Jana Van Gytenbeek (4) of the Cherry Creek Bruins dribbles between defenders at Cherokee Trail High School on Jan. 8, 2020 in Aurora. Van Gytenbeek will play college basketball at Stanford next season.
Kyle Newman, denverpost.com, January 12, 2020
Long before Jana Van Gytenbeek hit the game-winning, floating bank shot in the waning seconds of the Class 5A championship last year, the point guard was already forecasting her basketball prowess. On a random court in the mountains. At age 7.
Van Gytenbeek was on winter break with her family in Buena Vista at the time. She, her older brother Carter and her father, Tony, shoveled snow off the cracked concrete court at a nearby elementary school, and Van Gytenbeek went to work schooling Carter, then 12, on the art of shooting.
“Their court was practically in the middle of nowhere, mountains all around, and the wind’s really blowing, too,” Carter recalled. “I’m making shots, getting a little hot, and she’s making shots, matching me shot-for-shot through the wind and the cold and a rim that made you miss if you hit it.
“That’s when I started to know she was going to be really good. Like, really, really good.”
