TOLEDO, Ohio — The Toledo Christian girls basketball team clinched a share of the Toledo Area Athletic Conference title this week and right now they’re rolling.
Kendall Braden came in to high school with a ton of expectations. College coaches across the country knew her name before she was even a freshman.
Now in her sophomore year at Toledo Christian, she’s coming in to her own.
This week, she scored 25 points and had 9 rebounds in a high profile game against Ottawa-Glandorf and on Thursday night she scored 26 points in their win against Northwood.
"I've grown a lot. Leadership is a big quality," said Braden. "I'm very fortunate to have great teammates, great coaches, and trainer. I'm excited to get my reps up and all this training and hard work that I've been doing for a long time now, it's finally coming into play."
"I see a lot of growth in her," said head coach Tim Wensink. "One: gelling with the teammates. Two: just her experience that she's starting to gain and the confidence that she's gaining. We saw it Tuesday night at [Ottawa-Glandorf]. She wanted the ball in her hands and she got to a lot of good spots, read it and did a great job on her jumpshot."
This Toledo Christian team has high expectations and right now they’re in a rhythm. But they believe they’re primed to make a deep state playoff run.
"We're having really fun," said Braden. "We're discovering just how much our chemistry is starting to build up and it's really fun. We're all friends on this team, we've known each other for a long time which is really good for us. We're just going out there and playing. We work really hard in practice so it's fun when it's game time."
"I'm really confident that we can really make a run," said Wensink. "But you got to get better everyday and that's what we want to do."
Kendall Braden from Toledo Christian is our Dave's Running Athlete of the Week.