Undoubtably Coach Daniels might just know what he is doing.
Congratulations to him and Megan. I hope this is the start of a beautiful relationship - not to mention a winning program once again.
ALL-ARKANSAS GIRLS BASKETBALL TEAM
Comfort zone
Game, court therapeutic for Herbert
BY MARTY COOK ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
SPRINGDALE — Basketball has been a lot of things for Megan Herbert.
It has become a comfort for her since her dad died when she was 6 years old. It was a place to fit in as an awkward freshman suddenly dropped in a new school with new teammates.
Above all, basketball was Megan Herbert’s place to go to win. And, if possible, win big.
No one did it better this year than Herbert, a 5-11 senior forward. She led Shiloh Christian to the Class 4A state championship, averaging 25.5 points and 10.9 rebounds a game.
For her year-long dominance, Herbert is the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Miss Basketball 2009.
Individual honors have never meant too much to Herbert. She said she didn’t realize the plaque she received after the state championship game was for being the tournament’s MVP until she read it about a week later.
“This is really exciting because I worked really hard for it,” said Herbert, who will play at Central Arkansas next year. “It’s a really big honor, and I really am blessed to get it. A lot of girls would kill to get it.”
What Herbert thrives on is winning, a trait she inherited from her father, Bob Herbert, the 1990 state cycling champion. Bob Herbert and girlfriend Shelly Carlisle died on May 17, 1997, when a motorist ran into them on Parsons Road in Springdale while they were on a bicycle ride. Bob Herbert was 39.
The driver was later convicted of two misdemeanor counts of negligent homicide.
Herbert doesn’t have many memories of her dad, vague recollections of bike rides and him teaching her to shoot baskets. She and her older sister, Taylor, had been at their father’s house when Bob Herbert and his girlfriend told the children they were going out for a onehour ride.
“I know he’s proud of me,” Herbert said. “He’s looking down on me and watching me, and all I can do is let him know about it, try to remember him by it. Basketball is kind of a way of remembering him. “I think that’s why I love it so much, why it comforts me so much to play it.”
Herbert’s mother, Lisa Wakefield, sent her daughter to play in the Bentonville recreational league after the accident. Herbert didn’t like the game at first, and her vivid memory is the teasing she got for attempting a granny shot during tryouts.
The competition and camaraderie of the game soon turned Herbert into a basketball junkie.
“Every time I have something go wrong in my life or I have a hard time, I’ll just go out and play by myself,” Herbert said. “It’s a distraction, and I love it.”
Wakefield warns against playing Monopoly — any game really — against her daughter unless you are really interested in combat. There are no fun games with her.
“Her dad was very competitive, and she is, too,” Wakefield said. “She is something.”
Wakefield and her husband, Mike, built Herbert a half-court basketball court in fourth grade so she could have a place to shoot at home. The two unwisely decided to play their prodigy in what they thought would be a friendly 2-on-1 game.
It was not friendly.
“She killed us,” Wakefield said. “That year, she would live on the basketball court. We always told her, ‘When you’re on the court, the ball is yours.’ You can tell how she rips the ball from the other girls.”
Shiloh Christian Coach Vic Rimmer said Herbert undergoes a transformation when she steps on the basketball court. Most of the time, Rimmer said, Herbert is a regular giddy teenage girl, but on the court, she becomes a beast.
“She will not handle losing,” Rimmer said. “It’s her I-wantto-win attitude. That’s what separates her from the other very good athletes, that killer instinct.”
Herbert transferred from Bentonville’s school district to Shiloh Christian the summer before her ninth-grade year. Herbert did not want to make the move and leave her friends, and that awkwardness was soon compounded when Rimmer promoted Herbert to the varsity team two weeks after she arrived at her new school.
By the time the season began, Herbert was starting. In her four-year career, the Lady Saints were 119-15 with two title-game appearances and one championship.
“I had no clue she would even start as a freshman, but she has been way more than anyone could imagine,” Rimmer said. “It’ll be very hard for me in the future to compare players to Megan. Is this player good, or is she Megan Herbert good?”
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