From the AJC …
Kayla Lewis won three state championships at Southwest DeKalb. Marcus Thornton’s dream of winning just one at Westlake ended early in the state finals when a freak injury in warm-ups kept him mostly on the bench for the biggest game of his life. They didn’t have the same ending to their high school careers, but Lewis and Thornton dominated their senior seasons and finished in the same place — as Georgia’s girls and boys basketball players of the year.
Still on crutches from the severely sprained ankle suffered in the Class AAAAA boys championship game, Thornton is beginning to feel better.
“It’s over, and I can’t look back now,” Thornton said of the injury and the loss to Milton in the finals. “With time and the things family and friends have told me, that’s kept me going. This was still a special year. Now, I’m looking ahead.”
Thornton averaged 23.5 points, 12 rebounds and four blocked shots per game for Westlake, a South Fulton school that finished 30-3. He has signed with Clemson.
A 6-foot-9 power forward, Thornton compiled career statistics that included more than 1,500 points and 1,000 rebounds. He reached the semifinals or better in each of his three seasons as a starter. He has a 3.7 GPA.
“He left a legacy of being a true student-athlete,” Westlake coach Darron Rogers said. “Some people forget that’s what it’s about. He sets a good role model for everybody else in the state.”
Thornton believed he was a late-bloomer.
“I had a few people tell me how far I had come from a skinny kid in the ninth grade,” Thornton said. “I wasn’t aggressive back then. I let people get in my head. Even last year, if I was told I’d win Mr. Georgia Basketball, that would’ve been crazy to think.”
Lewis, a 5-foot-11 power forward, has begun to believe that her career has been a destiny.
A day after Southwest DeKalb won the girls Class AAAA title, she opened a time capsule she made in the fifth grade.
Inside she found her first pair of basketball shoes and a comic strip she drew and colored that showed her being interviewed by ESPN’s Dick Vitale after winning a national title in college. She remembered that part.
What she didn’t recall was coloring her uniform blue and orange — the colors of the University of Florida. That’s where she has signed to play next season, which is a coincidence.
“I had destined myself for something I didn’t know would happen,” she said.
As a senior, Lewis averaged 14.5 points and 6.9 rebounds. That’s the highest scoring total during the past eight seasons for Southwest DeKalb.
Lewis can dunk a basketball. Not doing it in a game is probably the only high school goal she failed to achieve.
Lewis felt she had accomplished enough to open the box, though.
“I was ending my career at a high point, so I felt like I could finally look in,” she said. “It was a long journey from a 10-year-old dreamer to an 18-year-old who is going to be a D-I player and always in the Georgia history books for all we accomplished at Southwest.”
TO FIND OUT WHO WON METRO GO TO GAPREPNEWS.COM …
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