Second Varsity Player Hits 1,000 Mark
Senior Cameron Bania became the second girls’ varsity player this year to reach the 1,000-point milestone. And she did it in nail-biting fashion—reaching the score in the final two minutes of the Panthers’ final game of the season and the final game of her high school basketball career! With 1:27 left on the clock, Cameron hit her 1,000th point on a free throw in the District final against top-seeded Whitfield, which eventually bested Principia, 67–47. (The only other time two Principia students attained 1,000 points in the same year was 2012, with seniors Liz Gilman and Kara Johnson. Interestingly, Kara also did it in the District championship game versus Whitfield!)
As a scholar-athlete all four years in Upper School, Cameron has participated in varsity softball (fall) and basketball (winter) and managed the varstity baseball team for three seasons (spring). “But basketball is my favorite sport,” she says, “because I love the competition and have learned many valuable lessons from it—including that nothing is accomplished without hard work, whether that be physical or mental.” On the physical front, Cameron focused on ball handling skills during freshman and sophomore years and on shooting—especially jumpers and three-pointers—during her junior and senior years. “Mentally,” Cameron says, “I mostly worked on playing at my best effort every moment, working hard through the entire game [and] not getting down on myself or giving up even if we were losing.” This positive, can-do approach permeates her school life beyond athletics as well.
“Cameron is committed to academics, taking a full load including several AP courses,” notes Upper School Principal Christen Alford (C’88). “She is on the honor roll, . . . overloads her schedule by taking one to two art classes every semester, and she has traveled on service trips to the Dominican Republic and South Africa. In addition, she was freshman class president and is the Perrin House Captain.”
Varsity Coach Shad Nichols (C’98) commends Cameron as “a natural scorer.” In addition to sacrificing a great deal of time in order to be the best player she can be, he says, Cameron also sacrificed for the team—in initiating offense and handling a press, which meant she had fewer opportunities to shoot. “For her to be recognized as one of the all-time top scorers at Principia, while also finishing 2nd all-time in assists, is really a remarkable accomplishment,” Nichols says. “It shows that when she had the ball in her hands, she was nearly always making the right decision.”
In Nichols’s view, Cameron brings a “unique ability to process information while playing—which is very rare. She is like a coach on the floor, aware of what the other team is doing or how we should be organizing ourselves as a team. This skill will serve her very well moving forward in whatever career she chooses, but especially in any leadership roles. “
In fact, in fall 2017, Principia nominated Cameron for the 2017 Outstanding Student Leader award, presented by St. Louis County to area high school seniors each year. As a softball and basketball teammate and captain of both teams, Cameron says she’s “learned a lot about how to be a leader and the different types of leadership necessary for different situations. . . . A lot of the lessons I have learned in sports directly link to being a house captain.”