Reed School Fourth Graders Help Bring Home A Victory

There’s a very good reason why Reed School fourth grade teacher Karla Rigdon skipped grading papers and spent the evening cheering for the Ladue High Rams’ basketball team. A real simple reason for certain.

Seems that star guard senior Kate Holloway is a Cadet teacher in her class. Ladue seniors get a chance to go into the classroom to see if a future in teaching might suit them.

Frankly, Holloway adores her grade schoolers quite a bit. She put on the chalk board a schedule of home games in the new year. The students voted to attend Monday night’s game with the Summit Falcons.

Armed with Skittles, ropes, Twix, Laughy Taffy, bags of popcorn and canned soda, 15 fourth graders sat in the front rows of the bleachers and cheered heartily for No. 10, their favorite player.

Everytime the senior guard touched the ball, the Reed kids belted out lusty “Kate, Kate, Kate” cheers. They even made up their own t-shirts for the occasion.

Down 12-4 in the early going, the Rams got their act together, ran off 21 straight points and blitzed the Falcons, 59-33 in a game shortened in the last four minutes by a mercy rule running clock.

“That was fun having all those kids there. I’m glad they came to our game,” said Holloway.” About that 12-4 deficit and 21 point run, Holloway had this to say: “Doc (coach Cord Dockery) called time out and got in our faces. He told us we could do better.”

Right, Dockery told them they had a good win over Marquette, and could play better. He cajoled them to extend the full court.

They responded quickly. The ball started going inside, and junior center Taylor Robinson went on a scoring binge. She led Rams scorers with a game-high 17 points.

She played with purpose. Scouts from the University of Memphis, Illinois and DePaul were on hand to look over the super star player. She rewarded their trip.

“I’m not nervous playing in front of the scouts. I was at first. So far, recruiting has been a fun process,” said Robinson.

About recruiting, Robinson wants to play for her mom and remain close to town. Missouri has a slight edge, although she has no definite plans at all at this point.

Dockery in particular enjoyed the Reed School visitors. “We’d love to have a kid base of fans follow us. Any fans we get is a good thing.”

Dockery liked the performance of his team, now 15-5 this season. “That’s as good as we’ve played this year. We played three good quarters,” dismissing the weak first quarter performance.

Junior Katherine Deboer scored 10 points. Kaitlyn Brame led Summit with 14 points. Summit fell to 9-11.

Ladue has little time off. They host John Burroughs on Wednesday.