As the first girl in the High School North basketball history to score 1,”000 points, Kathy Ruiz has left a big mark in her last season. But for Ruiz, 18, basketball takes a back seat when it comes to academics, and that’s what will happen when she heads to college in the fall.##M:[more]##
Ruiz is still deciding between the University of Connecticut or the University of Maryland next year, but either way, she’s making her decision on what’s best for her future. Ruiz is planning to major in business marketing.
“I got offers (to play basketball) for a couple of D3 schools, but I knew academically I could do better, so I just stuck to the academic focus of it for college,” she said. “I’m not going to play basketball, but it’s something I’ve already accepted. Basketball is something I truly have a passion for, but academics always come first.”
Even at an early age, school has always been important to her and her parents, who live in Plainsboro’s Princeton Crossing development.
Her father, Luis, a distribution supervisor at Petco and her mother, Ana, a home health aide with Buckingham Place Assisted Living in South Brunswick, moved to Plainsboro from Hightstown when Ruiz was five because of the WW-P district’s reputation.
Ruiz used to play volleyball and soccer, but “basketball’s my number one,” she says. She hit the 1,”000th point in the first-round of the Mercer County Tournament against Hamilton West on February 13 to lead her team to a 51-37 victory and a showing in the quarterfinals game.
Needing 12 points for the milestone, Ruiz hit eight points in the first quarter to help the Knights take a 12-8 lead. In the second quarter, with the score at 17-10, she scored two straight baskets. One of her teammates missed, and Ruiz rebounded for her 1,”000th point.
When the opportunity came for the actual 1,”000th point basket, she says she recalled it happened for her in “really slow motion.”
“I got the rebound of the missed lay-up,” she said. While driving to the basket, she says she was thinking, “‘This is the two points — I hope I don’t miss,’” she says. “I made the lay-up and I ran to celebrate.”
Ruiz is the second Knight to reach the 1,”000-point mark. Brian Sufalko hit his 1,”000th point for the Knights’ boys basketball team in 2004.
The North girls have one regular season game left against Egg Harbor on Saturday, February 23, and then the state competition begins. Ruiz says she is going to try to lead her team as far as she can. “I try to be a team player,” she says.
— Cara Latham
