Jim Mashek

HUSKEY WILL PURSUE PRE-MED STUDIES AT WKU

I remember, almost like it was yesterday.

Two weeks into March, we were in Lexington for the KHSAA girls basketball state tournament, at Rupp Arena. Where the Wildcats play.

Since I write for a fledgling web site — namely, my own — I was only credentialed to sit in the “auxilary press box” by the KHSAA. That’s a euphemism and a half, because it’s almost in the rafters of the 24,000-seat arena, and I take photos for jimmashek.com with my trusty Motorola phone camera.

The Bowling Green High School girls basketball team, coached by the personable yet wily Calvin Head, had qualified for the Sweet Sixteen for the third consecutive year. In 2020, the day after the Lady Purples got to Lexington, Head received a phone call from the KHSAA office telling him that the tournament had been cancelled, because of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

His team, needless to say, was devastated.

Bowling Green went back to the Sweet Sixteen in 2021, defeating Bishop Brossert, a private, girls Catholic school near Covington, Kentucky, taking a 50-48 decision. Two days later, in the quarterfinals, Bowling Green ran into eventual state champion Sacred Heart, out of Louisville.

The Lady Purples were a game opponent, but they lost 66-54. Back in Lexington one year later, they were poised to make another run at glory.

This time, Bowling Green stopped Letcher County Central in its opening game, winning 58-45. Then the Lady Purples were paired with another greater Cincinnati school, Cooper High School out of Boone County. The Lady Purples played reasonably well, but lost 55-47. Cooper would get knocked out in its next game, falling in the semifinals to Sacred Heart.

Which repeated as state champions.

Grabbing my legal pad, camera phone and three or four pens — you can’t be too careful, on that front, boys and girls — I scrambled to get to the elevator that led to Rupp’s ground floor, where they had a media work room, of sorts, while holding the press conferences after each and every game. I told myself, “Please, Calvin (Head), bring Emma to the presser.”

Casual basketball fans likely would have had no idea who I was talking about.

But opposing coaches knew. Rival players understood. I was thinking about Emma Huskey, the Lady Purples’ pocket rocket, a 5-foot-3, 110-pound dynamo who never seems to run out of energy.

Calvin was one step ahead of me. Head was joined at the podium by Huskey, the BGHS backcourt battler and junior guard Tanaya Bailey, a slasher and one of the team’s leading scorers. Interviews with other players, particularly on a losing team, are difficult at the state tournament because of logistics and guidelines to protect the players’ privacy.

Random interviews at Rupp Arena were few and far between.

But Emma Huskey was there, and she could encapsulate the Lady Purples’ journey from Thanksgiving to the Sweet Sixteen as well as anybody. Huskey was one of seven seniors, on the BGHS roster, along with teammates LynKaylah James, the standout center who will play at Berea College next season, along with Ava Bennett, Payton Briley, Taniya Fugate, London Lightning and Paris Wardlow.

It was Huskey’s job to represent the Lady Purples, in front of the Fourth Estate, a shrinking entity if there ever was one. Emma knew how to put the team’s 29-8 season into perspective, after district and region championships, again. The Sweet Sixteen is a meat grinder, as Warren Central’s boys found out the next week.

Warren Central had to win twice, in one day, to claim the KHSAA state championship, but the Dragons fell to George Rogers Clark, 43-42, in a game that neutralized Warren Central’s edge in quickness. Both teams had to fight through dead legs to the finish line.

So when Emma and Tanaya showed up with Calvin Head, I knew I was in good shape. (For a succinct quote or two, mind you, not my physical conditioning.)

“Obviously, this isn’t the outcome we wanted,” Huskey said. “I thought we pushed each other, played hard, all season long. I thought we gave it our best shot.”

They did, of course.

And one reason for that, one big reason for that, was Emma Huskey’s presence.

Emma Huskey was born on April 26, 2004, so yes, that means she’s been 18 years old for just about one month. She was born in her native China, and Steve and Jenny Huskey were looking to adopt a girl from China and return with her to the United States.

Steve Huskey, a biology professor at Western Kentucky University, and his wife are both educators, and adopting Emma was a complicated process involving the U.S. Consulate, in Guangzhou, a lot of patience and an even larger sum of cold, hard cash, as Steve Huskey pointed out earlier this month in an interview at Mr. B’s on Scottsville Road.

All the while, Emma Huskey was excelling in academics, too. She had all “A”s during her time at Bowling Green High School. She’s graduated third in her BGHS class and is enrolling at Western Kentucky University this summer.

