Yohn special for more than just her scoring
Over the past 30-plus years I've had the honor of covering the very best girls basketball players to ever compete in the Fox Valley area.
Leslie Schock and Melissa Parker. Lindsay Schrader. Corry Carter. Kiley Holtz. Chris Franke. Renee Kanak. Donna Groh. Michelle Russell. Billee Russell. Heather Rayka. Jenna Real. Nicole Watzlawick. Beth Hasenmiller. Amanda Walker. Jackie Heine. Laura Demke. Rita Castans. Melissa Tarrant. Stephanie Smith.
I could go on, and surely fill this space with many more names, but you get the drift.
Special, they all were for sure. And talented.
But there's just something magical about watching St. Edward senior Katie Yohn on a basketball court. It's not her talent. She has plenty of that and everyone knows it. It's not the fact she can score at will, or strip the ball from an opponent with ease, or pull up and hit a 3-pointer that leaves everyone smiling and shaking their heads, or dish in the lane without even looking at who she's dishing to.
No, it's none of those things, because those are things we've all come to expect while watching Yohn mature over the last four years.
What makes Katie Yohn so special is personality. It's a rare trait for a 17-year old to have developed such unselfishness and humility before they even graduate from high school.
I had the opportunity to sit back and not worry as much about stats Monday night, but to actually sit back and watch Yohn from the time she and her St. Edward team came out for warmups until the final handshakes of the Green Wave's 60-44 win over Marian Central.
Yep, she was on fire again. Buried her first shot -- a pull-up 3 of course -- then scored on a steal then hit another 3 from further out that left a Marian player on the bench with her head in her hands and the Marian coach imploring his team to "keep track of her!" Yeah, right. Boom, just like that St. Edward led 11-4 and never looked back. By the end of the night Yohn had 31 points, 10 assists, 7 steals, 5 rebounds and a blocked shot. Just another day at the office for the best player in the Suburban Catholic Conference.
But beyond those numbers are so many more things that Katie Yohn is all about. Relentless unselfishness. Team. Pride. Humility. Those things are what sets Yohn apart and it's those things that ooze from every pore of her body, win or lose.
"She has dedicated herself to basketball and her senior year and getting ready for college," said St. Edward coach Michelle Dawson, whose young son Kaden was chosen to deliver a bouquet of yellow roses to Yohn at center court before Monday's game, acknowledging Yohn eclipsing the 1,500 career point mark a couple weeks ago.
"I've seen her grow so much the past four years. When Katie brings the level of her play up she brings the level of our team's play up. She's just a special kid."
It would be easy enough for a player like Yohn to get caught up in herself, to know she can go off for 40 or 50 points every time she plays. But one of the reasons her teammates love her so much is because she's not that player. Witness the 10 assists Monday night, four of them of the left-handed no-look variety that rival the best I've seen from any high school girl ever.
"I've known her since kindergarten and it's just an honor playing with her," said Green Wave junior Kristi Knott, who took a pass from Yohn and scored when they were the only two in the lane Monday after a Yohn steal. "I learn stuff from her all the time. It's just an awesome experience to play with her and learn from her."
Knott knows why Yohn gave her the basketball on that play instead of laying it in herself.
"That's just her personality," Knott said. "She wants to get everyone involved. She wants us all to do well, the whole team."
Yohn, humble as always, just shrugs when asked about another 30-point outburst, one that now has her at 1,615 career points, just 157 shy of Hasenmiller's St. Edward career record of 1,772.
"To me they're just points," Yohn says. "I go out every single game just trying to be a team player. The ceremony was nice, but then we came out and played as a team."
She credits her early years of basketball at St. Thomas More and her coaches back then, her dad Steve as well as Jeff Turk, for what she has become today.
"That's just the way I was brought up," she said. "I had an older sister I watched, and then playing with my brothers ... I always liked to pass the ball. I wanted to become a great passer. Scoring comes. You give and you receive. If you pass the ball, people will look to pass it back to you."
So while it's easy to get caught up in the numbers, and easy to figure out how many points she needs to break the record, and easy to wonder if she'll break her own career high for a game (37), it's also easy, if you're really watching, to see how special this future Bradley University (and maybe WNBA???) star really is.
She doesn't have to score a point. If her team wins, that's satisfaction enough. If she's gotten everyone involved in the game and her team has responded to her leadership, she's happy.
"She's made me a fan of girls basketball," said St. Edward volleyball coach Jaime Walton. "She's just so fun to watch."
As fans, we should savor these last couple of weeks of Katie Yohn as a high school basketball player because, trust me, kids like her just don't come along very often.