This story originally appeared in the Feb. 16 edition of the weekly LINK Reader. To get these stories first, subscribe here.
Mere months into her high school journey, Simon Kenton basketball player Brynli Pernell is not a typical wide-eyed freshman. Despite her youthful age, the combo-guard is worldly wise when it comes to the ways of team play.
“She’s young, but she’s experienced,” Simon Kenton second-year head coach Brenden Stowers said. “She’s a bulldog.”
At age 14, Pernell is something else. The 5-foot-4 standout just recently cleared the 1,000-point mark in her career, which began as a seventh-grader. Pernell leads Simon Kenton in scoring with 15.4 points per game for the 18-9 Pioneers.
Coach Stowers said undeniable precociousness at such a productive clip is the result of one simple thing: Pernell’s refusal to be outworked.
“From endline to endline and sideline to sideline, she’ll do whatever she can to win a play,” said Stowers. “Not just the game — this girl wants to win every play.”
Pernell is particularly keen on team concepts. She wants to embody what it means to be a team-first player.
Coach Stowers said it’s all there in his young star: excellent communication on defense; the ability to create transition opportunities through ball pressure; knowing how to read a defense and when to pass; realizing proper movements needed without the ball to help create offensive mismatches against man-to-man defense; and understanding when to utilize effective passes against zones to make the zone move and open penetration gaps.
These are habits good guards have. Pernell just so happens to be learning best practices from a coach who at one time was one of the best NCAA Division II guards in the country when he played for Northern Kentucky University. And, like Pernell, Stowers played basketball at Simon Kenton. He graduated in 1999.
After that, Stowers starred at NKU. He garnered second-team All-American honors. He scored 1,311 career points, putting him in the NKU 1,000-point club along with his father, Jeff Stowers. The elder Stowers was one of the best and most exciting players in program history, helping to transform obscure Northern Kentucky State College into a regional power rechristened Northern Kentucky University. They are the only Norse father-son duo with 1,000 points each.
Both men have coached the Simon Kenton girls basketball team, son replacing father in 2022 after a 13-year apprenticeship following college coaching stops at NKU, Thomas More and Xavier. The elder Stowers won five 8th Region titles and 427 games in 20 years. Younger Stowers guided the Pioneers to the regional title last year in his first season at the helm.
Most instructively from a team standpoint, Brenden Stowers is an all-time NKU leader in assists, and he averaged 16 points per game his senior season, mostly as sixth man. He started just eight of 31 contests after starting 25 of 27 games as a junior because he bought into coach Ken Shields’ idea that he was better utilized as instant offense off the bench. Even so, Stowers was good enough to make a bid for the NBA’s Summer Development League.
He has passed down his unselfish, winning ways to his youthful players at Simon Kenton.
Pernell and the rest of the regular rotation of sophomores Haylie Webb (12.0 ppg, 8.5 rpg), Anna Kelch (9.6 ppg, 6.5 rpg) and defensive stopper Meg Gadzala; eighth-grader Bella Ober; junior Katelin Blevins; and seniors Rylie Flynn and Natalie Hernandez are one for all and all for Simon Kenton, thanks to their coach’s philosophy.
“My favorite part is how much we like playing together as a team,” Pernell said. “Coach says he wants us doing that all the time.”
Other desired constants are consistency and never settling for second best.
“That’s what he wants,” Pernell said. “I think we have really good players, and we always want to play our best.”
That sounds like something Shields would say when he was coaching at NKU.
“It’s not how good you are,” the legendary coach used to tell his players. “It’s how good you play.”
Brenden Stowers knows it well.
“He said it a lot when I played for him,” said the Simon Kenton coach. “He had a million of them like that. I still use some of them.”
Ken Shields, Jeff Stowers and Brenden Stowers are from the same sprawling coaching tree, with Shields at the top. They know how to cultivate a championship-caliber team while employing their own tricks of the trade, including establishing a clear vision, setting goals, developing a growth mindset and promoting a positive and supportive culture by fostering strong relationships and emphasizing teamwork.
Exhibit A: The Simon Kenton girls basketball team, hitting its stride at the right time.
“We’re all really close,” Pernell said. “We know what each other wants to do. We want to get better. It makes it so much fun.”