The 5-foot-8, sophomore guard Ta’Kenya Nixon was baffled when kids at Kreitner Elementary School in Collinsville thought she was “really tall.”

Nixon, the second shortest player on the Eastern women’s basketball team, is not used to being considered “tall” at all.

Then again, none of the players on the team are used to being role models for elementary school kids either – or role models in general, sophomore guard Kelsey Wyss said.

“You don’t think of yourself as anybody and then they look at you like you’re a big somebody,” Wyss said.

Nixon said all of the kids looked up to the players as role models even though they did not know them to begin with.

“One minute they don’t know you, the next minute they love you,” Nixon said.

The team made the stop to visit the kids at Kreitner prior to a game against Southern-Illinois Edwardsville in early January.

There, the team read to classes and had a basketball clinic during the physical education period of the school day.

“It was fun to show them the drills that we do and to see their eyes get bigger than snowballs,” head coach Brady Sallee said.

The dribbling drills that the players are used to performing every day was a struggle for the kids, Wyss said.

“The balls were bigger than the hole between their legs,” Wyss said.

Still, Nixon said seeing the kids do the drills was the best part of the day for her. After the team taught the kids the drills, the players picked a few of the kids to do the drills in front of the other students.

Sallee said it is always fun to see them try even if they are not doing the drill perfectly; however, he said he guarantees one of the kids will perfect it.

“Somewhere in that mix I guarantee you that one of those kids went home and kept trying to do it,” Sallee said. “Maybe two weeks from now they are able to do it a little bit better and maybe 10 years from now I’m recruiting them.”

Sallee said he hopes the team made that kind of impact on the kids, whether it is inspiring them to work on their basketball skills or to study harder.

One of the major talking points was preaching to the kids the importance of getting an education, Nixon said, and going to college.

“A lot of them didn’t know what (college) was at first,” Nixon said.

The players could show the kids that there is more than one way to get to college. Nixon said basketball is just one of the ways.

Wyss said athletics is a good way to get into college, but education comes first.

“Athletics will get you somewhere but you can’t get there without getting through school,” Wyss said. “Your grades are the most important thing.”

Sallee said a message like that coming from his players is strong because they cannot play without keeping their grades up.

“For that school, a lot of those kids maybe won’t even be looked at that way or be pushed toward doing that,” Sallee said.

Kreitner Elementary School is 60 percent Hispanic and to many students English is a second language.

The free lunch program is offered to 92 percent of the school, which has many students coming from low-income families.

Sallee said he hopes the team got through to the kids with the message of, “We were once right where you are.”

Nixon and Wyss said they were inspired to be role models for the students at Kreitner. It is nice on the other end, to be looked up to, Sallee said.

“It’s fun sometimes for our kids to be in a situation where they get to be looked at with those kinds of eyes,” Sallee said.

Also, Sallee said the students at Kreitner had as big of an impact on the team as the team had on the kids.

Sallee said he hopes the team will get to do things in the community more often.

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-7944 or admcnamee@eiu.edu

Ta’Kenya Nixon, a sophomore guard, looks to pass the ball during a women’s basketball game against Eastern Kentucky Jan. 13 in Lantz Arena. The Panthers will host Tennessee Tech Thursday. (Audrey Sawyer/The Daily Eastern News)

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