By MIKE MARSEE

Contributing Writer

 

How well do you know Grace Mbugua?

If you follow high school basketball, you probably know that Mbugua is the top player in this area and one of the top girls players in the state.

There is much more to the Danville Christian Academy senior than that, however. She is a dominant player today, a possible star of tomorrow, perhaps a future radiologist, a student, a friend, a role model and most important to her, a Christian.

Her faith has been her foundation through good times and bad as her life has taken turns she could never have imagined when she came to the United States from Kenya almost seven years ago.

“My faith is what drives me, and I don’t think I would be where I am without having faith in God,” Mbugua said.

Few people outside the close-knit DCA community know anything about Mbugua beyond what they see on the basketball court, and she knows that.

So she and her coach, Billy Inmon, peeled back some of the layers to allow the rest of us to get to know the girl known as “Baby” to her coaches, teammates and classmates a little better as she leads the Lady Warriors in their pursuit of a second consecutive 12th Region championship.

 

Baby’s got game

 

For starters, Mbugua can play basketball like few others. She is one of the best girls to ever play the game at the high school level in this area, and she is still adding to her skill set.

The 6-4 Mbugua led the state in rebounding in each of the past three seasons and was a top-five scorer last year when DCA won its first 12th Region championship. And while it is unlikely she will repeat either of those feats this season, she has again put up impressive numbers since returning from knee surgery at midseason.

She was named the 12th Region Player of the Year by the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches last week, putting her on the list of candidates for this year’s Miss Basketball award.

She signed with Louisville in November and is one of four senior girls in Kentucky schools committed to play for a power conference school in Division I, and she is certainly one of the top girls ever to play in this area.

“When she got (to the U.S.) she had never played organized basketball. So for her to have made that type of transition from never playing to doing this, that’s a miracle unto itself,” Inmon said.

Mbugua barely knew how to shoot a basketball when she came to the U.S. as a 12-year-old, but now she plays the game with an ease and fluidity that often separates great players from those who are very good.

Entering the postseason, Mbugua averaged 21.9 points and 13.2 rebounds and ranked eighth in the state in rebounding and 12th in scoring. She was shooting 53 percent from the field and 71 percent from the free throw line.

She had 2,335 career points and 1,725 career rebounds, and had she not been injured she might have threatened the state record of 1,978 career rebounds set in 1984 by Sherry Gish of Muhlenberg Central.

“Grace is an incredible talent who brings a diverse skill set and tenacity to the court,” Louisville coach Jeff Walz said. “She can play multiple positions and provide matchup problems for her opponents. On offense, she can attack off the bounce or step behind the 3-point line to display her shooting prowess. On the defensive end, she alters shots and is a formidable inside presence with her pursuit of rebounds and putbacks.”

Mbugua grew noticeably in both strength and skill in her junior year, which coincided with the opening of the first weight room at her school.

“It’s changed the way I play and my confidence, knowing that I can compete against stronger girls … and I’m not just limited to being a post. I can also play as a guard, too, with my strength and ball-handling work.”

She said that when it comes to the growth of her game, she is most proud of having learned to master multiple positions.

“Just being able to be a player, not a position,” Mbugua said. “Being tall is one thing, but being tall and strong and Coach has always trained me as a guard ever since I came here, so that’s another thing.”

 

Baby’s big night

Mbugua rocketed up the recruiting rankings last year to become the No. 3-ranked player in Kentucky at the time of her signing, and she was ranked 78th nationally and 17th among power forwards.

But those rankings didn’t mean as much to Walz as what he saw at Rupp Arena when Mbugua was warming up for DCA’s first-round game in the Girls Sweet 16 last year.

Every coach in the building was salivating after Mbugua’s 34-point, 14-rebound performance in the Lady Warriors’ narrow loss to Cooper, but Walz was sold on her before the game began.

Inmon said Walz told him that Mbugua’s sudden switch to her left hand and effortless Eurostep to work around a teammate who had pulled up in the layup line were all he needed to see to move from his seat to one closer to courtside.

“He was the first one to call, the next morning after the state game,” Inmon said. “I didn’t even ask him how he got (my number), but he called me and I was out of it … and I was saying, ‘Walz, Walz,’ and my wife Jennifer was like, ‘I think that’s that coach at Louisville. You’d better answer it.”

Walz had contacted a coach at Liberty, the school Mbugua had committed to prior to her freshman year before calling Inmon, and both Inmon and Mbugua said the player was already considering reopening her recruitment.

Walz doggedly pursued Mbugua, whom he said could be one of the best players to come out of Kentucky.

“Her work ethic is unmatched and with her dedication to skill development, she will no doubt have an immediate impact on our team,” Walz said. “Our staff worked tirelessly to recruit and secure Baby, as she is arguably one of the best players to ever come out of our state.

Mbugua said she never considered that state tournament game as the opportunity it was until coaches from some of the top programs in the country started calling.

“I was very nervous for the game. I never was thinking, ‘Hey, this is my big shot,’” she said.

 

Baby’s big move

 

Dennis and Bettieh Mbugua allowed their three daughters to come to America for opportunities they would never have had in Kenya. Basketball has opened doors for them, but it was never about athletics.

“There’s not the opportunities for women there,” Inmon said. “They’re very intelligent people, and they wanted more for their daughters. They wanted a Christian environment and a college education.”

There is significant poverty in Kenya, but Mbugua said her family had “a normal life” in the capital of Nairobi.

“There are some parts where people are struggling, but I was blessed,” she said. “I was raised in a good home, never had to wonder where my next meal would come from. Both my parents are very hard-working people, they own a real estate agency. And I went to a private school back home.”

Even so, girls and boys are treated differently in schools and elsewhere, and there are ceilings she likely would never have cracked.

“It’s just not like it is here,” Inmon said.

Older sisters Esther and Ruth were already in the U.S. when Grace and her parents chose DCA over a school in Brooklyn, N.Y. after workers with a missionary organization attempting to help girls in Kenya gave them a list of schools authorized to accept students with F1 student visas, which are typically private schools.

Her parents stayed for a couple of months to help her get settled, then returned to Kenya. Her mother has visited a couple of times since.

“It was a huge shock, but I just had faith in God and trusted him in everything,” she said. “And I’m thankful for the sacrifice my parents made (to let) their 12-year-old come to another continent.”

Inmon said Mbugua’s parents, with no real knowledge of Kentucky at the time, had concerns about everything from racism to loneliness.

“I told her mom, ‘Listen, you’re not going to have these issues here. She’s going to be a rock star here. They’re going to love her,’” he said. “And they came and they were just amazed.”

Mbugua said it didn’t take long for her and her parents to feel at ease.

“We came here and fell in love with Coach Billy and his wife, and they felt comfortable leaving me here with a good Christian house mom,” she said.

The “house mom,” Debby Jorgensen said it took some time for the two of them to connect.

“Customs are so different between Kenya and here, and they don’t talk to adults there. She’d be sitting right here and I’d talk, but she never answered me. It took about a month or so and she started answering and really opening up,” Jorgensen said.

After Mbugua’s sixth-grade year, Ruth was moved from a school in North Carolina where she was unhappy to DCA for her final two years of high school.

Ruth played two seasons at Division II Carson-Newman before transferring last summer to Jackson State, where she became the first DCA graduate to play Division I basketball. Esther Mbugua, the oldest sister, is a teacher of English as a second language in Tennessee.

At the time of her commitment to Liberty, Grace became only the second girl from Kenya to earn a full Division I basketball scholarship offer in the U.S.

 

Baby’s big faith

 

Spend just a few minutes with Mbugua, and it quickly becomes clear that she does not merely give lip service to her Christian faith, a faith that she said has deepened during her time in Danville.

“I was always raised in a Christian home and I was baptized when I was 12, but when I came to Kentucky I think that’s when I really got to understand the Lore and I really got serious with my faith,” she said. “And obviously I’m not a perfect Christian, I have my fall-shorts and fall-backs, but God has been so good to me to where I just always want to know more of him.”