Emma plans to pursue a pre-medicine curriculum. Her Dad was a baseball player, and a hurdler on his high school track and field squad, in his native Michigan, and Emma tried her hand in several other sports over the years

“Emma became an American citizen once the plane landed on American soil, in Los Angeles,” Steve Huskey said. “She was able to get a birth certificate, citizenship documentation, those sorts of things.

“When Emma was about 8 years old, we adopted her kid sister, Ella, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ella’s adoption was an ‘open adoption.'”

Emma Huskey already has shown some pretty unique athletic prowess, Steve Huskey will tell you. One winter night, when Emma was in kindergarten, Steve says, he handed her a regulation size basketball in the family garage. He’d dribbled it a few times, showing Emma how it was done, and his daughter proved to be a quick study.

“She couldn’t have been a day over 5 years old,” Steve Huskey said, “and she looked up at me, not at the ball, and started dribbling. She said, ‘Like this?’ With her left hand, her right hand, and she wasn’t even looking at me.”

The Huskeys enjoy fishing, and other family activities, and Emma is working this summer at a grocery store. Her little sister, Ella Huskey, is playing recreational basketball but also is interested in drama, art and dance. Emma Huskey returned so quickly, from a dislocated shoulder, in her junior year, that even Calvin Head was impressed.

Before long, Emma Huskey was playing softball, too, and over the last four years, she’s been a middle infielder for the Lady Purples’ softball squad.

In middle school, at Bowling Green Junior High, Emma Huskey was a consummate team player. She was considerably smaller than her basketball teammates, and the photos Steve Huskey shared with me only confirm that reality. Emma would learn how to use her size to her advantage, particularly on the defensive end of the floor.

When she got to Bowling Green High School, Emma became one of Calvin Head’s prize pupils. She didn’t need to take a lot of 3-point shots. The Lady Purples had Ava Bennett and Saniyah Shelton for that role. She became a starter as a sophomore, and was one of the team’s steadiest players during her three years with the varsity. She didn’t shoot a lot, and she was content to let others handle the ball above the top of the key.

No, what Emma Huskey liked, perhaps more than anything, was trying to dig her heels into the court to defend on the perimeter.

And that was one area in which she really excelled.

“I guess, when I was young, I’d say (my size) made me work harder,” Emma Huskey said. “I had to find different ways to score. I played with Meadow (Tisdale), LynKaylah (James), Ava (Bennett) … Some of them, like Ava and Payton (Briley), I played softball with, too.”

Head, who has just completed his sixth season at BGHS, believes Emma Huskey was his “glue player,” the one who facilitated others in their scoring, while focusing more on defense and passing. In the Lady Purples’ rousing 50-33 victory over Barren County, in the KHSAA 4th Region semifinals, Huskey neutralized the Trojanettes’ Katie Murphy, a talented sophomore playmaker.

Calvin Head brought her to that press conference, too.

On Monday afternoon, Head looked back fondly at Emma Huskey’s four years with the Lady Purples.

“She’s a kid who understood her role, and what she needed to do to succeed,” Head said. “She always sacrificed, for the betterment of the team. She always had a great work ethic.”

That translated to softball, too, where Huskey usually led off while playing shortstop or second base. In her senior year, just completed earlier this month, Emma batted .321 with seven extra-base hits and 14 RBI. A lot of teams played more games than Bowling Green, because Coach Demont Franklin had to rely on multi-sport athletes, particularly Huskey and her basketball teammates.

Huskey has tried other sports, too. With mixed results.

“I’m not very good at soccer,” she admitted.

Emma Huskey spoke at her school’s graduation ceremony, earlier this month, and she put a lot of stock into being a leader for her senior year in high school.

She knew it was going to be her final few months in the arena, and she wanted to make them count.

“Being a senior, you have to set higher standards and expectations,” Huskey said. “I feel like more eyes were on me, or us, as a group of seniors. We are the ones who the coaches hold most accountable and we are responsible for many things that happen within the team.

“I always try to encourage the younger ones, and work hard in everything I do.”

That was obvious in March, when the Lady Purples’ basketball team celebrated a resounding victory over Franklin-Simpson High School in the KHSAA 4th Region championship game at WKU’s E.A. Diddle Arena.

While the public-address man was announcing the all-tournament team, BGHS teammates Meadow Tisdale and Saniyah Shelton grabbed Emma Huskey, by the shoulders, and brought her to the court for photos.

It was a poignant moment. And an emotional one for Emma, and, yes, me too.

I teared up. I sure did. Emma said she did, too.

“I’ve never coached anyone like Emma Huskey,” Head said. “I’m not sure I ever will.”

Good job, Emma. You did your team, your school, and your city proud.