When she began playing Hamilton PAL basketball for coach Mark Kieffer, who also doubles as her dad, Haylee Kieffer was a starting guard but found herself wandering underneath the basket most of the time.
“I believe I was,” Haylee said, when asked if she was tall back then. “I was only about six when I first started playing, and I wasn’t really scared to go down with the big men, so they finally put me down there. Luckily I grew more and got stronger, so it was good for me.”
Kieffer now stands at 5-foot-11 or 6-feet, depending on when the question is posed.
“I’m six feet with my basketball shoes on,” she said. “I just say I’m six feet because most of the time when people ask me, it’s when I have my basketball shoes on.”
Either way, she is an imposing presence in the Colonial Valley Conference and will be a major key to the fortunes of the Nottingham High girls’ basketball team this winter. With leading scorer and rebounder Shaunice Palms having graduated, Kieffer is going to have to step up her game in all areas—offense, defense and rebounding.
The senior looks ready to do so.
“This is definitely the best shape she’s been in, out of all four years she’s been here,” coach Lauren Kelly said. “She looks good, her head’s in the right place. As long as everything stays as consistent as she’s been (at the start of preseason) I think she’ll have a really successful year.”
Which pretty much has to happen if the Northstars are going to improve on last year’s 13-13 record—their best in Kelly’s five seasons as head coach.
“She’s obviously an integral part of our offense,” Kelly said. “We not only want to get the ball inside to her, but we’re going to rely on her for both offensive and defensive rebounds. We need her on both sides of the ball.”
After playing sparingly during an uncomfortable freshman season, Kieffer averaged 6.1 and 6.6 points during her sophomore and junior years, along with 7.5 and 7.8 rebounds. She set a single-season record with 88 blocked shots as a sophomore (smashing the previous mark of 72) and entered this season with the career record of 130 (the previous record was 108).
Kieffer has been honing her game ever since she started playing. During PAL, she was at an age to play in the Juniors but also played up in the Senior League.
“I was playing for two teams, it was crazy, but it was good,” Kieffer said. “I wanted to do that. It brought up my confidence in playing. When I was in juniors, I was bigger than all of them so it was easy to beat up on them. When they brought me up, I was smaller than people so it started to build up my confidence of going against the big girls.”
As a freshman, Kieffer moved to AAU and played with the nationally ranked Philly Freedom Stars for two years. Wanting to play closer to home, serendipity struck when Kieffer was recruited to play for the area AUF Hawks this past summer and fall.
“AAU has definitely made me a lot stronger,” she said. “I think it matured me a lot more. In high school, you get good girls but not all of them are fantastic. And with my Freedom Stars team we had girls there were a lot bigger than me, which I’m not used to in the CVC. So that helped me a lot.”
‘They didn’t think I was good enough. That just motivated me to be better.’
Kieffer played JV as a freshman but was also on the varsity. She recalled it as being an unpleasant experience because she felt unwelcome by the veteran players.
“When you’re a senior, you don’t want a freshman coming in trying to take your spot, so I understand that,” she said. “But it seemed like they did not want me on the team at all. They didn’t think I was good enough for it. That just motivated me to be a better player, to show everyone that ‘Yeah, I’m a freshman, but I can do it.’”
It also left a lasting impression that Kieffer is trying to turn into a positive. This year, she and Tyasia Stephenson are being counted on to provide senior leadership. She embraces the role and also thinks back to when she was young.
“I always knew that when I eventually became a captain, that I should be welcoming to everybody instead of shutting them out, like I was,” she said.
Kieffer’s goals this year are to average 16 to 20 points and 12 to 14 rebounds. She wants a bad scoring game to be no worse than 10 points. She has worked hard on her offense, has improved her elbow jumper and has been converting more put-back lay-ups in scrimmages. She has also been making more foul shots, which is crucial considering she will be getting hacked quite a bit.
Defensively, her goal is to be smarter. Over her career, Kieffer has often had to sit long stretches due to foul trouble, or she would just foul out. With Palms gone, Haylee needs to log major minutes.
“She’ll be successful if she can stay on the floor,” Kelly said. “ I told her, ‘Forget about getting blocks, you’ve already got the record.’ She’s a tall girl, she has nice presence. When she puts her hands up, that’s enough to defend. She doesn’t have to reach in or try to get the block.”
If Kieffer manages to stay on the court, this could be another solid season for the Northstars thanks to a group that has played together for a while.
“We have a history,” Kieffer said. “We know what’s going to happen. I’ve been playing with Liz (Kerekes) for a few years, and with Ty since I was a freshman. Liz is the point guard, I’m a big man, we know what will happen and we trust each other. We trust every single girl on the court.”
Kelly noted that for the first time since she’s been head coach, most of the girls played together during the off-season. She also has two sophomores who have played basketball all their life, giving Nottingham some depth.
“It’s not like they put the ball down in March and picked it up again,” Kelly said. “It’s just so nice for the coaches, at this point in December, that we’re already surpassing where we were in February of last year as far as being able to run through an effective, productive practice and being able to work on an offense. Obviously it’s a different story when you’re testing out plays and offenses against real opponents, but I’m excited about what we can do.”
As is Kieffer, who hopes this is not her last year of organized ball. She wants to play in college and then wants to follow in the footsteps of both her parents. She’s looking to open her own hair and makeup salon, and she wants to coach basketball.
“Ever since I was younger I’ve always loved make-up,” she said. “My mom (Christine) is good at doing make-up so that kind of got me into it. When my hair’s not up, I’m doing make-up. And my dad coaches on the side, and I want to do that too, definitely.”
She just has to make sure she doesn’t start a natural post player at guard. Then again, that strategy didn’t work out too bad for Kieffer.
Nottingham High’s Haylee Kieffer shoots a free throw during a scrimmage last month. (Photo by Wes Kirkpatrick.),