Mbugua’s faith was tested when she suffered a torn knee ligament in June that required surgery, but Inmon said that also allowed her to realize that her identity is not merely as a basketball player.

“So many people were saying so much about her, but it was like, ‘That’s not who I am. This could be taken away from me, but my faith will not be taken away,’” Inmon said.

Inmon, who leads the youth group Mbugua attends at their church, said the self-discipline that Mbugua called upon to push through her rehabilitation after her knee surgery in June first manifested itself in her faith.

“She’s been able to lock in as far as reading her Bible every day, praying every day and searching,” the coach said.

Mbugua said she realized that not everyone she encounters at Louisville or in the rest of her life will share her beliefs, but she won’t check her faith at the door.

“Me and Coach Billy talked about going somewhere where I can be unapologetic about my faith,” she said. “And I think playing at the D-I level, I can use that big stage to glorify God and reach people.”

 

Baby outside the lines

 

If you see Mbugua off the court, chances are you’ll see her with a group of her teammates.

She said her interests are broad and she is open to almost anything – “I just go with the flow” – and she loves spending time with her teammates.

“They’re not just my teammates, they’re my best friends,” she said. “I just enjoy being around people that have helped me get to where I am.”

Inmon said Mbugua has made a tremendous impact at DCA, not only among her peers but also with the youngest students in the K-12 school.

“At DCA the older ones always do a great job of mentoring the younger ones, and they love her,” Inmon said.

Mbugua spent a portion of her summer at Camp Lewis, a summer camp outside Jackson where Inmon volunteers as camp director, and while she couldn’t be physically active so soon after her surgery, she was a hit in the swimming pool and she helped the campers she led win their weeklong competition by helping them memorize the most Bible verses.

Inmon said Mbugua interacts with teens and children in a way she does not with most adults.

“She’s a funny kid,” he said. “When she’s not around adults, sometimes I like going out of the room just to hear her laugh and cut up. It’s hard for her to get past that with adults … but around other kids she’s a riot, and I love it when she opens up like that.”

At home, Jorgensen said their conversations have gotten much deeper over their seven years together.

“When I think back at the difference between now and then, she carries on an adult conversation now, and I can just tell it’s so different,” Jorgensen said. “Now it’s talking about school, about her classes, about the future, about the Lord.”

As for the future, Mbugua said she is considering a career in radiology or a related field.

“And I know Louisville has a good med school, and that’s one of the things that was a factor in me going there,” she said.

 

Baby at work

 

Playing basketball just seven months after a major knee surgery isn’t commonplace, but Mbugua worked tirelessly to salvage some of her senior season and her doctor said at virtually every visit that she was well ahead of schedule.

“God just gave me extra motivation to keep working in physical therapy,” she said. “The days seem long, but the weeks go by so fast whenever you’re in therapy (and) the stuff I had been doing in therapies, I can see it happening on the court.”

She said the rehab was hard, but she has not shied away from hard work since coming to DCA as an unskilled sixth-grader.

“I could barely shoot the ball when I was 12, so I came here and literally had to start from scratch,” she said. “I told Coach I wanted to be the best, but it’s one thing to say it, and the first month I was here was a struggle. My parents were here with me, and at first they were saying that if you don’t like this place and the school, we’re just going to go back.”

“And for the first 30 days or so, she either threw up or cried or both every day (at practice),” Inmon added. “She’s done the hard work that people just don’t understand. It doesn’t matter what I give her, she goes and masters it and I give her something harder and she masters that.”

Mbugua will continue to work on her ball-handling and quickness as she prepares to play for Louisville, but her focus has been on helping DCA go even farther than it did last season.

She has played 17 games since returning to action near midseason. She was named most valuable player at the All “A” Classic after leading DCA to the small-school championship.

Next comes the 12th Region Tournament and a chance to return to Rupp Arena and the statewide stage where her life changed a year ago.

“I want to end my senior season with a win,” she said.