Clairton’s Gissendanner is Small School player of year
Away from the basketball court, Clairton’s Kamela Gissendanner is the most lighthearted of 16-year-olds. “I’m never serious,” Gissendanner said. “People wouldn’t know that. But I’m a real jokester. A prankster.”
Once she gets on the floor, Gissendanner’s demeanor changes, as evidenced by her runaway victory in the voting for The Associated Press Pennsylvania Small School (Class AA-Class A) girls basketball player of the year award.
Gissendanner won the vote of state writers and broadcasters by a wide margin over Cranberry’s Carrie Mason and Vincentian’s Renee Robinson. Gissendanner finished with almost double the combined votes of her two closest competitors.
A 6-foot junior swing player, Gissendanner averaged 30 points per game in leading the Lady Bears to a 21-7 record and the PIAA District 7 Class A championship. Clairton reached the state quarterfinals.
Gissendanner also averaged 14 rebounds, six assists, five blocks and five steals per game and will enter her senior season with 1,944 points.
“Kam’s an incredible talent,” Clairton coach Jess Hutson said. “One of the things that makes her so special is that she not only leads our team in scoring, but she also leads it in assists.”
Combining the size of a post player with the perimeter skills of a guard, Gissendanner inevitably draws comparisons to some of the best players to come through the WPIAL.
Among those is former McKeesport standout Swin Cash, the Final Four MVP for national champion Connecticut.
“As far as being compared to Swin, it’s an honor,” Gissendanner said. “Right now, the player I look up to most is Tanisha Wright. To overcome everything she’s been through to get where she is, she’s an inspiration to me.”
Wright was the 2001 Big School player of the year for West Mifflin and now plays for Penn State. Just as her friend and idol does, Gissendanner can take over games by herself.
“You want to know a game where she just did it all? I could give you 10,” Hutson said. “Probably the game that stands out the most is when we beat (PIAA champion) Bishop Carroll in the middle of the season. We only scored 49 points. She had 35 of them.”
Gissendanner also carries a 4.0 grade-point average.
For Clairton’s senior recognition game, she volunteered to come off the bench so one of the Lady Bears’ upperclassmen could start.
“It’s easy to coach Kam because she’s so unselfish,” Hutson said. “The bigger the game, the more she wants the ball. The bigger the lead, the more she wants to give her teammates the ball.”
Next year, Gissendanner has a chance to become the first girl to repeat as player of the year.Still, she thinks she needs some work on her game.
“I’ve got to work on my defense. And my shooting. A little bit of everything, really,” Gissendanner said. “I’m not perfect.”