Once a shy newcomer, Richardson has helped make Cannon girls basketball a contender
PART 1
C Jemal Horton
CONCORD – The biggest, best and most ballyhooed player on the team was also its most bashful.
C. JEMAL HORTON
jhorton@independenttribune.com
It was a contradiction, if there ever was one.
Here Reigan Richardson was, an amazingly talented athlete who was already one of the most recognized 10th-grade girls basketball players in the United States. She stood 6-feet tall, and every high school in North Carolina – probably every college here, too – would’ve loved to have had her gracing its campus.
But in the fall of 2018, Richardson had left an uber-successful Hickory Ridge program and taken her talents to the private world of Cannon School, which wasn’t exactly a place known for its stellar girls basketball team.
In the 10 seasons before Richardson’s arrival, the Cougars had experienced just one winning season – 2013-14, when they slid in at 12-11. Cannon was definitely fortunate to have a player of Richardson’s magnitude on the roster.
Yet Richardson was terrified to say a word to anyone affiliated with the team.
“When we got her her sophomore year, she was super quiet and shy,” Cannon girls basketball coach Kelvin Drakeford said of Richardson. “She would barely speak. A couple weeks went by, and I was like, ‘Does this girl like me? Is she going to enjoy it here?’”
However, Richardson’s game did the talking for her, and what it was saying – screaming – was that she was quite comfortable in her new environment.
She was “must-see” every game. Despite the difference in talent, she shared the ball with her teammates. Part of it was her way of gelling with them, but the biggest part was that it was just the way she was as a player: She wanted everyone to look good.
Slowly, Richardson began to reveal more than her considerable basketball skills. She was smiling. She was talking. That turned into praising, directing, gently correcting her teammates.
And the results were undeniable.
That 2018-19 season, Richardson led the Cougars in every major statistical category and helped them reach the playoffs for the first time since 2013-14.
Even though she's listed as a guard, Reigan Richardson(3) leads Cannon School in rebounding with nearly 11 per game.
She was definitely a Cougar now, and the program was better for it, and it began a run of high-level play that continues today, with once-struggling Cannon now having an honest-to-goodness chance to win a league title. And perhaps more.
Now, it seems like eons ago that Richardson was a soft-spoken player in a beleaguered basketball program.
New normal
These days, Cannon is one of the best teams in the Charlotte Independent Schools Athletic Association and also the state. Heading into Tuesday, for example, the Cougars had already won four of their six games while playing a challenging non-conference schedule.
No one comes into the Cannon gym now and expects the girls game to only be a necessary evil before the highly regarded Cougar boys take the floor. The Cannon girls are an action-packed club that threatens to win each night.
Richardson, of course, is a big reason for the transformation, and people far and wide know that.
Drakeford took over the program the year before Richardson arrived, and he had big dreams. He, too, knew what Cannon used to be, and he was determined to change it. His first season, the Cougars finished 4-15, which actually surpassed the previous year’s win total by three games, and they’d come close in several contests.
A few small improvements, and the Cougars would eventually move to a higher level.
Then again, one major improvement – like adding a nationally ranked college recruit – would really expedite the process.
“I think getting a player like Reigan Richardson has helped tremendously,” Drakeford said. “I think we were OK; we had some good players and good pieces. I think we needed a go-to player like Reigan, who has helped other people get better.
“Now, people think Reigan Richardson, they think Cannon, which ultimately, people are like, ‘What do they have going on over there?’ And some become interested in the school.
“It’s been huge for our girls program. The thing was essentially dead before we got it. In our first year, we had 15 girls come out. And then Reigan came the second year – the twins, Gabby and Zoe Edwards came over as well. From there, it’s just taken off.”
