Even as she produces at a high level, Morton’s Chanteze Holland can fly under the radar.
The 5-foot-6 guard, the Governors’ only senior who plays significant minutes, was averaging 20.1 points, 3.0 rebounds and 3.0 steals before a win against Hobart on Wednesday.
“She’s having a great season,” Morton coach JaMesha Harris said. “She struggles sometimes a little bit when she tries to overplay. But when she adjusts and when she locks in, Chanteze is a phenomenal player. She’s just a phenomenal guard.
“I’m definitely going to miss her. She’s my senior. I got her when she was a sophomore. She didn’t have that much confidence when I first got her when she was a sophomore. She didn’t understand why she wasn’t playing. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t playing, from the talent she had. But confidence — I built her confidence up a little bit, and she just took off from there.”
Indeed, Holland scored 44 points on 11-of-19 shooting from 3-point range in the Governors’ 84-55 victory against Bowman in the final of the Hoops 4 Pink Holiday Tournament at Morton on Dec. 28.
“She’s so quiet,” Harris said. “It just came out of nowhere. She gets her threes off so quietly. I didn’t even know she had that 40 when she had it. I knew she shot a few threes. But she gets her points when we need them.”
That team-first approach has been the focus for Holland, a co-captain.
“I just wanted to win a championship,” she said. “I just brought the game home. I just knew it was really important for our team to win that tournament, so it was really a big thing for me and my team. I just knew we had to bring it home.”
Morton (14-3) has been bringing home quite a few victories this season. The Governors, who last won a sectional game in 2017, have recorded their most victories since going 18-6 in 2015-16.
“We’re really good as a team,” Holland said. “We’ve put a lot of team effort into everything we do, every practice. I’m really going to miss this team when I graduate.”
Players such as star sophomore forward Kylah Patterson, a co-captain who recently eclipsed 1,000 career points and averages a team-best 24.5, will miss Holland.
“She means a lot to us,” Patterson said. “She’s there with her 3-point shooting and her scoring. She’s there with her defense and her hustle. She gets 50-50 balls. She’s there to finish too. She steps up.”
Holland has been a key contributor for the Governors for several seasons. After averaging 1.6 points as a freshman, when she split her time between junior varsity and varsity, she jumped to 10.5 points as a sophomore. She posted 13.0 points and 3.3 steals last season.
“I was still learning how varsity works,” Holland said of her sophomore season. “But as long as I had a coach to help me and guide me through, it got easier when I got on varsity.
“I always thought I could do it. I just had to push myself to do it, especially when I have a good coach.”
Holland said she “learned from my mistakes from last year” and worked diligently on her passing and shooting in the offseason.
“I stayed in the gym all summer,” she said. “I was waiting for conditioning to come back so I could build more character. I’m just trying to build myself better for the future.”
Holland’s grandmother Barbara Knox died in June. Holland’s mother, Sandra Askew, had been a traveling nurse, working contracts hours away from home for months at a time, so Knox would stay with Holland.
“It’s motivation,” Holland said. “It was very hard on my mom, and she took some time off, and now she’s staying home and taking one-day jobs.”
Holland, who has a job at McDonald’s, intends to play basketball in college and has a career in mind.
“I really want to be an attorney,” she said. “Half of my family really wanted to study law, but they didn’t do it. This generation really got into nursing. So my generation is really based off nursing. Most of my family really wanted to do law, and I really want to pursue their dream and take law. I really want to do it for myself.”
