By Michael Wojtichiw
When one thinks of Chicago Public League girls basketball, schools like Whitney Young, Marshall, Kenwood and Simeon all come to mind. But now there’s a school on the city’s Southwest side that’s making a name for itself, one that’s somewhat comes out of nowhere: Kelly High School.
When coach Hector Hernandez took over as the school’s head coach four years ago, the team was in the Green Division, the lowest division a Public League school can compete in. In the years since, Hernandez and his Trojans have won three conference titles in four years, moving from the Green Central to the Blue Central to the White Central and thanks to its conference title this season, the program will be making its first-ever appearance in the Public League’s highest division next season, when it joins the Red Central/South.
“When the seniors I have now came in as freshmen, I knew I had something special,” he said. “This senior class, in the past three years, has only lost a handful of games.
“They’re used to winning.”
“We’ve improved so much in the past couple years,” said senior captain Griselda Gurrola, who has been on the varsity squad for four years. “It’s really come down to a lot of dedication. We love practicing and our coaches have really helped us improve so much.”
The Trojans’ three conference titles in four seasons are impressive, but the way in which they’ve accomplished it may be even more so. The team went undefeated during the shortened 2020-21 season, finishing 9-0 last year and won its first 14 wins this season before Dyett broke its 25-game winning streak with an overtime win Jan. 14.
The Trojans, who dropped to 17-2 after losing its first-ever CPS Playoff game in program history to Westinghouse on Jan. 25, have had their success despite lacking one thing that’s key to many programs’ success.
With many of the girls not being much taller than 5-foot-4, the players and Hernandez have had to use their quickness and speed to their advantage.
“We realized we weren’t going to win by playing down low, playing a slow pace,” he said. “I have a bunch of soccer players and they can run for days. So my mentality was to press all game, press all day. We press, we get steals, we make layups.”
“We actually use our lack of height to an advantage,” senior Blanca Ocotoxle said. “A lot of teams see us and underestimate us and think that we can’t do certain things, but that pushes us even more. We do have agility and are often faster, but we never stop running.”
One thing that’s helped the team be able to run the system he’s implemented is that many of his players are athletes in other sports, namely players on the girls soccer team. So when the season comes about, he knows that their conditioning will be up to form.
With the pace the team likes to play and the defensive pressure it likes to put on opponents, it’s no shock that the Trojans are averaging nearly 23 steals per game. The truly impressive part is that the squad isn’t very turnover-prone, holding more than a 2:1 steal-to-turnover ratio.
“I know we’re going to be shorter, I know we’re going to be lighter, I know we’re going to be smaller, we just have to play quick,” the coach said.
“We’re smaller, but we’re faster,” Gurrola said.
The talk of the Trojans’ success has made waves around the school as well. In the past, only parents and maybe a scattering of friends attended many of the girls’ games. But as the team kept winning games, more and more students took notice and started coming to games.
Especially after not being able to play in front of fans last season due to the pandemic, having students, faculty and parents attending their games this year has been something that the team has really looked to for inspiration.
In fact, one could probably say it’s helped fuel their fire and been somewhat of a catalyst to their success.
“A lot of people have come to our games and told us ‘wow you guys are really good,'” Ocotoxle said. “Last year’s season, going through Covid, it didn’t feel like a real game because we weren’t allowed to have fans, so it felt like a normal practice.
“There have been multiple times where the whole crowd is cheering us on, hyping us up and it just wants us to be better.”
For as great as the past two seasons have gone, it hasn’t been all about being successful on the court for the Kelly Trojans. They’ve been able to have some fun off of it as a team as well.
Last season, Adrienne Scherenzel-Curry, the Chicago Bulls’ Vice President of Community Relations and Executive Director of the Chicago Bulls Charities, heard about the success the Kelly girls were having and got in contact with Hernandez. Hernandez and his team were very grateful and honored that the city’s NBA franchise took an interest with them and thought it was the last time they’d hear from the Bulls.
They were wrong.
The Bulls reached out to Hernandez again this year and they combined to do something a little special for the squad.
Then one day in December, Hernandez got the team together for a trip to 167 Green Street in the West Loop.
“We got there and our coach was putting us through some work and practice and told us to turn around,” junior Laura Sircher said. “And then the Bulls were just walking in. It was crazy.”
The group of Bulls players, which included DeMar DeRozan and Lonzo Ball, split the Kelly squad into two teams and had different Bulls players as de facto coaches. The Bulls then led them through some practice stuff before coaching their respective Trojan squads in a scrimmage. They even had DeRozen commenting over a microphone toward the end of the game.
“It was an amazing opportunity for us to have that happen,” senior Alyssa Valdes said. “To have them know who we were and to recognize us like they did was really cool.”
Teams and girls basketball fans across the city and area might not know much about Kelly, but they better start paying attention because the girls are starting to break more barriers every season.
“The Red Division is as good as it gets,” the coach said. “We’re just going to keep putting up a challenge, giving it everything we’ve got.
“It’s amazing. It’s been a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication. It’s all coming to fruition.”
