Welcome back, Kennedy: Cougars show old magic to win first girls playoff game in 10 years
Kacie Shinmoto doesn’t know the rich history of the girls basketball program in which she is the leading lady, but she is now part of it.
The junior point guard for the Kennedy Cougars of the Sacramento City Unified School District will tell you she is having the time of her life. She runs the floor with teammates and pals since their youth. As a group, they enjoyed a festive postgame moment on Wednesday night that has been a long time coming for one of the storied programs in the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section.
With Shinmoto scoring a game-high 25 points, providing steady ball handling and hustling in for eight rebounds, Kennedy downed Franklin of Elk Grove 53-44 on Wednesday night in a Division I opener.
It’s the first playoff victory for the Greenhaven school in this sport in 10 seasons. Kennedy was The Bee’s Girls Basketball Team of the Decade in the 2000s, when the Cougars regularly competed for or won D-I section championships and kept on winning in the Northern California rounds. Kennedy was a regional force in the 1980s and ’90s. In recent years, the victories were much harder to come by.
Kennedy is 17-9 this season and went 14-11 last year, which followed four lean and long campaigns. The head coach is a basketball lifer in Marvin Nakamoto, in his seventh season at his alma mater and in his 35th year of coaching overall, from youth ball to AAU.
Nakamoto said his team is home grown to the core. Players do not come from out of district. The Cougars are not a big team, but they are a fundamentally sound, well-coached group that has ball handlers, shooters and pesky defenders.
“We play basic basketball,” Nakamoto said. “It’s a good group. I started coaching kids of parents I went to school with. And the game still gives back. It’s all about teaching values: how to be respectful, how to compete. School comes first, and we work around the girls schedule.”
Academics is big for Shinmoto, to be sure. She carries a 4.67 grade-point average, meaning a boatload of advanced-placement courses such as biology, calculus and language and composition. Basketball helps ease her mind of her rigorous studies.
“It’s pretty much school and basketball for me,” Shinmoto said with a shy smile.
As for her team’s effort to make up for a lack of length or bulk, the team leader said, “We do play hard. We have effort, and we play hard defense. We just play our game.”
Nakamoto said Shinmoto reads the floor like a soccer player reads the pitch. Shinmoto played soccer growing up and carried that field presence into the gym.
“We don’t have to teach her to look — she knows how, and she continues to get better and better in every aspect of the game,” the coach said.
Junior guard Suelyn Saelee scored 12 points against Franklin. Junior Kaylee Wong and senior Vanessa Johnson had eight points apiece.
Unlike regional powerhouse programs such as Folsom, McClatchy or St. Mary’s of Stockton, the Cougars “are not on the summer AAU circuit,” Nakamoto said. “And we’re learning what the playoffs are all about.”
Kennedy will play at second-seeded St. Mary’s on Friday. The Rams have won a remarkable 21 section banners over the last 26 seasons. They are led by McDonald’s All-American Jordan Lee, a 5-11 guard who has scored more than 2,000 career points. She is averaging 25.6 points and 10.5 rebounds while sporting a 4.4 GPA.
Kennedy assistant is link to glory days
The Kennedy bench includes Kirsten Shimizu, a blast from the program’s glorious past. The assistant coach was a key cog at guard on the 2009 Kennedy team that went 27-7 under coach Brandon Yung and beat rival McClatchy in the section finals at Arco Arena before falling to national powerhouse Berkeley in the NorCal finals.
“She’s our next generation as a coach, and she’s giving our girls some examples of what it’s like to be in the playoffs,” Nakamoto said.
Franklin finishes championship season
Franklin finished 19-10 under alum coach Kim Manlangit, whose club won the Delta League, just the second league crown for the program in the 23-year history of the school. Sophomore guard Tasiana Carr led Franklin with 18 points and senior guard Ellyana Estacio had 13. Franklin started the season with a 13-point loss at Kennedy and ended it with a home encounter against the same program.
“It felt like we were moving a heavy rock uphill tonight,” Manlangit said, expressing pride in what her program accomplished this season. “Shinmoto was our focal point on defense and she had a great game.”