RIVERSIDE

Kamryn Fink’s basketball journey began when she was not even two months old.

A Highland girls basketball team that had won 20 games in the 2009-10 season was playing a postseason tournament game at Mid-Prairie High School in Wellman.

Her dad, Jody, was the Huskies coach pacing in front of the team bench that night, just as he does now.

Kamryn was nestled in a baby carrier beside her mom, Karen.

“She slept through it,” Karen says with a laugh.

The memory is Fink legend.

“My mom used to always bring me in my little car seat,” Kamryn says. “She has plenty of stories when I used to sleep through the games.”

Fast forward 15 years or so, and on a cold winter night at Highland High School in rural southeast Iowa, the baby is grown up and the dad is still the coach. Kamryn, who ranks among the state of Iowa’s best in the freshman class, is diving into the second row of the stands for a loose ball. She jumps onto the stage, which is located just behind the baseline at one end of the court, for another ball.

Minutes later, Kamryn, a 5-foot-7 guard who turns into a power forward at times, is fouled as she hits a 3-point shot and a whistle blows. Tweet! It’s three-plus-one.

She slaps hands with teammate Katelyn Thomann, and get this, she starts laughing. It’s a rare moment in an intense freshman season that has placed Fink among the leaders in the state of Iowa in both rebounding and scoring.

Dad notices the moment.

“Look at that!” Jody Fink shouts across the court, loud enough for daughter Kamryn to hear. “You CAN smile!”

Kamryn missed the free throw, but then got another chance because of a lane violation by the opposing team. She hit the free throw, given a second chance, and chuckled about it later.

“It’s very hard for me to smile on the court,” says Kamryn, whose 343 rebounds ranks third overall in Class 1A, and second among freshmen for the 16-7 Huskies. “I’m very competitive. When he (Jody) sees me smile, it’s kind of like a happy surprise for him.”

Thursday, when Kamryn partially dislocated her thumb in the opening quarter of a 1A regional tournament game against Wapello, she still scored a double-double: 25 points, 13 rebounds.

Jody Fink is activities and athletics director at Highland High School and Junior High School. He teaches phys ed. He hires coaches. He coordinates game nights. All of them. You’ll see him manning the ticket booth during Highland baseball and softball games. He’ll run the press box during soccer games. His piercing voice is unmistakable. He is everywhere.

But basketball is his game.

It is a passion that quickly found a place in Kamryn’s heart, all the way back to those baby games in 2010.

“I’ve just loved the game,” she said.

She played club basketball as a younger kid and went to camps. Later this year, she’ll begin to play for a club team that is based in North Liberty and is linked with the highly respected Missouri Phenom basketball program that is based in Kansas City and St. Louis, and whose alumni list includes Napheesa Collier, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and Taryn Sides, a starting guard this year for 12^th-ranked Kansas State.

“That’s going to be one thing that’ll help her at the next level. She wants to go to college and play,” Jody Fink said. “The Missouri Phenom team is going to get her against some better competition. They’ll work on that ball improvement, ball handling and just make her a better player for us.”

Even better?

Kamryn was just 14 years old when she made her high school varsity debut in November. She started the game, and had a double-double, 20 points and 20 rebounds, in a 58-53 win over Keota. Four nights later, she scored 32 points and grabbed 20 rebounds in a 60-47 win over Southeast Iowa Super Conference rival and defending league champion Lone Tree. She had double-doubles in her first three games.

Her impact was immediate on a team that has just one senior starter, Katie Herrig.

“She understands the game,” Jody Fink said. “From the inside game, the outside game, there’s still a lot more that she needs to sit there and learn. She does get complacent kind of out there. Once she sits there and learns…”

He pauses.

“She’s got the whole package of being able to handle the ball, be able to shoot it, she can defend,” Jody Fink said.

Fink’s 47 3-pointers during a 15-win regular season was just 10 short of a school single-season record. She hit another three in her postseason debut Thursday against Wapello.

Kamryn has already gone through the “freshman funk.” It’s the time when a ninth grader who is playing against kids three years older starts missing shots, layups, loses an edge and everything seems to go wrong.

When the Huskies faced Lone Tree a second time this season, the Lions were ready. Fink faced double teams and triple teams and no empty space. Lone Tree’s defensive response was so smothering that Fink was able to take only eight shots, and she missed seven of them. The Huskies lost by 43 points.

“There’s definitely been some ups and downs,” Kamryn Fink said. “Sometimes it gets hard when falling apart. I know there’s a few of us that try our best just to keep us all back together. Even on our bad days, still trying to push through because you can still find some good throughout all the bad.”

Days later, Kamryn is back in the gym at Highland, running drills with sophomore teammates Hailey Brun and Katelyn Thomann, and freshman Autumn Guseman, as her dad barks instructions.

On this team, Kamryn, now 15, is already a leader. She and Guseman lead Highland High’s freshman class in volunteer hours.

“I’m just like trying to get the girls closer together,” she says. “Hey, we’re fine, let’s go, we can do this.”

“The girls here have been very good, very accepting of that,” Jody Fink said. “She hasn’t been over-domineering and all that. She hasn’t been mouthy. It’s been in a respectful way there.”

Just a few hours before the hustle and bustle of game night hits the varsity locker room, you’d find Kamryn in the junior high gym, where the junior varsity players, many of them Kamryn’s classmates, are in action. Kamryn has the scoreboard duties. When the referee crew hasn’t immediately recognized that a fifth team foul means free throws, Kamryn hits the buzzer to let them know.

It’s all part of that Fink basketball family. Basketball smarts.

Not long after one of the Huskies’ games, most of the Fink family is assembled in the lobby at Highland High School. Kamryn is there, having emerged from the locker room. Also there is her younger brother Kyler, an eighth grader who has his eyes on playing for the Highland boys team next year, and Cassie, Kamryn’s younger sister who is in the fourth grade at Highland Elementary.

The only one missing is Jody. He’s wearing the athletic director’s hat again as the boys varsity game is played.

This is when the switch is flipped.

Now it’s dad and daughter, and not coach and player.

Jody Fink is more apt to talk classwork with Kamryn than basketball. When they leave the school, the world changes.

“We don’t talk about basketball,” Jody Fink said.

Oh, they might want a hoops game on TV. But …

“We do watch games,” Kamryn said. “After the games, after practice, everything stays in practice. He tries to have two separate lives, a dad and a coach. So when we go home, he is a dad and not my coach.”

“I want her and I to have a good relationship,” Jody says.

Still, basketball is the solid link that goes all the way back to that night in Mid-Prairie 15 years ago.

“I love it,” Kamryn says. “It’s just something for us to bond over and it just brings us closer.”

Tuesday, Kamryn’s first postseason journey in high school hoops resumes with a regional quarterfinal against Hillcrest Academy, a Southeast Iowa Super Conference rival the Huskies have already defeated twice. A win would put the Huskies in the 1A Region 7 semifinals against Springville or Winfield-Mt. Union.

It’s not about the stats.

“Going into the season,” Kamryn Fink said, “nobody really knew what to expect of us. We were definitely not thought of as a threat by anyone else and we have worked to prove ourselves with everything we’ve done. Staying together as a team, having that respect for each other and just the want to stay together has helped us a lot throughout the season.”

Kamryn, who ranks among the top three freshmen in Iowa 1A in rebounding, scoring, assists, 3-pointers and free throws, will get plenty of attention. And that’s just fine, says the dad and coach.

“If people are going to sit there and take her away,” Jody Fink said, “she’s going to find her teammates.”

A four-year dream has really only just begun.

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul