Comer tabbed as all-star coach

Kirk Comer’s 2018-19 basketball season isn’t over just yet.

Comer, Jay County High School’s girls basketball coach, was selected to lead the IndyStar Indiana Girls Junior All-Stars this summer, the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association announced Wednesday.

“It’s a great honor,” Comer said. “It’s a compliment to all the kids that I’ve been able to coach and all the coaches that have helped me along the way.

“I told my assistant coaches that I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without them. I’m really, really humbled.”

Comer joins former JCHS boys basketball coach Craig Teagle as the only Patriot coaches picked to head the all-star teams. In 2012, Teagle’s all-star squad included current NBA players Gary Harris (Park Tudor, Michigan State), Glenn Robinson III (Lake Central, Michigan), Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell (Park Tudor, Indiana) and college standout and current NBA G-League player Kellen Dunham (Pendleton Heights, Butler).

“He is well deserving,” Mike Broughton, director of the Indiana All-Star Game, said of Comer. “People I know in the (Jay County) area speak really highly of him. He has a good track record. He has good credential and he likes to work with kids.”

Broughton, who with the help of a number of advisors is tasked with picking all four all-star teams as well as their respective coaching staff, looks at the effort at which a team plays under the direction of a prospective all-star coach.

“Some coaches receive various honors during the year and we take those into consideration,” Broughton said. “Then we take longevity, coaches that have had success, won a lot of games, what we hear about coaches and they make kids play hard.

“They are people the community is proud of to have as coaches.”

The Junior All-Stars will play a pair of games against the Kentucky Junior All-Stars later this summer, the first scheduled for June 1 in Kentucky at a site still to be determined, and the second game on June 3 at Jeffersonville High School.

Comer’s squad will also play one game against Indiana’s Senior All-Star squad — the team was announced March 7 — at a site to be announced later.

All three games will be doubleheaders with the junior boys team, which was also announced Wednesday.

Todd Law, who led the Class 2A Oak Hill Golden Eagles to the program’s first state championship on Feb. 23, and Danny Brown of Columbus East will be Comer’s assistants.

The Junior All-Star team consists of 24 players split into four groups. The core group will play in all three games, with the other three groups — labeled Red, White and Blue — to participate in one game each. The assignment for specific games is yet to be determined.

Those players are:

Core group

Kendall Bostic, Northwestern (Michigan State)

Ella Collier, Danville

Nan Garcia, Jeffersonville

Madison Layden, Northwestern (Purdue)

Jasmine McWilliams, North Central (Northwestern)

Sydney Parrish, Hamilton Southeastern

Red group

Sydney Graber, Homestead (Central Michigan)

Sydney Jacobsen, Harrison

RaSaya Kyle, Marion

Alaina Omonode, West Lafayette

Keegan Sullivan, South Bend St. Joseph

Sydney Watkins, Heritage Christian

White group

Khera Goss, Ben Davis

Maddie Lawrence, Winchester

Lindsey Syrek, University

K’Ja Talley, Warren Central

Taylor Westgate, Oak Hill

Kristian Young, Lawrence North

Blue group

Darrian Carmean, Vincennes Lincoln

Maya Chandler, Triton Central

Juliana Kemper, Lawrenceburg (Indiana Wesleyan)

Rachel Loobie, Franklin Central

Tia Tolbert, Vincennes Rivet

Alana Vinson, Roncalli