Ashlyn Allen’s triumph is a popular one in Lonoke, and Jackrabbit fans everywhere can take pride as she heads off to Central Baptist College to continue her basketball career.
“I’ve said this a lot over the years and meant it about every kid, but she’s a better kid than she is a basketball player,” outgoing Lady Jackrabbit coach Nathan Morris said. “We’d much rather have those types of kids. But she can play basketball, too. I’m not knocking her basketball ability. There’s a lot of good in her life to come.”
Allen deserves it.
The 5-10 forward, the daughter of Brandy and the late Shoney Allen, averaged 8.3 points and 5.7 rebounds and hit 54 percent of her field goals as a senior for LHS. She also played volleyball.
But basketball is her love.
“I remember going to basketball camp and my dad talking about basketball,” she said. “He passed away when I was in third grade.”
Brandy Allen also grew up in Lonoke and participated in basketball, volleyball and track and field for the Lady Jackrabbits.
But Ashlyn said her father was the one who encouraged her to go into athletics.
“After he passed, my momma kept me in sports,” she said. “I knew that he wanted me to play, so I kept it up. I knew I was wanting to play.
“In third grade, you don’t have a team to play for, but in sixth grade, I started at the community center. That’s when it all started. I knew I wanted to keep playing and make him happy.”
Brandy Allen said basketball had been important to Ashlyn in the aftermath of her father’s death.
“She was very close to him,” she said. “It helped close the gap. Basketball really helped her a lot.”
Morris said that in his 11 seasons at Lonoke, he didn’t remember a player improving as much over the last semester of her career as Allen did.
“She had to play behind Eboni Willis and Amanda Sexton for two years, so she was basically a senior with experience coming off the bench,” he said. “I knew she could play, but she lacked a lot of experience.
“She’s a do-right kid. She’s going to do things the right way, try to please the coaches and work hard in doing it. She carries herself the right way. I’m super proud for a kid who gets an opportunity to keep doing something she wants to do.”
When the season ended, Allen thought her basketball career was over, but her mother talked her into putting out a few feelers to colleges.
Coach Lyle Middleton at CBC, which plays in the American Midwest Conference of the NAIA, was the first to call back.
“I thought it was going to be kind of hard to find her a place at first, but she loved CBC, and I loved it, and it worked out,” Brandy Allen said.
Both sides were pleased with her tryout, and she signed a scholarship offer in the spring. Since graduation, she said she had been doing individual and team workouts as she prepares to join the Lady Mustangs full-time in August.
She recently went to Conway for a team workout.
Lonoke athletics are a bond between mother and daughter.
“With Lonoke High School athletics, dedication and discipline are everything,” Allen said. “Everybody is dedicated to being the best Jackrabbit you can be. We stress discipline in the classroom and athletics. And it’s not just the athletes who are good people. Everybody is. It’s a very close-knit group, like family. It’s just everything.”
Brandy Allen, who did not go on to college, graduated from LHS in 1997.
“Athletics gave me something to do, something to look forward to, something I could work hard at and set goals for,” she said.
Mother and daughter played volleyball for LHS coach Laura Park, who thinks highly of them both.
“She and her mother are the same,” Park said. “They look like sisters. Ashlyn’s been raised very well by her mom and her grandmother, and she’s just a wonderful kid. She’s amazing, has a great attitude, is very coachable.
“She is a hard worker in everything she does. She is very respectful and always wants more, not just for herself but her team. She is a true team player.
“I love the child, and I just can’t say enough good things about her. I’d go to bat for her any day.”
Brandy Allen said her daughter was a better athlete than she had been.
Ashlyn’s strengths?
“She’s a good leader, and she’s also a good friend,” Brandy Allen said.
Ashlyn said she was “an A-B student, sometimes C.” A member of FBLA, Spanish Club and Fellowship of Christian Athletes at LHS, she said she hoped to major in exercise science and minor in business.
“After college, I hope to go to physical therapy school,” she said. “I want to be a physical therapist and later I want to try to open my own clinic. I can’t wait. I’m excited.”
She has a younger sister, Asha Allen, 16; and brother, Bralin Carter, 14, but her mother said she was sad to think of her first child leaving home.
“I’m kind of all over the place,” Brandy Allen said. “She’s a very good daughter. I’m just so proud of her. She’s been through a lot, and she’s made it. Now she’s headed for her next step in life.”
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