This story originally appeared in the June 23 edition of the weekly LINK Reader. To get these stories first, subscribe at linknky.com/subscribe.
Rising senior Quinn Eubank began her Ryle High School basketball career as a seventh-grader and a champion. She watched wide-eyed from the bench as the Raiders won the 2019 state crown. She received extensive game action the next season while making an immediate impact as an eighth-grader and finished fifth on the team in scoring and third in rebounding.
To say that Eubank’s Ryle career has been grand isn’t far from the truth. A 5-foot-11 combo forward, she eventually surpassed 1,000 career points and 1,000 rebounds, becoming just the third player in program history to reach 1,000 in both categories. The returning all-conference selection has scored 1,321 points and grabbed 1,024 rebounds in her high school career. After leading the Raiders in rebounding each of the past three seasons, she’s on pace to obliterate Ryle’s all-time record of 1,094. Eubank has a chance to reach 1,000 career assists. She averaged 14.3 points and 8.5 rebounds per game last season.
Eubank reached another milestone in her basketball journey when she verbally committed to Belmont University earlier this month.
“I’m very happy for Quinn. She really wants to play basketball in college,” Raiders coach Katie Haitz said. “She’s talented. She works very hard.”
Eubank is not a Ryle novelty. She’s the latest in a line of greats who have made the college grade while plying her craft in Raider black and orange. Ryle has sent nearly 20 girls to college programs since Haitz became head coach in 2015. There were nine college-bound players alone on the 2019 state championship squad.
“We’ve had so many great ones,” Haitz said. “It started my first season in 2015-16. We had seven seniors, and they were wonderful leaders. They showed the rest of the girls what it takes to be successful.”
Of those seven seniors, five went on to play college basketball, including that season’s top three scorers: Mallory Schwartz (Bellarmine), Carly Lange (Indiana Wesleyan) and Madison Jones (Midway). They began their high school careers playing under preceding Ryle head coaches Patti Oliverio and Karra Jackson. Under Haitz, they kick-started a college-signing legacy that continues to this day and was renewed with Eubank’s commitment to Belmont.
“Quinn is very deserving,” said Haitz, a former player under Nell Fookes at Boone County High School. “She’s versatile on both offense and defense. She can guard anybody. She’s a great athlete. She’s quick. She has an outside shot. She’s a good ball handler. She can score. She can rebound.”
That pretty much checks all the boxes when it comes to scouting reports, and you can add durability to the list. Eubank has missed just one contest in her 123-game career. Yet, Haitz could be talking about any number of her players, so uniform have their myriad qualities been on the court.
“I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of talented girls,” Haitz said. “Maddie Scherr was on that first team as an eighth-grader. Lauren Schwartz was a freshman. They learned so much from the older girls, and the girls kept passing it down every year. I’m really proud of all of them.”
Lauren Schwartz was an all-conference star who played college ball at Rice University before transferring to University of Washington. Scherr went on to become Miss Kentucky Basketball of 2020. She began her college career at Oregon before transferring to Kentucky. On Haitz’s second team was another precocious eighth-grader, Brie Crittendon, a future 9th Region player of the year who played at Eastern Kentucky.
Talented eighth-graders kept coming. Austin Johnson arrived in Haitz’s third season, Abby Holtman in her fourth season. Holtman is heading to the University of Cincinnati, Johnson to North Greenville University. Quinn Eubank and Sarah Baker were eighth-graders in Haitz’s fifth season, but both were on roster in the seventh grade. Baker saw action in one game that season.
If she hasn’t already, Baker, a 6-foot-2 post player, will sign soon with a college from among nearly two dozen potential suitors, including Kent State, Wright State, Bowling Green, Delaware, Fairfield and Belmont, all of which have made offers to the returning all-conference standout. Baker averaged 11 points and 6.9 rebounds per game last season.
“Quinn and I talk about it. It’s exciting,” Baker said of the recruiting process. “We check up on each other and get updates.”
Baker, more of a late bloomer than Eubank, would also like to finish her Ryle career in grand fashion. She needs 72 points to reach 1,000. She needs 378 rebounds to reach 1,000.
Add in a potential first regional title since 2020 and a trip back to the state final for the first time in five years, and Eubank and Baker would have plenty more to talk about. Together, they’ve already won three district championships, two regional titles and the school’s one and only state crown.
“It would be so nice to win the region and state again,” Baker said. “That’s the goal.”