Kait Carter might not have been the first in her family.
And she might not have been the first on her team.
All that does is give her more to celebrate.
Carter is a senior on the Penn Charter High School girls basketball team, and on Jan. 4, she scored her 1,000th career point.
Oddly enough, her teammate Carmen Williams reached the milestone a few minutes before her in the same game.
And Carter is the second member of her family to reach the 1,000-point club. Her brother Matt was the first boys basketball player at MaST Charter to hit a grand.
Carter couldn’t be more proud of everyone.
“It was so exciting because we did it in the same game and everyone was there to see it,” said Carter, who reached the milestone in a 65-28 triumph over Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in an Inter-Ac game. “I don’t think too many teammates got their 1,000 points in the same game, so it was special for me, Carmen and the whole team. It meant a lot.”
It also meant a lot for Carter and her family.
“I wanted to get 1,000 points ever since my brother did it,” Carter said. “We worked together a lot. We would play together, just shooting around. He’s been a big help to me and a big influence on me. I remember when he scored it, and it was a big thing for him. He’s helped me a lot, he’s made me a better player.”
Carter has been a contributor for the Quakers since her freshman year. And while she’s been a capable scorer since she stepped on the court, she’s also able to do other things well, and in doing so she’s helped Penn Charter remain a contender in the challenging league.
“I like scoring, but I think I can do a lot of things,” Carter said. “I think I’m pretty good at defense, I work on passing a lot and getting my teammates involved. I try to do everything I can to make the team better. We have a very good team and we all work on the little things. If I’m not scoring, it doesn’t bother me, I just try to help us win.”
She’s been doing a great job of that.
The Quakers are 13-2 on the year, 3-1 in the Inter-Ac. Their lone loss was a tough one, a 61-47 setback to Germantown Academy. That loss kept them from being in first place in the league, but the good news is they’ll see the Patriots again, so the league is far from decided.
“We’ve done a lot of good things here, but we really want to win the Inter-Ac this year,” Carter said. “We lost a game so we know we have a lot of work to do, but we also know that we can still win it. We just have to play hard and keep working.”
Carter has been working her entire high school career and she does it every season.
During the fall, she plays soccer and in the spring, she plays lacrosse. The Parkwood native sees herself as a basketball player going forward, but she is happy she’s had a chance to be a three-sport athlete in high school.
“A lot of girls play a lot of sports here,” Carter said. “The school is great for that. I knew I loved it here right after I visited it, and it’s been great.”
It was clear she made the right decision on the day she scored the 1,000th point.
Girls games don’t always draw huge crowds, but during that game, the gym was packed with supporters and spectators.
“We had a lot of school spirit that day,” Carter said. “It’s hard, a lot of times we don’t have a lot of people at games, but that day we did. It was great to play in front of a big crowd like that. It was fun.”
For the rest of the winter, Carter will do her best to drill three-pointers and clean up under the basket. Next year, she hopes to do the same in college, but she’ll also learn to drill and clean up other things. Though she’s unsure where she’ll end up, she has a pretty good idea of what she wants to do.
“I want to be a dentist, I’ve always wanted to be a dentist my whole life,” Carter said. “I don’t really know why, it just seems like a very cool job. My whole family is police officers or in law enforcement, and that’s a great job, but I’ve always wanted to go in a different direction.
“I think I want to be an orthodontist. When I was younger, I didn’t have great teeth, and they made mine a lot better. That might be why I want to do it.”
Before she’s giving people the perfect smile, however, she has a lot of unfinished business at Penn Charter.
One goal down, but the three-year captain still has those team goals that she views more important than her individual one.
“We want to have a great finish,” Carter said. “We had a great start, we love playing those games and had a great time at the Christmas tournament, we do that every year. Now we just have to play hard and try to win big games. We have a tough schedule, so it should be fun.”
