By Weston Irons Posted June 9, 2016
Being from a small town, three-sport athletes are no strangers to Lowry. It takes a tremendous amount of talent, skill, and hard work to balance all three sports and to be exceptional at them. Yet senior athlete Jillian Albright manages to do it with ease. Albright is one of Lowry’s top athletes and is a name you’ll see in the newspaper often. She excels athletically as well as academically carrying a 4.0 GPA. With all these points considered, Albright was an easy choice for The Brand’s student-athlete of the year.
Albright has been playing sports ever since she can remember. Albright was involved in many different sports growing up. She discovered a passion for basketball in the Winnemucca City League, she played soccer when she was younger in the AYSO, played volleyball for a travel team, and participated in track at the junior high level.
“Sports are really big with my family so I’ve pretty much [played] since I was born I guess. I’ve been playing since I could walk. At halftime of my brother’s city league basketball games I would be dribbling a ball out on the court by myself,” said Albright.
Albright definitely has a favorite when it comes to sports, but she is just as competitive and good in every sport she participates in.
“I definitely enjoy basketball the most. I do volleyball and track too, but I think basketball is the most challenging. It’s really a huge team sport,” said Albright.
Although Albright could go on and on about her favorite sports memories, there is one that overshadows all the others.
“It was definitely my sophomore year when we won a state championship. That was the highlight of my life. We were also the regional champion three years in a row,” said Albright.
Albright has a lot in store for her in the future as she will be attending EOU beginning next September and will be playing basketball for the Mountaineers.
“I’m going to EOU on a basketball scholarship. I think I move down there in the middle of September. I looked at a few different schools and I visited one other one but when I went to EOU it just kind of felt right and felt like a good fit for me. I loved the campus and played with the team and the girls were all super nice I had a really good relationship with the coach and that is super important to me. That is something that I wanted to be a part of,” said Albright.
When Albright first contacted the head coach, she was instantly interested in what Albright would bring to the table.
“I play point guard and that is actually what the coach at EOU is interested in because I emailed her and told her I was a 5’9” point guard and she was really interested because typically point guards are a lot shorter,” said Albright.
Academically Albright will be going into education and her impressive GPA here proves that she will have no problem with her courses although it will be a bit of a change.
“I’m planning on going into education right now. I don’t know if I am going to stick with it…like elementary education. I like little kids, I mean I don’t have younger siblings but I like working with little kids. I had early childhood last year and I thought our little preschool was really fun. And I have a cousin who used to be an elementary school teacher,” said Albright.
Albright has said one of her many inspirations also comes from Lowry and is someone she considers her motivation.
“I really look up to Julia Dufurrena basketball. I think that seeing that she could make it further after high school was really big for me growing up. I would come up to the high school and play when I was in junior high during the open gyms and stuff with her and then actually seeing her go further is super cool to me. I think that kind of made me think that maybe I could do that myself,” said Albright.
Albright has a number of things she is going to miss about playing sports in Mucc, the relationships that she has forged are at the top of that list.
“I’m going to miss all of my coaches and all of my friends. In high school sports, you have all of these great friendships that you make. And I really am going to miss my basketball coach, she has been my basketball coach for all four years because when I was on JV she was a JV coach,” said Albright.
One of the biggest adjustments Albright is going to have to make is getting used to the length of the collegiate season.
“The season could potentially be six months long if they make it to playoffs so that is going to be a huge change from here considering we only have three months for each sport so it is definitely a huge change from here,” said Albright.
Albright has had a very memorable career at LHS and she would not change a single thing.
“I don’t think that I would change anything. I think I’ve had a pretty good athletic career at Lowry and I made a ton of memories with a ton of friends and I think I’ve been pretty successful. It’s cool to look back and see what we have accomplished,” said Albright.
Albright concluded by giving a great piece of advice to future athletes and current athletes that everyone should hold close to.
“If you are thinking about playing further, don’t give up on that dream because last year I kind of lost a little bit of confidence and I was thinking maybe I should just go to school and maybe I shouldn’t try to play basketball. Then this year while I was playing basketball I was like ‘You know what, I’m not ready to give this up.’ So I think that just don’t give up on that dream if that is what you want to do,” said Albright.
Albright has had an incredible career and has truly left her mark on Lowry. She will be talked about by the community for years to come.
