First in St. Charles to win Gatorade Player of the Year
Destrehan High School sophomore Cara “Moon” Ursin has been chosen as Louisiana’s Gatorade Player of the Year for girls’ basketball, becoming the first athlete in the history of St. Charles Parish to win the award.
The Gatorade Player of the Year award is one of the most prestigious awards in the history of high school athletics. In order to win it, you must excel in athletics, but also achieve high standards in academics, as well as display exemplary character on and off the field, court or ice.
In the history of the 30-year-old award, its winners have been the likes of pro football players Peyton Manning and Emmet Smith, track runner Allyson Felix and WNBA player Elena Delle Donne of the Chicago Sky, who personally recorded a segment welcoming Ursin to the club of previous winners.
She is not only the first athlete from Destrehan High to be chosen, but also the first athlete in the history of St. Charles Parish to be chosen. Move over Ed Reed, you have some company on the “one of the best athletes to come out of this area” bench.
Destrehan High School Principal Stephen Weber said he could not be more proud.
“Cara is the type of person who shows what’s possible for this community,” Weber said. “She exemplifies what we want here at DHS, and I’m not just talking about the award, I’m talking about the type of person she is – hardworking, character driven and productive.”
Weber said he considers himself her biggest fan, but he does have one minor disappointment in Ursin.
“She doesn’t have the guts to play me in one on one,” he said with a smirk and a wink.
Ursin is all muscle; she glides when she has the ball on the court. Her friends, teammates and even the teachers address her by her nickname, “Moon.” Her coach, Angela Butler, says they call Ursin that because she jumps so high.
Sitting in the locker room with her friends, Ursin explained how long she’s played this game and what this accomplishment means to her.
“It’s definitely an honor,” Ursin said. “And it’s very motivating. I was actually called into my councilor’s office. They called my coach and she came and got me and I was a little nervous. When Coach B. [Butler] came in she had this mean look on her face and said ‘let’s go.’
I couldn’t think what I might have done. When we got to her office, my friends and family were there and I started to realize I was being played. My mom asked me if I knew what was going on and I just guessed maybe I had won player of the year.”
In Butler’s office they had balloons and flowers for Ursin, and she got a big kiss from her mom and dad. Butler gave her a huge hug and said congratulations. Ursin sat down to watch her YouTube acceptance video and took the moment in.
“When I saw the video, it touched my heart,’ Ursin said. It was a bittersweet year for Ursin. She and her team went all the way to the semifinals of the LHSAA state basketball tournament and lost. Ursin took it hard, but not so much for herself, but for the seniors on the team who would never get another chance for the ring all high school athletes crave as much as pros crave a Super Bowl, World Series or NBA Championship ring.
Several Division 1 schools including Baylor, Duke, LSU, Auburn, Louisiana Tech, Texas Tech and the University of Southern Mississippi are interested in Ursin, and when you hear her stats, it’s no surprise.
The sophomore guard averaged 26.3 points this season, 11.5 rebounds and 6.9 steals per game. She is a two–time District 7-5A MVP and Defensive Player of the Year. She was also a 2014 Class 5A First Team All-State selection as a freshman, where she posted per-game averages of 4.6 assists and 3.4 blocks. She accomplished 19 double-doubles and three triple-doubles, scoring 1,331 points in her two-year high school career.
Butler said every college girls’ basketball coach within a two-state radius has contacted her about Ursin.
“It’s almost a daily thing,” Butler said. “I’ve heard from colleges north, south, east and west. I hear from everyone…Texas [Tech] called me yesterday.”
Despite the big numbers, all the glitz and pats on the back, Ursin is as humble as someone with little talent. Talking to her on the street you’d never know she was the best female basketball prospect in the entire state of Louisiana. She said she has been dealing with compliments as long as she can remember.
“I started playing when I was 5 years old,” Ursin said. “I played with my brother, Coy, on the Buddy Lawson playground in Kenner. It was a co-ed team. I thought it was really fun and I was really good at it.”
She was raised by a single mother along with her two brothers, and they all moved to St. Rose from Kenner a few years later. That’s where she played recreational basketball, organized St. Charles Parish. Every little town within the parish has a rec ball team and at the end of the year a parish All-Star team is selected from hundreds of kids who play rec ball, Ursin was one of them.
“That’s when it first hit me I was a good player,” Ursin said. “I was 11 years old, I won ‘Miss Biddy’ and an All-American title for my age group. It was also the year I signed my first autograph for my first fan. This little girl, about 5 years old, came up to me and said she wanted to play ball just like me some day. She asked me for my autograph and I said sure. She handed me a book and a crayon and that’s what I used to sign my name with – my first autograph I signed with a crayon.”
Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball came next where she played for the Louisiana Lady Legends. AAU is a National junior league program sponsored by coaches and basketball enthusiasts. When Ursin joined the league it cost her mother $400 entrance and dues fees. Ursin’s mother, Erica, who worked as a school cafeteria employee, said she gladly sponsored her daughter who she’s always been proud of.
“I did it not because she’s a good basketball player,” said Ursin’s mother, with tears in her eyes. “I did because she is a good person, a caring person, who never gave me any trouble growing up and has always been respectful to me and others.”
It’s easy to see.
Ursin is considerate of others, and she talks about her teammates as if they were her sisters. In fact, she said straight out that Brandi Mason, Lamitra “Me Me” Wells and Tiera Melancon are her sisters.
“These are my girls,” Ursin said. “This is my sister (pointing to Wells), this is my twin (pointing to Mason) and this is my Gatorade Player of the Year (pointing to Melancon).”
Coach Butler said she has never in her entire career seen the type of comradery that exists on this team. In middle school, Ursin played sixth, seventh and eighth grade basketball and was MVP all three years, despite the fact she only played two games in her eighth grade season due to a broken finger. Mason and Melancon were right there to see it all.
“I played against Brandi in middle school,” Ursin said. “I played with Tiera in middle school. We’ve all known each other most of our lives.“
Butler said she’d been coaching long enough to know she had something special right from the beginning and, not just in Ursin, but in the chemistry of the team she wanted to build around Ursin.
“These girls have been playing together a long time,” Butler said. “It’s the kind of thing where players are aware of the small nuances and floor maneuvers. They know each other, they know how the other plays the game, where the other will be in the paint, and how they’ll get under the rim after they make their cut once they’ve passed the ball.
It’s the kind of thing you can’t teach, just take advantage of if because you know it’s there, and with these players – it is.”
Winning State Girls Player of the Year puts Ursin in a position to be selected as a National Player of the Year, and winning that she said would be more than she could imagine, except for one thing.
“If I did win national player of the year,” Ursin said. “It would have to be a Team of the Year award as far as I’m concerned. I couldn’t have done any of this without my team.”
In return, her friends are pretty convinced at what kind of player and person Ursin is, as they all said together: “Cara’s the truth.”
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