March 8 , 2005

Sports

Kellie Olson, grandaughter of University of Arizona basketball head coach Lute Olson, is second in the Arizona Community College Athletic Confer-ence in 3-point field goal percentage at 39 percent. Olson plays guard for the Lady T-Birds.

Photo by Rebecca Straughmatt

Thunderbird carries good blood lines

Matt Lambert
Mesa Legend

The Lady Thunderbirds basketball team has had numerous players step up their individual game this season and emerge as leaders.
Kellie Olson, a multi-faceted player with extraordinary basketball knowledge, has become the team’s silent leader in many games this season. Her profound impact can be spotted during games as she continuously drains critical shots from beyond the three-point arc. She has made 36 out of 91 three-point field goals attempted this season. Her three-point field goal percentage is at an astonishing 39.6 percent, which is good for second among the best sharp shooters in the ACCAC. According to Coach Robin Schamber, “It takes a lot of practice to shoot the way Kellie does and her statistics back it up.”
Kellie possesses a finely tuned array of fundamentally sound skills. One would watch Kellie play and understand that she has a mind built for basketball. One of her greatest mentors in the game is her grand father Lute Olson, head coach of the men’s program at the University of Arizona. He’s one of the most celebrated coaches in college basketball history.
Olson comes from a talented basketball gene pool which also includes her cousin, Julie Olson, who is now the head coach of women’s basketball at Loyola-Marymount College in Calif., and also a former standout player at the University of Arizona.
Olson graduated from Salpointe High School in Tucson in 2004. She led her team to the state championship during her senior year. They suffered a disappointing loss, but Olson refers to that game as a “bittersweet experience,” because they were the first Tucson team to make it to the states in 30 years. During high school she was awarded all-conference status twice during her junior and senior year.
As for her final two years of schoo,l she is undecided. Offers from schools in northern California have been the topic of conversation on numerous occasions, but she has her heart set on playing ball at a Southern California school.