One of the Girls’ Sweet 16’s best players once gave up the game
We don’t know how Franklin County will fare in the Mingua Beef Jerky/KHSAA Girls’ Sweet 16 this week or how the Miss Basketball voting — to be announced later this month — will turn out.
We do know that the Lady Flyers’ Brooklynn Miles ranks among the greatest players to wear the navy and gold candy stripe warm-ups and play in the 11th Region.
“I tell people all time, she’s never lost a district game, and I think she’s only lost three games in the 11th Region in five years, six years, something like that. So, that’s not bad,” Franklin County Coach Joey Thacker joked. “I don’t know who’s going to win Miss Basketball, but I know nobody has the résumé that she’s got.”
Miles, a 5-6 point guard, was recently voted 11th Region’s player of the year by the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches. That makes her a Miss Basketball candidate. She committed to Tennessee last summer after being heralded as a three-star recruit, according to ESPN.com’s ratings.
Miles has seemingly been around forever. She got playing time as a seventh-grader on Thacker’s 2017 state finalist team, and she started as an eighth-grader when they went back to the Sweet 16 finals for another try.
That’s two region titles and two state finals before she reached high school. She has helped lead her team to back-to-back region championships since. It might have been a three-peat if not for Scott County’s defense on Miles’ shot in the closing seconds of the 2019 region finals. Franklin County lost by one point.
Time away
It’s hard to believe given the success she has had and the accolades she has received over the years, but there was a time when Miles decided to give up basketball. She sat out her entire freshman year.
She admits now that she took the game for granted. The reasons for walking away were personal. They included a transfer to a new school for a time.
“It wasn’t that hard when I stepped away, the way my mindset was back then,” Miles said after the Lady Flyers claimed their fifth 11th Region title in seven years last month. “But when I came back, it wasn’t hard, either. I’m not going to lie to you.”
Miles returned to Franklin County.
Basketball was new again.
“I don’t take it for granted anymore,” Miles said. “I know that it’s what I do. It’s what I love. And I can be the best I can be.”
And Miles has no regrets about walking away.
“Now, it’s part of who I am,” Miles said. “I don’t regret it, because it made me better. It made me value basketball more.”
Thacker said he saw the difference when she returned.
“I do think she appreciates it more,” Thacker said. “She came back with a burning desire to fit back in and use the talents that God has given her. I think more than anything else, through that whole deal, she learned that it was her identity … being on a team and using the skills that she had to help herself and help others.”
‘Jet-quick floor-leader’
Miles’ recruiting charts describe her best: “athletic lead guard with unselfish persona motors in transition game, a speed merchant,” said ESPN.com analyst Dan Olsen. “Jet-quick floor-leader with explosive attack in uptempo game,” said another post.
For her career, Miles has 2,257 points, 472 rebounds, 616 assists and 443 steals in 149 games. That works out to 15 points, four assists and three steals per game since seventh grade. She’s only the third Lady Flyer to surpass 2,000 points for her career, along with Allison Story and Princess Stewart, and ranks second all-time on the career points list.
Last season, she was the 11th Region coaches’ player of the year and a Herald-Leader first-team all-stater as a junior. Coming into 2021, she was voted the Herald-Leader’s preseason No. 1 player in its annual survey of coaches.
This season, Miles has averaged 16.3 points, 5.6 assists and 3.3 steals per game, according to school records.
Playing for Thacker, Miles knows what it means to have Franklin County across her jersey.
“He just always tells us to represent what was before us. Everything before us was important,” Miles said. “Everyone represents what’s on your shirt.”
The Lady Flyers reached Sweet 16 finals in 1980, 2016 and 2017, but they have never claimed the top prize.
To do so this week, they’ll need to overcome South Laurel in the first round and then possibly face an Anderson County team in the quarterfinals who thrashed them 64-32 at home on Jan. 8.
When the game against South Laurel begins at 5 p.m. Wednesday, it will have been 11 days since Franklin County played for the 11th Region title. Miles wasn’t bothered by the layoff.
“We’re definitely going to use it wisely, trust me,” Miles said on March 27. “Coach Thacker probably has a lot of plans for us for the next two weeks. It doesn’t exactly bother us. It gives us more motivation. …
“We’re definitely going hard this year.”
