Sean Keeler, denverpost.com March 2, 2019
The Stanford commitment and Regis Jesuit girls basketball standout had actually practiced her alley-oop conversion five times the day of Jan. 12 before successfully throwing down the first one in Colorado girls hoops history.
Fran Belibi and Avery Vansickle had been planning on blowing up the Internet for weeks before the bomb actually dropped. On the day of the first recorded alley-oop in Colorado girls basketball history, the pair of Regis Jesuit players had practiced the thing five times, just to make sure they had the steps right.
If Vansickle, the Raiders’ point guard, had the ball, Belibi, Regis’ 6-foot-1 star forward, was supposed to make a particular noise as the cue to call for a lob.
“We got it in three times (out of five) and told ourselves, ‘Today’s the day,’” Belibi told The Post of the lead-up to the Raiders’ visit to Heritage High School on Jan. 12. “We kept saying it was going to happen, but it didn’t.”
Until it did.
The Raiders’ Gracie Weigand stole a feed into the paint to start the break that led to the dunk that rattled the Twittersphere. Vansickle, sprinting at the front of the ensuing break, took a long feed from Weigand. The Regis guard set her feet in the middle of the lane, bounced the rock once, and lobbed it up in front of the rim for Belibi, who was trailing on the play, to finish with her right hand.
Cue the bedlam.
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