'Bean' Ball
Rookie Point Guard Has Gobblers In Gear
Posted: January 28, 2013
Kierstin Roadcap (left) has been a spark for Broadway this season. She is averaging 9.1 points, 2.6 assists and 2.1 steals per game as a freshman. (Photo by Michael Reilly / DN-R)
The Broadway High School freshman estimated that she’s attended Kenny Brooks’ basketball camps in Harrisonburg every year since she was 4. Palling around with Brooks’ daughter, Kendyl, who is currently a freshman guard at HHS, Roadcap could be found shooting baskets on the court after JMU women’s hoops games, too
“I definitely want to go to college,” Roadcap said. “That’s been my dream ever since I was little, to play basketball, preferably. I love Kenny Brooks. My grandma [Marie Wimer] works for the JMU women’s basketball program and ever since I was little I was running around the halls of the Convocation Center.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, when BHS coach Bobby Mongold handed the keys to the Gobblers’ offense to Roadcap this season, the varsity stage did not overwhelm the 5-foot-9 point guard.
Nicknamed “Bean,” Roadcap has averaged 9.1 points and leads the Gobblers (13-3 overall, 7-1 in the Valley District) with 2.6 assists and 2.1 steals per game, while giving Broadway something it didn’t have during a breakout 19-9 campaign last season: a true point guard.
“Heather Bagwell ran our point guard position last year and she definitely wasn’t meant to be a point guard,” BHS senior captain Heather Cantrell said, “but she had to run it because we didn’t have anybody else. She would’ve been more of a 2-3, so when Kierstin was added, she was definitely a big piece to the puzzle.”
Whoever came up with the saying, “You have to crawl before you can walk,” hasn’t met Roadcap. Like many of her other life endeavors, the jump to varsity was a seamless transition and she was ahead of the curve.
“My mom and dad [Mendy and Robbie Roadcap] always told me: when I was little I never really crawled,” Kierstin Roadcap said. “When I was 8 or 9 months old, I just got up one day and started running.”
Soon after, she had a basketball in her hand.
The nickname? That came from Gena Curry, her grandmother, who started calling her “jellybean” because Roadcap was born in February and Easter stuff was coming out.
But this “bean” has been anything but green.
“She doesn’t play like a freshman,” Mongold said of Roadcap, who has lost only four games in Broadway’s basketball program since moving from Bridgewater to play her seventh-grade season at J. Frank Hillyard Middle School.
Roadcap started for a BHS junior-varsity team that went undefeated last season. The year before, she lost just one game: a championship game against Turner Ashby, the team she would have played for had she not moved.
Now, Roadcap is part of a resurgence for the Gobblers, who failed to win a single district game in four seasons until last year. Surviving those strings of defeat would have been tough for Roadcap, who is also a two-time Little League state champion in softball.
“I do not take losses lightly at all. Oh my gosh,” said Roadcap, who plays shortstop and catcher on the diamond. “…It can be school. It can be pretty much anything in life. I hate losing. I hate it.”
Roadcap’s ability to drive to the basket has been integral for Broadway’s offense, freeing up other shooters and even setting up Cantrell and Brianna Zook – the team’s leading scorers – in the post. Roadcap’s aggressive, physical style of play has frustrated opponents on the other side of the ball, too.
“When you look at her, you definitely wouldn’t think of her as a freshman,” Cantrell said. “She’s not scared to get up in somebody’s face and take control.”
With Roadcap this season, BHS is averaging 56.8 points per game. That’s 11.4 points more than last season through 16 games. The Gobblers averaged 47.3 points per game overall last winter.
“We’re a different team when the ball is in her hands,” said Mongold, noting that Roadcap doesn’t have to score to impact a game. “She’s a terrific defender and I think one of her best attributes is her court vision.
“…Everybody else on the floor is playing checkers and she’s playing chess.”