Spring Garden, AL – A year after she committed to play her college basketball career at Alabama, Spring Garden star makes major college destination official, sees opportunities ahead in new women’s basketball order that Clark has forged.
By: Joe Medley
Among Ace Austin’s many gifts that will serve her well in major college basketball, she sees the court.
As she sat at the head table for her signing ceremony in Spring Garden High’s gymnasium, surrounded by family in special-made crimson “Ace” T-shirts with Alabama script “As” as her first initial, Austin looked across the gym at the school’s football team.
Friday’s festivities began with a pep rally for the Panthers’ second-round playoff game against Berry, and there they sat, in the bleachers and donning their maroon home jerseys, watching the main attraction.
They had watched her walk into the gym triumphantly, to low lights and “Yea, Alabama!” playing loudly through the gym’s sound system. They’d watched Alabama mascot “Big Al” hype-walk in with her.
The football players watched as four speakers, including their former head coach, Jason Howard, took their turns at the mic to sing Austin’s praises.
They watched a video, filmed by brother Riley Austin, of a pre-varsity Austin flashing advanced ball handling skills in her driveway.
When Ace Austin got her chance to speak, she proved once again how a sharp-shooting point guard entering her sixth season as a starter for one of the state’s most successful programs can see the floor.
“Thank you to Coach (Barrett) Ragsdale and the football team for letting me share this day with you all,” Austin said. “Go get the ‘W’. You all are going to end up on top, so good luck tonight.”
Ace Austin gets it, and Ace Austin has IT.
That’s why it’s not hard to imagine an extraordinary girl from the Garden doing well in this brave new world that Caitlin Clark has forged for women’s basketball.
Austin, who’s nickname Kristen “Ace” Clement, who starred for Tennessee when Tennessee and head coach Pat Summitt were the face of women’s basketball, will go play for an ascendent major college program.
She’ll have all of the potential exposure laid out in front of her, at a time when the Caitlin Effect has goosed exposure.
If Austin plays her way before cameras with national scope, earning chances to show the world her endearing homespun confidence, she could be one of the next big things.
No one doubts that Austin can play her way into significant camera time.
Guest speaker Doug Bush, owner and director for the Alabama Southern Starz Nike EYBL organization, coached Austin in travel ball on the national Nike circuit. He said he’s coached her more than 300 games going back to her fourth-grade year.
“On the Nike EYBL circuit that we play on, we play against the best players in the country,” he said. “Two players that have taken the WNBA by storm this year, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, both played in the EYBL, so those are the types of players that Ace has been playing against.
“I’ll tell you, she’s proven that she’s one of the very best players in this country. She has played at a level that’s amazing against those types of players.”
Former Georgia Tech player Brian Domalik, owner and trainer of Shooters Paradise. He played with nine professional players, including Kenny Anderson and Dennis Scott.
“In getting to know Ace, she is going to go down as one of the greatest basketball players in the state of Alabama,” he said. “She’s also going to go down as one of the greatest athletes in the state of Alabama,.
“That being said, she is the most humble, sweet girl that I have ever had the privilege to be around.”
As Ricky Austin reminded everyone during the news conference that followed Friday’s signing ceremony, “there’s no moment that’s too big” for his daughter.
She showed it when her dad told his then-seventh-grade daughter to pick up her scoring at halftime of a state-championship game. If not, he told her, Spring Garden might not win the game.
She did, scoring 14 points in the second half, and the Panthers won.
“At that moment, I said, ‘Wow, if that’s all I had to do, the next few years are fixing to be great,’” Ricky Austin said.
The makings of a star are there, and Clark has laid a fertile ground for stardom in front of Ace Austin.
“Opportunity and expectation have to meet for that to happen,” Ricky Austin said. “I think Alabama will provide that opportunity. If her expectations stay high, I’m kind lof like some of her trainers.
“I think anything is possible.”
Ace Austin has sat through countless news conferences after Northeast Regional and Final 48 games. She weaved her way through another one Friday, all the while holding her toddler niece.
She dribbled through her press availability like she has so many high school presses through the years. Headed into college basketball after her senior high school season, she has her eyes up.
She sees the floor ahead of her, and Clark has finished it with the colors of opportunity.
“It starts with just the views of women’s basketball,” Ace Austin said. “Before Caitlin Clark, you didn’t really hear of many people watching women’s basketball, and that’s including college men and NBA. Now, they are talking about women’s basketball. …
‘It’s important to have your people, and not just family wise but people you don’t even know, and she has helped that grow of just the face of women’s basketball. That’s a great opportunity for me and a great opportunity for every basketball player that’s a girl in college basketball.”
Ace Austin said she looks at Clark and imagines a version with her own branding. That branding. Is a girl from the Garden who considers business or law enforcement as potential career turns, after the ball stops bouncing.
Who knows what NIL and basketball can launch for her, assuming she plays her way into such visibility?
She plans to stay grounded, she told the assembly Friday, which just adds to her IT factor.
If staying grounded proves difficult, she always has her mom, dad and two brothers to humble her. At one point during Friday’s signing ceremony, she looked to her dad and asked the correct date, so as to fill in that line.
Her dad humorously reminded her that it’s on the T-shirts everyone around her wore: “Nov. 15, 2024, National Signing Day.”
“Spring Garden is always going to be home,” she said. “So, roll Tide, but go Garden go forever.”
Photo gallery by Joe Medley
