6-0 F) Ring City/Randolph H.S.: Extremely long and athletic. Does a great job rebounding in and out of her area, and alters shots. Runs the floor well in transition and has great hands and body control finishing on the break. Also displays the ball-handling skills to lead the break and the court vision to find open teammates. Played up a level. Huge upside.

15:U Honorable Mention All-GymRat CHALLENGE

Lauren Daugherty (6-0 F) Ring City

14:U All-GymRat Challenge Team

Jocelyn Willoughby (5-9 F) Ring City/St. Phillips School: Only finishing up 7th grade. Has great potential. Very quick first step. Excellent off-the-ball defender. Showed leadership qualities, despite her young age. Long and strong athletic build. Good shooter inside 15 feet.

Breanna Cavanaugh (5-7 PG) Ring City/Blair School: A tenacious competitor. Outstanding offensive player. Key role in leading her team to the semifinal round. Strong player who has a very quick first step that gets her past defenders. Showed nice hesitation dribble skill.

“Nike has been running the National Skills Academies for elite female athletes nationwide for the past seven years. A common denominator among great athletes is their desire to rise to the challenge of competing against the very best. Attendees at Nike Girl’s Skills Academies are by invitation only. The invitation alone identifies you as part of a special group. It is your attendance that signifies your willingness to accept that challenge. Just sixty players will be invited to train and compete at the Nike Skills Academy in your region. “

Read More About NIKE Elite Youth

Summertime in girls’ basketball has become a living mixtape of just sick, sick dribbling mastery. Freeze-framers Ellison and Jefferson might be a hair above the rest, for now, but one of our panelists called Johnson “a female version of Hot Sauce,” while another called 8th grader Canada an “upgraded version” of today’s best. Yikes! Waiting for what the next summer will bring is like waiting for the next season of “Mad Men.” Well, make that “Mad Handles.”

While the list of shooters may have been our biggest source of pride, this list of prime-time defenders is a tribute and proud area for the coaches. The number of players willing to give up body and glory for a stop is something we think separates the girls from the boys.

There are teams like DFW Elite and West Coast Premier with program-wide commitments to producing glove-like defenders, and the growing legion of fly-swatters is further illustration of the game’s growing explosiveness. We don’t think it’s any coincidence that four players on this list played for the gold-medal-winning USA U17 team. Defense is the American identity in the girls’ game.

By Mindi Rice

The New York/New Jersey area’s club basketball scene was already loaded with programs, but that didn’t faze those behind Ring City basketball.

“We’re all really passionate about the game and the kids,” said Maria Harper. “There’s no trying to influence anybody, we’re just trying to be good for the kids.”

With two young boys at home, Harper returned to the gym with the girls during the winter, becoming an assistant at Paterson Catholic (Paterson, N.J.). This winter, she will take over at the helm of her first high school, De Paul (Wayne, N.J.), but not without a focus on Ring City and her current non-profit, Give & Go, on the schedule.

“One of our goals for the first year was to play at Nike Nationals,” Harper said. “Once we proved we could compete at that level, they allowed us a spot, with the understanding that it didn’t make us a Nike team.”

In mid-October, Harper got the word that Ring City was being added to the roster of Nike-sponsored teams, which a representative of Nike confirmed.

“We are very excited to represent the brand and the excellence it stands for,” Harper said. “I foresee a future that is beneficial for all the girls in our program with our new relationship with Nike.”

Before the Nike sponsorship was even on the horizon, the Harpers needed to find a coach. With the idea for Ring City bouncing around between Ron and Maria Harper, a parent helped them make a connection.

Enter Walter Welsh, who was coaching with the NYC Gauchos program. An intended one-hour meeting turned into five hours and, at the end, Welsh was in. He became the coach for Ring City’s elite team and was part of an organization focused solely on girls’ basketball.

“The Gauchos were a great organization with the boys and girls, but I wanted the focus to just be on girls’ basketball,” Welsh said. “With Maria, I felt she was doing something really special.”

So did the kids, who started talking to Welsh and the Harpers about the program. In the spring of 2009, four teams took to the club circuit, a team of 13-year-olds, a 14-year-olds squad and two 16-year-olds teams, including the elite squad. After barely any time to get acquainted, Welsh led the elite team into the fire of April’s Boo Williams Invitational.

“I told Maria from day one, if we’re going to do this, we have to do it on the highest level,” Welsh said. “If you want to be champions, you’ve got to fight everybody.”

The tournament was somewhat of a success — the team got off the ground with a middle-of-the-road debut and Ring City got its name out. As the summer grew closer, the team had plenty of time to learn from each other, Welsh and the Harpers. They traveled to one of the biggest Memorial Day tournaments and filled July’s schedule with tough brackets, including wrapping up at Nike Nationals. The team progressed every week, eventually making it to the Silver Bracket semifinals in North Augusta, S.C.

But Harper isn’t just focused on the girls’ on-court success. With her foundation, Give & Go, she has also turned her attention to academics, starting with the current Ring City players. The foundation works with kids to find tutors, help with SAT and ACT preparation and is exploring scholarships. It’s something that appeals to more players than Harper expected.

“A lot of AAU coaches don’t really care about school,” said Seton Hall-bound Ka-Deidre Simmons, ranked No. 53 in the 2010 class by ESPN HoopGurlz, and part of Ring City’s inaugural elite team. “But Maria has always said that if we need help, just to let her know.”

