Girls Basketball: John Jay’s Knox Reaches Milestone

John Jay junior guard Raegan Knox has enjoyed a prolific career playing for the Indians and it just got better.

In the team's Feb. 8 contest against visiting Brewster, she hit a jumper with 2:40 remaining in the third quarter, a basket that enabled her to reach the 1,000-point milestone for her career. At that moment it gave her 29 points for the game.

“I didn’t know that was the 1,000-point, so I was so shocked,” Knox said. “It was like, ‘Oh yes, I got it.’ I was so excited and happy. They stopped the game, I got the game ball. I got to hug all my teammates. It was really nice because I didn’t expect that at that point in the game, it just happened. I was so surprised.”

Knox wound up scoring 34 points in a 59-43 triumph against the Bears. That effort was four points short of her career high when she tallied 38 points against Ketcham in her freshman year.

“I wanted do to it at home,” Knox said. “If you do it away, it’s still great but you don’t get all your fans, you don’t all the excitement and everything. It’s not as much a production when it happens on the road.”

Being able to hit the milestone at home enabled her family to watch her accomplish it.

“My family was able to make it, my cousins and a lot of my friends were there to congratulate me,” Knox said. “It was a nice feeling because everyone was there to support me.”

Knox says that a big reason for her scoring prowess is because of the support her teammates give her.

“A lot of the reason why I have been successful is because of my teammates, we work well as a team,” Knox said. “They work to get me the ball where it should be so I’m in the right position to shoot it. That has helped a lot.”

What has also helped her a lot is her work ethic.

“On my end, I have worked hard and made basketball one of my priorities,” Knox said. “I always wanted to be the best I can be so I always put a lot of effort into that and I think it’s paid off. I am happy with things how they have worked out.”

As early as her freshman year, Knox showed promise. She established herself quickly as a key player for the Indians, leading the team in scoring by averaging 17.3 points per game.

Knox also led John Jay in scoring with 19.6 points per game as a sophomore last year and 21.1 points per game this year—the second best scoring average in the area.

Back as a freshman though, tallying 1,000 points for her career wasn’t something she dwelled on.

“As a freshman, it never really crossed my mind, it seemed so far away,” Knox said. “So I never really thought about it a lot but I did think that it would be cool to do.”

What Knox also thinks is cool is being able to play for coach Greg Blake, who is in his first year of coaching the John Jay girls squad but has 37 years of coaching experience. Blake is no stranger to John Jay as he was the head boys coach at the school from 1988-96, which included making it to the sectional finals at the Westchester County Center in White Plains in '88.

Blake also was an assistant coach for the John Jay boys squad during the '99 and 2000 seasons

“He’s done a good job of implementing offenses for us,” Knox said. “We have more sets and quick hitters than we used too. We get good ball movement and reversals. We work well as a team.”

“I’m not saying that we haven’t in past years, I just think that having your offenses that everyone has somewhere to go at a certain time has been helpful to us,” Knox continued. “Coach Blake has done a great job motivating us because we want to be the best that we can be.”

Knox also wants to be the best that she can be in the classroom, which she says is her top priority, thus the reason why playing in the Patriot League or Ivy League in college sounds attractive to her. She said right now she is not set on one school.

“A lot of schools from the Patriot League have contact me, Bucknell, Lafayette, Colgate,” Knox said. “Richmond has had some interest in me and a few Ivy League schools Princeton, Dartmouth. Then a lot of Division III schools such as Emory and other schools like that.”