A head coach and a team that will be ever entwined in the lores of Kansas City Kansas Community College women’s basketball are the newest inductees into the KCKCC Athletic Hall of Fame.

Coach Joe McKinstry, who took three Blue Devil teams to the national tournament and won two, and the 2018-19 NCJAA DII National Champion team will be enshrined in an open induction luncheon Saturday, Nov. 9. In addition, the inductees will be introduced between games of the 2024 Hall of Fame Classic.

The 2019 champions ran rampant through the national tournament in Harrison, Ark., building leads of 20 or more points in each of their four wins.

The secret to their success was certainly no secret – depth. “Essentially, we had three starters coming off the bench,” says McKinstry. “It didn’t matter who started, we had nine players we could rotate in and out without ever missing a beat.”

Indeed, the Blue Devils had seven players who started 10 or more games, And that didn’t include the NJCAA Player of the Year, Nija Collier, who made just five starts; or redshirt freshman Caroline Hoppock, who played in all 36 games and averaged 7.3 points.

Collier, at 6-foot, led a front line of four players in double figures. Averaging 17.3 points, 9.7 rebounds and 1.5 blocks, she shot 58.5 percent from the field and .400 from 3-point. The Magnolia, Ark., duo of 6-1 Lillie Moore and 5-9 Kisi Young dominated inside, Young averaging 8.7 rebounds and Moore 8.1. Moore also averaged 14.7 points and shot 53.0 percent from the field; Young averaged 10.6 points and had a record .639 shooting percentage.

Freshman Lenaejha Evans was third in scoring, averaging 11.2 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.9 assists. Perimeter scoring came from a trio of sophomore team captain Camryn Swanson and freshmen Brodi Byrd and Hoppock. Swanson, who averaged 8.8 points, knocked down a record 87 3-pointers; Byrd added 76 and 8.9 points in 22 starts; and Hoppock 59 treys.

The playmaking was handled by sophomore point guards Caitlyn Stewart and Lexy Watts, who combined for 202 assists. Stewart had 107 assists and averaged 5.4 points; Watts 95 assists and 4.8 points. Lizzie Stark missed the first half of the season with a knee injury and played just 17 games; Carson Chandler joined the team the second semester and saw action in 14 contests; and Diamond Williams was sidelined for the season by a torn ACL.

Not only could the nine top scorers be counted on on a daily basis but all had their moments. Byrd hit a buzzer beater in a win at Fort Scott and a lefthanded 3-pointer that was key to a win over JCCC. Watts’ two free throws in the waning seconds preserved a 64-60 win over the Cavaliers. Hoppock came off the bench to hit a record tying eight 3-pointers (8-of-11). Swanson’s five 3-pointers and 15 points paced KCKCC’s second round national tournament win over Pima.

Arguably the best rebounder in KCKCC history, Young was named Second Team All-All-America, the first Blue Devil so honored. Moore totally dominated KCKCC’s 84-71 Region VI championship win over Highland, scoring game highs of 25 points and 14 rebounds. Evans’ three first half 3-pointers kept KCKCC in contention in semifinal overtime win over JCCC; Stewart forced the overtime with one of the two biggest 3-point goals in history, a game-tying shot with 10 seconds left; and Collier won it 79-76 with a three with just 1.8 seconds left.

As a team, the Blue Devils won 15 of their last 16 games, won their first outright Jayhawk Conference title in 22 years, finished 32-4 overall and No. 1 in the final NJCAA DII poll, all of which is outlined in these pages. They averaged 89.1 points while giving up 63.3 per game, shot .468 from the field to .351 for opponents and outrebounded foes 1737-1237.

                                          Auspicious debut for McKinstry

No one has had a more auspicious head coaching debut than Joe McKinstry – an NJCAA DII national championship in his first season in 2015-16. And a second three years later in 2018-19. Those are well-documented but what most fans don’t remember, he might have had a third had it not been for injuries and COVID.

In his final season, the COVID season in which no games were played until January 2021, the Blue Devils were 18-2 in regular season play, losing only at Johnson County 65-53 and at home to the Cavaliers 75-55, a game in which McKinstry missed because of hospitalization with vertigo.

However, the Blue Devils avenged both losses in the Region VI championship but not before a crucial 64-59 win over No. 6 Labette. “A big game, Labette was very good,” remembers McKinstry. “It was a season when one at-large team would get to the national tournament and I thought we might get that if we lost the championship game.”

Didn’t happened. It was the Blue Devils who prevailed, handing the No. 1 Cavaliers their first loss 67-59 at Friends University. “Two things stand out in the game,” says McKinstry. “We got Jewel Hart back who hadn’t played because of a separated shoulder and she was a problem for them. Luckily, it was a year she wouldn’t lose her eligibility or we wouldn’t have activated her.

“The other thing, we had played State Fair and I talked to my wife (Carleigh) from a Dairy Queen in Sedalia and told her we played a zone defense. She said we should use it against JCCC and I got to thinking, ‘Holy cow, she’s right.’  So we implanted a defense specially for the game against JCCC and they weren’t prepared for it.”

The record will show KCKCC fell to Union 72-69 in the opening round, rebounded to beat Muskegon 68-47 and then was eliminated by Arkansas State 67-52. What is not reflected is that the Blue Devils were without Hannah Valentine the last half of the season because of injury and Hart was just rounding back in shape.

“Yes, I believe we could have won it all with Hannah. She undoubtedly was our best player, both scoring and rebounding. We had an uncharacteristic number of turnovers and played as bad as we had all year in losing to Union. We played nervous and I think Hannah would have steadied us. After the first game, I don’t think we were invested in the way we needed to be.” How good might they have been at full strength? Johnson County finished second in the national tournament.

In the 18 years before McKinstry took the head coaching job, KCKCC had only two 20-win seasons (2014 and 2015). In McKinstry’s six seasons, five teams won 20 or more games and the lone season they didn’t, they were 19-13.  By the year, they were 33-3, 19-13, 21-11, 32-4, 25-7 and 21-4 – 151 wins and just 42 losses.

A standout point guard at William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa, McKinstry finished his four years there as No. 5 on the all-time list and in the Top 10 in steals and 3-point goals. After earning a degree in Physical Education, McKinstry served seven years as associate head coach during which time the Statesmen were 161-70, won three conference titles and played in four national tournaments, finishing second in 2013.

McKinstry came to KCKCC in 2015 as an assistant to men’s coach Kelley Newton and after one season, was named head women’s coaching succeeding Valerie Scott Stambersky. He left KCKCC in 2021 to coach at his high school alma mater, Oak Park, and then spent one season as assistant to Ben Conrad at JCCC. He’s presently in his second year as head women’s coach at William Penn. He and Carleigh have four daughters and a son.