The back-to-back girls basketball 9th Region Player of the Year has found her college home.
Cooper senior Haylee Noel committed to South Florida, via her Instagram page on Tuesday. Noel enters her senior season with 1,685 career points as she looks to help lead Cooper to a fifth region title in the last six years.
In her junior season, Noel averaged 20.9 points per game while shooting 44% from the field, 36% from three and 88% from the free throw line while pulling down 7.9 rebounds per game and was also the Northern Kentucky High School Girls Basketball Coaches Association Division I Player of the Year.
She’s been playing varsity since the seventh grade and was a part of four region title teams from seventh through 10th grade as the Lady Jaguars reached the state semifinals twice during that run. Noel joins a list of Cooper players during that time to play Division I basketball. Whitney Lind plays at Lehigh, Liz Freihofer is at Eastern Kentucky University, Logan Palmer at Evansville and Maleah Alexander is at Liberty. Zene Thompson (Thomas More) and Bella Deere (Gannon) are at the Division II level.
Noel was an All-State first team selection in both the Lexington Herald-Leader and Louisville Courier-Journal. She held offers from Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, Western Kentucky, Bowling Green, Arkansas, Murray State and Youngstown State among others.Â
South Florida plays in the American Conference, their head coach is Kristy Curry.
