By Terry Mosher

Editor, Sports Paper

You are influenced by the environment you live in, which almost makes it natural for children of coaches to become good at the sport their parent is involved with.

So you would expect Kelsey Callaghan to become good at basketball since her father – John Callaghan – has lived it also as a player and as longtime coach at South Kitsap.

And that expectation would be right on. Kelsey Callaghan, a junior, is in her second year as the starting point guard for South Kitsap, which again this year is making a serious run for a berth at 4A state.

“I love the girl,’ says Megan Murray, coach and a director of Total Package Hoops, a local select basketball organization that Callaghan has played for. “She’s full of energy. She played really, really well this past spring and summer. She’s just really aggressive and knows a lot about the game of basketball.”

That also should not come as a surprise. She has been following her dad around the gym since she was able to walk. And she not only has played the sport – and soccer as well – since she was very young, but has been a sort of gym rat, always shooting around during her dad’s practices. She even served as ball girl for several years for the South Kitsap boy’s high school team John Callaghan coaches.

“I wish I had her on my team,” says John Callaghan. “She’s tough. When Kelsey puts her mind to something, I would not put anything past her. She might be a small package (5-foot-3 when she stretches out), but she’ s not a small package in her mind.”

Mark Lutzenhiser, the girls basketball coach at SK, knows how valuable Callaghan is to the team. All teams need a good point guard that can handle the ball well under pressure, see the floor well and direct traffic as well as play good defense.

That describes Callaghan for Lutzenhiser.

“I’m not sure we would have been successful as we were last year without her,” says Lutzenhiser. “She’s one of the best ball-handling guards I ever coached. She is the product of her upbringing. The fact is she loves the game. My kids love the game, but they don’t love playing it. She does.”

Lutzenhiser says that coaches’ kids learn the game they are around all the time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are all good at it. Or, like he says about his own kids, that they love to play it.

But Callaghan genuinely loves the game.

“I think the gym is my second home,” says Callaghan.” I’m always up at the gym. When I was little – really little – I was always at Marcus (Whitman Junior High), where her father is a PE teacher). Once he (her dad) started coaching at South, I was always at the South Kitsap gym. I was their little ball girl. When they went to state, me and my brother (Ryley) swept the floor. That was cool.”

Callaghan has been involved in soccer and basketball ever since she can remember. She played outside midfielder on this past season’s SK team that made the state 4A quarterfinals, and made second team All-Narrows League.

“She’s one of those players who could have played anywhere,” says Julie Cain, SK soccer coach. “She’s so athletic and reads the field so well. She’s just really a great defender.”

The other thing Cain likes about Callaghan is her determination to get better. She wants to be coached and if there is something new to learn, Callaghan is the first to ask how to do it. And then she goes out and does it well.

Her skills on both ends of the basketball floor helps her be an offensive threat as well as a good defender in soccer, which enabled Cain to use her as an attacker on offense.

“She can take a player one-on-one and attack very well,” says Cain, who adds Callaghan could be a team captain next season.

Murray sees the same thing during the select basketball season. Callaghan, who admits to being 5-3 “On a good day.” can go up against much taller basketball players and compete well.

“She probably matched up this summer with no one smaller than 5-5 or 5-6 and she did well,” says Murray. “She plays tough. It’s funny, this past summer she got tangled up for a rebound with a girl about 6-1 who was just built solid and the 6-1 girl didn’t get off the floor. But Kelsey did. She’s in there banging with the big girls and it’s her who jumps up off the floor.”

Callaghan has always been the shortest player coming up through the ranks of SKYA or pee wee basketball to select ball, junior high and now high school. But the lack of height doesn’t slow her down. It just makes her tougher.

She has played point guard all the way through because she is smaller. And playing the point in select ball with Total Package has really helped her.

“I go up against a lot of good talent,” she says, “and that makes me a better player. And it helps you with your fundamentals when you have defense on you that have talent. You have to pick up your game, have to be quicker with better moves and think faster. Everything comes quicker.”

The part of her game that may surprise people is just how quick she really is. That, she says, comes from her dad.

“I was just kind of blessed with that,” Callaghan says. She has also been blessed with an atmosphere that encourages sports. Her mother has been a soccer player, her father a basketball player, and that has led her to both sports. It also has helped that the Callaghan’s have a hoop on a half-court in their front lawn. It’s there that she and her brother, an 8th-grader at Marcus, battle on and hone their game.

“Oh, we play all the time,” says Callaghan. “We have to cut the game short sometimes because we hurt each other or get too feisty and our parents come out and tell us to stop playing. But we love it.”

John Callaghan says his daughter is like a sponge, soaking up all the information she can.

“Kelsey is a smart kid,” says John Callaghan of his daughter, a 3.7 grade-point average student. “I remember when she was a little girl and driving home from a game and she was telling me, ‘You got to play those guys on the bench.’ She understands the game. She could be a good coach some day, if that is what she wants to do.”

Callaghan was on two teams at Marcus Junior High that won county championships and was voted both years the team MVP.

“I’ve never coached a player who is as good a ball-handler, boys or girls,” says Lutzenhiser. “Pound for pound, she is really aggressive. She just loves to play and does not back off from anybody.”