SEATTLE — In her first season with the University of Washington women’s basketball team, Kelli Kingma often feels the presence of older sister and former Husky Kristi Kingma.
All she has to do is look around.
In the team’s training room, Kristi Kingma’s picture is displayed in a gallery of UW greats. In the dining room, her name is on the wall in several places, citing her many accomplishments in four standout Washington seasons.
“Kristi was a big name,” her sister acknowledged.
Indeed, Kristi Kingma is No. 14 on the school’s career scoring list and holds a handful of school scoring records, including most 3-point goals in one game (11) and one season (86). But this season Kelli Kingma will begin writing her own college basketball story, and it is one that could be every bit as successful as her older sibling.
According to UW coach Mike Neighbors, it was Kristi herself who said, “Kelli is going to be better than me.”
Still, Neighbors added, “the comparisons are inevitable and they’re going to keep coming. But over the course of her four years here, I want Kelli to develop her own identity.”
Like her sister, Kelli Kingma was a top player at Mill Creek’s Jackson High School. The Huskies took notice early, and during an unofficial visit to the UW campus in the spring of her high school freshman year then-coach Kevin McGuff offered a scholarship.
Urged by her father, Gregg, to be sure of her decision, she waited about six months before announcing publicly what she knew all along in her heart — she wanted to be a Husky.
“Honestly, (coming to Washington) is a dream come true,” Kelli Kingma said. “I watched my sister play here and this has always been my dream school.”
In addition, she very much wanted to stay in Seattle. “My family is really close,” she explained, “and I could never go far away from them. Basketball is my first love, my passion, but at the end of the day, it’s my family that’s more important to me. And I couldn’t sacrifice that.”
By the time she arrived at Washington, McGuff had left to become the head coach at Ohio State University. Neighbors, a former UW assistant responsible for much of Kingma’s primary recruiting, had been hired as his replacement.
From the start, Neighbors made it clear that he wanted Kingma in the program as much as ever.
“She’s the definition of a student-athlete, of what you want on and off the court,” he said. “Do you trust her? Yes. Is she talented? Yes. Does she put in the time? Absolutely. And when you can check those three boxes, we know we want them.”
For all the similarities between Kingma and her older sister — “Some of the things they do, I can’t tell a drastic difference,” Neighbors said — they are different players. Kristi Kingma was a prolific scorer, while Kelli Kingma has a more balanced game.
“Kelli is probably more rounded,” Neighbors said. “Kristi did something (scoring) at a great level and a very elite level, but Kelli does a whole bunch of things really, really well. … She can do it all.”
For now Kelli Kingma is coming off the bench and it probably will be that way for much of this season, mostly because Washington has a terrific backcourt tandem of senior Jazmine Davis and sophomore Kelsey Plum. Davis, a three-time All-Pacific-12 Conference choice, will likely become the school’s career scoring leader sometime this season, while Plum set a single-game school record with 45 points in Washington’s season-opening loss at Oklahoma last week.
“My first practice I stepped up to guard Kelsey and she blew straight past me and made a layup,” Kingma recalled. “Then I guarded Jazz and she pulled up and hit a 3 right in my face. And I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. What am I doing out here?’
“In terms of the speed of the game and the talent that’s here, it’s obviously a huge transition between high school and college. But it’s gotten easier and I feel now like I belong out here. Every single day I wake up loving it, and my teammates have always been so supportive of me. It’s been really fun learning from them.”
Although there are constant reminders of her sister — “I think every single day somebody says to me, ‘Hey, Kristi,’” Kelli Kingma said — there is also an opportunity to do something truly special herself.
“From Day 1, (Coach) Neighbors has said, ‘Kelli, we didn’t recruit you because of your sister. We recruited you as Kelli Kingma, not Kristi Kingma.’ So I don’t feel any pressure about that.
“And at the end of the day, Kristi’s my biggest fan. She’s going to be the first one to tell me how well I did and how proud she is of me.”
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