Kamri Sears signed a basketball scholarship with Wallace State last week. Sears is pictured with her parents, coaches and supporters during the signing. Photo by Bart Moss.

By Bart Moss

For the FCT

Kamri Sears has been a fixture on the Tharptown varsity girl’s basketball team since the eighth grade.

She has been a dominating force in the lane for the Wildcats, amassing more than 1,700 career points and averaging eight rebounds per game.

Last week Sears was rewarded for that effort inking a basketball scholarship with the Wallace State Lions in Hanceville.

“It is so exciting to be able to continue to play the sport I love and get my education paid for,” Sears said.

“I’ve already been to Wallace and worked out with the current team some. I can’t wait to get there full time and start a new chapter in my life.”

Sears will have to make some big adjustments to her game. She has dominated many of her 1A opponents in the paint with her size and quickness, but the junior college level will present a new challenge – Sears will have to become a shooting guard.

“It will be a hard transition,” Sears explained.

“In high school, I was always a little bigger than most of the girls we played against. In junior college, I will actually be too small to play inside. I have to learn to be a guard.”

But playing the guard position will not be totally foreign to Sears, according to her high school coach Chad Green.

“Kamri can handle the basketball and shoot from the outside,” Green said.

“We have called on her to do both at times. It wasn’t the central part of her game but she is capable of it. She will also be a great rebounding option on the back side.”

Green said he was proud of what Sears has accomplished.

“She had a good career for us,” said Green. “She’s improved every year. We will miss her athletic ability.”

Sears said she has always wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and play college basketball. Her father, Wayne Sears, was a standout basketball player for Russellville and Northeast Mississippi Junior College in the 1980s.

“Daddy never put pressure on me to play basketball,” Sears said.

“He always said he would be happy no matter what I did. But he instilled in me the love of the game.”

Sears will have to wait a few months before joining her new teammates. For now, however, she will have to work out on her own to stay in basketball shape and learn a new position.

“That’s the hardest part,” Sears said, “making myself work out every day. But, my goal is to work hard and be good enough to be a team leader and captain by my sophomore season. I can’t wait to get started.”

Sears said she wants to major in education and become a teacher and coach upon graduating from college.