Courtney Vandersloot, a former Kentwood High School star, won the WNBA title on Sunday as the point guard for the Chicago Sky.<\/p>\n
Vandersloot finished with 10 points,15 assists and nine rebounds as Chicago beat the Phoenix Mercury 80-74 in Game 4 of the best-of-five series for its first title.<\/p>\n
The 5-foot-8 Vandersloot, a 2007 Kentwood graduate, played for Gonzaga University in Spokane before being drafted third overall in the 2011 WNBA draft by Chicago. At Kentwood, she led the Conquerors to a 28-1 mark her senior season and a third-place finish at state.<\/p>\n
Allie Quigley scored 26 points and Candace Parker added 16 points, 13 rebounds and five assists to help Chicago to the home victory. Vandersloot married Quigley in 2018.<\/p>\n
“Together, we made a commitment to this team and this franchise because we got a taste early of what it felt like to be in the finals,” said Vandersloot, referring to the 2014 matchup versus the Mercury, which the Sky lost in a three-game sweep, according to a Chicago Tribune <\/a>story<\/a>. “We knew if we got the right people that we could be in this moment and it would be special here.<\/p>\n “We didn’t want to go seeking this feeling. We wanted to do it here and we knew we had what it takes. We just needed a few more pieces.”<\/p>\n One of the biggest pieces turned out to be the February signing of Parker, a free agent and a two-time league MVP with the Los Angeles Sparks.<\/p>\n Vandersloot, 32, averaged 13 points and 10.2 assists in 10 playoff games. In the regular season, Vandersloot averaged 10.5 points and 8.6 assists, which led the league, a feat she has accomplished five consecutive seasons. She also holds the league record for most assists in a game with 18, set in 2020.<\/p>\n At Kentwood, Vandersloot led the state in scoring as a senior when she averaged 26.0 points, 7.0 assists, 5.0 rebounds and 5.0 steals per game.<\/p>\n Nicknamed “Sloot,” she is the daughter of Bill and Jan Vandersloot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Finishes with 10 points, 15 assists, nine rebounds in win over Phoenix <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":52329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-52328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52328"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=52328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}