For Simmons, the 5-foot-8 point guard at Shabazz (Newark, N.J.) and a student in the New Jersey system where students must pass a state test to graduate, that was going to mean a summer math class to prepare her for the fall’s re-test. She missed passing the math portion by five points on her first try.

Instead, Harper talked to Simmons’ school. She packed up a math book and spent time tutoring Simmons, and her twin sister Desiree Simmons, who had already passed the test, during long car trips to and from tournaments. No. 42 Daisha Simmons has pledged to Rutgers.

“She’s just a great person,” Ka-Deidre Simmons said of Harper. “A very well-rounded person. … When we were around Ron, he was always telling us about the work he had to put in before he could play. They were great examples for us.”

“We’re trying to offer an answer for a need we saw in the community,” Maria Harper said. “For the first year, I think we had a great showing. We’re building a great program and we have a strong nucleus of younger kids.”

As for the program’s debut on the national stage, it didn’t come just from Ron Harper’s star power, or on the income from the family of four. The girls participate in fundraisers for travel expenses and they put in the work at other tournaments to show they could compete. But nothing, from the size of the program to the tournaments they’ll travel to in future summers, is set in stone.

“I think great things are going to happen in the future for Ring City,” Welsh said. “There’s still some growing to do, but it was a great first year.”

Check this a picture of (left to right) Smith with Maria Harper, husband and former NBA player Ron Harper, and Ring City coach Walter Welsh.

Coach Nick O’Neil of Buffalo-based Team United provide the snapshot. The Harpers run Ring City Basketball, which includes an elite-level girls basketball team on which Smith played along side several other Division I recruits.

—Keith McShea

Ring City Elite 16U team will be in the semifinals of the Nike Nationals today. Ring City features stars from all over New Jersey, including Holy Angels’ Jaclyn Jerkovich and Ramapo’s Sarah Halejian.

There will be more on Halejian early next week as she has truly made a name for herself on the AAU circuit this summer and has a laundry list of schools now interested in her as she enters her senior year and vies for a third consecutive North Jersey Player of the Year honor and a third straight Bergen County title for the Raiders.

Ring City defeated the NY Gauchos to move on to the semifinals. The Gauchos feature former Paterson Catholic star Starr Breedlove. Breedlove, who will be a senior in the fall, will attend DePaul Catholic to play for Ring City coach Maria Harper after her most recent school, St. Michael Academy, closed down. There will be more on Breedlove in Tuesday’s edition of The Record.

It’s the Fall of 2005 and Anton Marchand, Cleon (Silk) Hyde and Troy Lemond have an idea.

The childhood friends from Fort Greene are already fixtures on the city’s boys basketball scene and have just completed their fifth summer of running the Conrad McRae tournament in Prospect Heights, an event doing so well it has an apparel deal with Nike.

But the trio notices a void in the city’s basketball scene. What’s missing? A top-flight tournament to showcase the best girls talent the city has to offer.

The need first comes to their attention via Epiphanny Prince, Bergtraum’s star guard and a fellow Fort Greene product.

Prince has just committed to Rutgers and is months away from entering her senior season when she begs her three friends to take her to Nike’s legendary IS8 tournament in Jamaica, Queens. But since the IS8 is a tournament for boys, she can’t play, she can only watch.

Hyde, Lemond and Marchand drive Prince to Queens, wondering all the way why one of the best girls basketball players in the city is watching the boys instead of playing in a tournament herself.

“She’d tell us, ‘Let’s go to IS8, Let’s go to IS8,’” says Marchand, 39. “Silk and I would ask her all the time, ‘You don’t have anything to play in?’ She’d say, ‘No.’ She was the best player in the city with nothing to do.”

Sure enough, Prince has just finished her AAU season with Exodus, one of the city’s top girls grass roots teams, and is idle until December, the start of the high school season.

This is when Hyde, Lemond and Marchand begin brainstorming. They eventually come up with the idea to start a girls tournament, patterned after the IS8.

They aim for the coming spring, knowing if they can launch it, then Prince can be the face of their tournament.

It’s the norm for committed players to not play after their senior season to avoid injury, but Prince is different. The guys know Prince would play in meaningful games during the spring leading up to her enrollment at Rutgers if they provide the venue.

St. Francis College was on Maddie Jankowski’s radar even before she was on theirs. The Middle Village, Queens native attended the Terriers’ basketball camp growing up and developed an affinity for the Brooklyn Heights school.

“I knew I wanted to go there for a long time, but my mom and my dad, they wanted me to just wait it out and keep all my options open,” the St. Mary’s of Manhasset rising senior told The Post.

St. Francis was her first visit last October and they offered her in late July. She also checked out Lehigh, George Mason, Fordham and a few Division II schools. But staying close to home and playing in a conference where her family could watch nearly all her games made the difference. Jankowski verbally committed to the NEC school Wednesday.

“My family, my best friends they are all like, ‘We are going to be at every game,’” she said. “I told [coach Brenda Milano] my family is crazy with coming to my basketball games and she started laughing. She was like, ‘Maybe we will get to open up the other half of the gym.’”

The Terriers are getting a budding 5-foot-8 guard who can light up a scoreboard with her sweet shooting stroke. Jankowski’s game has grown in all aspects over the last two seasons playing for the Gaels and the Long Island Xtreme and Ring City AAU teams. She also trains with former Hofstra guard Jason Hernandez.

This summer with Nike Ring City Elite has been a prosperous one that raised her recruiting stock.

Read More at NY Post