Brook Simpson loves to play basketball.
"When I was younger, about fifth grade is when I started," Simpson said. "I used to just practice in my driveway everyday and I didn't play travel ball until seventh grade so it is just a fun game for me. You just keep learning and keep improving."
Simpson is a making a major impact on the varsity team for Belding as a freshman.
Her team has won five their last six games and is 7-3 overall.
She is averaging 23 points per game.
"She is a kid that when you say here is the ball here is the rules go play it, she is going to be good at it," 3rd year Belding head coach Shad Breimayer said. "She just has that natural instinct for sports."
Simpson also has a tireless work ethic spending at least two hours a day in the gym before practice even starts.
"I just want to use my jump shot more," Simpson said. "I feel like that is a really good part of the game and I just now got it this year so it is helpful and my three pointers now are improving a lot so I just want to keep improving those."
Simpson has had such an impact that opponents have started implementing specialty defense against her like a box-and-one or diamond-and-one.
"At first it was new because I've never had a box and one defense with face guarding so it is hard to get open and hard to score points," Simpson said, "but if you hustle on defense you get a lot of buckets."
Simpson is already on the radar of many colleges. She was scheduled to meet with the coaches at the University of Michigan before COVID hit.
She made it clear that getting to the next level is a goal.
"I definitely want to go division one but I haven't really ruled out any college so far," Simpson said. "I'm open to anything."
"I think the next progression will be getting a little more size to her a little stronger maybe to get to that next level," Breimayer added. "With the work she puts in, I could see her achieving anything. She is a worker and if she sets her mind to do what she wants to do, she wants to make it to the D1 level, I believe she will make it."
Simpson and the Black Knights are scheduled to host Godwin Heights on Friday night.
