Kymora Johnson
Virginia’s Kymora Johnson was once DQ’d from a national championship because she was on a boys team initially appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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Kymora Johnson has been shining on the largest basketball levels for a very long time.
Long earlier than she led 10-seed Virginia to a historic upset of 2-seed Iowa on Monday within the NCAA Tournament, she was already making noise at a national degree.
When Johnson was 10, she performed for the Charlottesville Cavaliers, an AAU program that had reached a national championship match.
The team was disqualified from the national tourney because Johnson was on the team.
The cause? Johnson was a woman taking part in on a boys team.
Yahoo wrote a story about this greater than a decade in the past, because the elimination of the team went viral. Johnson’s team wore all-pink uniforms in protest regardless of not truly being allowed to play.
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The Yahoo story additionally writes that Johnson supplied to sit down out the match so the remainder of her team to play, however they stood in solidarity together with her.
It’s fairly the basketball origin story for Johnson, who’s a strolling bucket who completed second within the ACC in scoring within the 2025-26 season.
She’s acquired the superior issue that she stayed house, a child from Charlottesville now in her third season starring for her hometown college.
Johnson put in 15.3 factors per recreation as a freshman, then 17.9 as a sophomore, and she’s as much as 19.5 factors per recreation this season.
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She’s additionally averaging 4.5 rebounds, 5.8 assists and a couple of.1 steals per recreation whereas taking pictures 36% from 3-point vary.
Against Iowa, Johnson had 28 factors whereas taking part in all 50 minutes of an epic double-overtime win to advance to the Sweet 16.
She’s constructed for this second, and Kymora Johnson is not letting it move her by.
