By Chris Cox

Growing up the daughter of a coach, Clifton-Clyde junior Shea Wurtz was exposed to basketball at an early age. 

“I’ve been playing since I was probably five,” she says. “My dad is the high school basketball coach. I would go with him to practice and found it fun.”

While having her dad as a coach has helped in certain areas, like her basketball IQ, Shea acknowledges that playing for her dad, Kieran Wurtz, has had some ups and downs.

“It can be good or bad,” she admits. “Sometimes there’s a lot of fighting and arguing but then sometimes it’s good and fun. I do feel like there’s less pressure on me because I know what he expects.”

Being from a small school, Wurtz and her Clifton-Clyde teammates have played together since they were young, something she says has really helped their chemistry at the high school level.

“We have a really good bond and play hard for each other,” she says. “We know each other really well and can read each other because we’ve been playing for so long together. We just know what everyone can and can’t do.”

With that chemistry in place, Wurtz says the Eagles main goal is to have even more success than last year.

“We want to get to state again and go a little bit further,” Wurtz says. “We have three starters coming back but even our six, seven, eight players played a lot too. We have a really small team, so everyone gets a lot of chances to play. Also, my younger sister, Sevy, is a freshman this year and I think she’ll help us out a lot.”

Individually, Wurtz says she wants to up her scoring and make first team all-state again. 

Outside of basketball, Wurtz is a member of the Eagles volleyball and track teams. She is also a member FFA, FBLA, FCCLA, and NHS. Wurtz is only a junior so she doesn’t have any plans set in stone for after high school, but she does have an idea of what she would like to focus on in college.

“I want to do something with animal science,” she says. “I want to also play basketball somewhere while working toward that.”