MARIENVILLE, Pa. (EYT/D9) — Kaylie Rooke has one thought on her mind when she’s on the court for the Forest girls basketball team.
The ball is mine.
The senior forward doesn’t care how she gets it.
Steal. Rebound. Blocked shot. It’s all the same to her.
And she’s been piling up all three.
(Pictured above, Kaylie Rooke)
“What I’m thinking on defense is I want to get that ball. Every time,” Rooke said. “It’s keeping the other team’s points down because every shot could potentially improve their score. That’s my main concern. Stopping somebody from scoring.”
Rooke has been doing just that for the Fires.
At barely 5-foot-7, but long and lanky, Rooke has just always had a knack for getting rebounds and swatting away shots.
It’s become her calling card.
She’s averaging 10.1 rebounds and a staggering 8.3 blocked shots per game this season to go with 8.4 points and three steals per night for Forest.
Rooke, though, doesn’t give those numbers much thought.
If any.
“I’ll be honest with you, it doesn’t really mean that much to me,” she said. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful about my abilities, but at the end of the day, what’s most important is the win for the team. I never look at the stat book.”
Just the scoreboard.
And the scoreboard has agreed with Forest a bit more this season.
The Fires are 3-3 this year, just their second back on the court after a year hiatus because of low numbers in 2021-22.
Rooke was a sophomore that season and turned down an option to play for the boys team.
Instead, she and some other players without a home from East Forest staged practices and scrimmages several times per week to stay sharp.
“It wasn’t a structured thing,” she said. “It was just for some of the girls who still wanted to be out there to get some activity. All of us wanted to be out there playing that year. I definitely missed playing with my team and my girls.”
Still, when the program returned last season, Rooke was on the fence about whether or not to play again.
Rooke’s prime focus has always been on academics and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to divide her time again.
Ultimately, though, her desire to hit the court again won out.
“I’ve always taken to heart that I’m a student-athlete and the student part comes first,” Rooke said. “I was more concerned about academics because junior year is important for a lot of things. That’s when you start preparing your college applications, so that was my primary focus. I was also working at the time, but at the end of the day, I made the decision to play and I don’t regret it.”
Rooke turned in a solid season as a junior.
She’s elevated her game even more now as a senior.
Forest coach Alex Luke named her as one of his captains and Rooke is very much a leader of the team.
“She has been a captain both years I’ve coached the team and she has begun to develop as a leader by example and a leader by words and actions this year,” Luke said. “She works extremely hard at doing things the right way.”
Rooke said the biggest impact she makes as a leader is getting her team ready to play.
And moving on if they make a mistake.
“I really try hard to get them in the right headspace mostly, and then helping them with their skills comes second,” Rooke said. “There’s not a single game where I’m not trying to boost someone’s confidence or reminding them of little things to sort of help them get the jitters out, calming them down when they’re upset on the court, those kinds of things.”
Leadership comes largely natural to Rooke.
So does some of the things she can do on the court.
Rooke admitted she doesn’t practice blocking shots. It’s just something she has always been able to do — perhaps not at the prodigious rate of rejections she is stacking up this season — but she’s always had the ability.
“Defense has always been my thing,” Rooke said. “I kind of just work with what I’m given. I have height and length, so I kind of found my game and honed it. It just comes to me.”
So does rebounding, which she said is mostly desire.
Few have the drive that Rooke has on the court.
“Again, it’s just a matter of wanting that ball,” she said. “I want that ball. What I’m saying in my head, basically is, ‘Give it to me. I want it.’
Rooke has a clear picture of what she wants for the future, too.
She will not play basketball in college — this season is it for her. She intends on attending Bucknell University to study chemistry. Eventually, she wants to become a pharmacist.
“Something I’ve never questioned before in my entire career of playing was I knew I didn’t want to play in college,” Rooke said. “I still feel that way. As much as I love the game, what I really love is playing with the girls I’m playing with now. That’s what makes it worth it to me.”
Rooke and her teammates are also playing with a mighty big chip on their shoulders.
Few outside of East and West Forest, the two schools that make up the sports teams at Forest, have given the Fires much of a chance to win games this season.
Or even be competitive in them.
Rooke wants to prove all of those people wrong.
One rebound, steal and swat at a time.
“We want to earn respect in the eyes of the public,” she said. “I mean, our program just recently got back to functioning again and a lot of people come into games against Forest thinking it’s going to be super easy. They think they have a win before they even start the game. We want to change that mentality that people have. We talk about that all the time and we’re going to fight until the end.”
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