Katie Corby is taking the Cindy Lauper approach to her junior season with basketball.
This girl just wants to have fun.
“I’m looking to enjoy basketball and playing with my team,” the Steinert High junior said. “I like all the girls this year and we’ve been doing really well as a team. I don’t want to be overly stressed. I just want to enjoy myself and have fun while we’re winning.”
Sounds like a great plan. But don’t think it will curtail Corby’s competitive nature.
The daughter of former New Egypt boys coach and current Spartans’ girls assistant Jay “The Nott Man” Corby, the guard comes from a family of hoopsters.
As a natural athlete, she did soccer, tee ball and gymnastics at a young age but none of them stuck. Her dad strongly encouraged her to try out for Hamilton PAL girls where she played with cousin Jaclyn and was coached by her uncle Tom Corby (now a Steinert boys assistant).
“They really bonded,” Jay said. “My brother coached her through her youth years and deserves most of the credit for her love of the game.”
During Covid, Corby was again coached by Tom in the Hamilton Little Lads, where she played mostly male competition. The same held true in travel ball, where she played with her brother Mason, a sophomore on Steinert’s team.
“Her success in Hamilton PAL and Hamilton Little Lads is where we saw that she could be a special player,” Jay Corby said. “Her unwavering toughness versus the boys made her a fan favorite.”
Playing with her family helped toughen her up, especially brother Nick, a former Spartan football/basketball player.
“We would play in the backyard all the time and he’d never let me win,” Corby said. “He was so competitive. We’d really go at it and that made me love it.”
Corby took her love to AAU with the NJ Shoreshots girls and enjoyed success there with one of the best travel teams in the state.
What’s interesting is that during all that time, Corby was a point guard.
When she got to Steinert, she was suddenly a scorer.
“I was a pass-first kind of guard making sure everyone knew where to go,” she said. “Over these past few years I’ve really stepped up for this team scoring. I just became this new player that I never saw in myself in AAU. I was never a big scorer. These past few years I’ve surprised myself with what I could actually do.”
The question was, what couldn’t she do?
“The kid’s a baller,” head coach Kristin Jacobs said.
Corby took the Colonial Valley Conference by storm her freshman year. She led Steinert in scoring (8.2 points per game), assists (2.4), three-pointers (32) and, despite being a guard, rebounds (4.4). She was third in steals with 48. She continued to stuff the stat sheet last year, again leading in scoring (11.8), rebounding (6.4), assists (2.5), threes (46) and steals (83).
“Freshman year I knew I was gonna have to help the team,” Corby said. “My dad and I worked on my shot a lot in the gym. I had a good first scrimmage and felt confident in myself. As the season went on I just stayed confident. I knew (scoring) is what the team needed for us to win.”
Scoring is important, and Corby worked hard on her 3-point shot prior to her sophomore season. But she has become an all-around weapon.
“Katie is also an excellent screener,” Jacobs said. “She’s only 5-6 but leads us in rebounds because we have tremendous defenders who box out so she can come in from the outside. She figures out how to contribute even if the ball is not in her hands 24-7.”
Getting to play with Jaclyn (Tom’s daughter) her first two years helped give Corby a comfortable transition to high school ball.
“It made me more relaxed to know I had someone to look up to and follow in her footsteps,” Corby said. “She was the one who’d get back on defense, she could help me dribble the ball. I used her as someone to help me a lot. We’re really close and having someone I’m that close to really helped on the court.”
And then there was that other relative – her dad. Not surprisingly, that relationship had an edge to it.
“Jay is a brilliant basketball mind,” Jacobs said. “They’ve had ups and downs; it’s a father and a daughter. If your father is coaching you, and as intense and competitive as they both are, there will be some disagreements. They both want to win. They both have high standards for themselves and each other.”
Jay began coaching his daughter in the PAL along with Tom. The two get along famously, but their personalities can grind against each other in the heat of battle.
Corby is one of the area’s top coaches as he maximized his personnel to turn New Egypt’s basketball and lacrosse programs into winners. He is also a popular rec coach in various sports.
Katie knows how good her dad is, but hey, what father-daughter duo won’t have their tiffs?
“We have a really good relationship,” Katie said. “It’s hard having your dad as your coach, obviously. We do butt heads at time. But it’s good to have him there. He takes a lot of the weight off of me sometimes. At times I’m trying to do everything and he takes me over to the side to talk about what I need to do, what the team should do. He understands. We’re very alike in that aspect.”
There are times when mom Lauren, and sister Stacy are stuck in the middle and “my mom will be like ‘I can’t do this anymore!,’” Katie said with a laugh.
This year, Jay has decided to step back a bit and let his daughter make her own way. He is still a part-time assistant but will not be coaching Katie as intensely.
“We both thought this was best for her basketball development and our relationship; she may have some of my competitiveness and temper at times,” Jay said with a laugh. “Coach Jacobs has built a great relationship with Katie, and our assistants Jasmine Watson and Amy Jones have also really bonded with her. They worked over the summer and brought a new vision and version of coaching, which she enjoys.”
Katie added that, “We did kind of go at it last year. We’re both so competitive, we both want to win so bad and we would take it out on each other.
“Now that I’m a junior and we’ve done this two years we can start to figure out what works between us,” Corby continued. “He’s taking a little step back to give me some ease. We just make sure I’m still having fun and he can still coach me without me getting upset or mad at him.”
It seems to be working. In two pre-season scrimmages, Corby scored 50 of Steinert’s 100 points. In a season-opening win over Nottingham, she scored just six points but garnered 10 assists, six rebounds and six steals.
Corby knows she will need to keep scoring since Mia Pope, last year’s second leading scorer, is foregoing her senior year to focus on her future in softball. But Katie is not the lone option as witnessed by Bella Rosa’s 17 points on opening night.
“We have other scoring options and other guard ability with Naomi Gray and Bella Rosa,” Jacobs said. “We have some really good options off the bench; Maddie Larry can run some point so Katie can go off the ball. Emily Chirichella is very handsy with the basketball in her possession. We’ve got some other kids to play that role.”
Corby also plays the role of student well with a 4.7 grade point average. She is a chair member of Steinert’s Teens on Fire community, but basketball takes up much of her time. She also plays lacrosse in the spring.
What makes Corby refreshing as an athlete is that despite her fiercely competitive nature, she knows the importance of being a good sport. In Little Lads, she became the first female to ever win the prestigious Tony Stella Sportsmanship Award, named after the iconic township youth coach.
“It’s important to have good sportsmanship on and off the court,” Corby said. “Good sportsmanship is good to have as a lifestyle. Not just in sports but being a good sport about other stuff too. In practices it’s good to have it. It keeps the practices positive instead of all of us yelling at each other and getting upset. If we have a good, positive practices, people will feel better about themselves and feel more confident.”
Which tends to make it more fun for everybody.
And that’s really the main thing Corby is looking for.