Signing week proved profitable for four local prospects and Kansas University.
During the first official high school signing period of the 2008-09 season, KU landed three area softball players and one city hoops standout, three of whom made their commitments official Friday afternoon.
Free State High twins Rosie and Maggie Hull signed with the Jayhawks to play softball, and Lawrence High forward Tania Jackson, who will miss her senior basketball season at LHS because of injury, also placed her name on the dotted line.
Earlier in the week, McLouth High catcher Kendall Patterson inked with the KU softball program, as well.
For the Hulls, who orally committed to KU in January, Friday’s signing celebration was the culmination of a long wait.
“Basically, as soon as we knew KU was interested, we were ready to sign,” Rosie Hull said. “And we’ve been waiting for this day ever since. We grew up Jayhawks, and it’s a dream come true for us to be able to play softball there.”
For both, the top priority throughout the recruiting process was to attend the same college.
“We didn’t even really look anywhere else,” Maggie Hull said. “We always knew we wanted to go to the same school, and it was either we were both going to play or neither of us were going to play.”
Wearing white and blue KU T-shirts and huge smiles, the Hulls signed in the FSHS gym in front of about 60 friends, family members and teachers.
Meanwhile, across town, Jackson signed in the LHS library in the company of dozens of her closest friends and family members.
One of the heroes of last year’s run to the Class 6A state title, Jackson orally committed to KU this summer and said Friday that she never wavered on her commitment to her hometown team.
“Going to Late Night every year and getting goose bumps on my arms : there’s no other place to be around basketball than KU,” Jackson said. “It’s a great atmosphere. I grew up around it, and it was just the perfect place.”
While the Lawrence trio waited until Friday to sign, Patterson could not. Instead, she signed Wednesday, the first possible day allowed by the NCAA.
KU coach Tracy Bunge and her staff didn’t have to recruit Patterson very hard. She orally committed to Kansas as a sophomore.
“I wanted to play there ever since I was little,” Patterson said minutes after making it official.
Although she grew up a KU fan, Patterson first realized she wanted to play softball for KU at age 12, when her youth coach, John Moppin, took her and her teammates to watch his daughter, Jessica Moppin, a former KU infielder, play at Arrocha Ballpark.
“They were my idols,” Patterson said of the players on the Kansas teams she watched back then.
The Bulldogs catcher put pen to paper as her proud papa, and MHS softball coach, Ballard Patterson watched over her shoulder, and her mother, Lorie, sat by her side.
– The Mirror’s Benton Smith contributed to this report.
