Change of Heart: Local freshman center returns to basketball after planning to focus solely on academics at CMU


After an entire summer without picking up a basketball, former Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart Academy leading scorer Averi Gamble decided she couldn't stay away from the sport she loves.

The 6-foot-3 center planned to spend her freshman year at Central Michigan University focusing on her academics and possibly playing club basketball in her free time. She said she hadn't played since March, when Sacred Heart lost to Pittsford 48-30 in the Class D State Championship Game.

"At the beginning of the summer, I just wasn't really feeling it after playing for so many years," Gamble said. “But I just couldn’t give it up. Being away from it just made me realize that I loved it that much more, so I just had to come back.”

At the start of the fall semester while exchanging recipes with Gamble's mother, Alesha, women's basketball head coach Sue Guevara convinced Averi to practice with the team. On Oct.10, Gamble was officially added to the 2016-17 roster.

“If I’m going to be a practice player, I’m going to put in all the work anyway," she said. "That's the hard part. So I might as well take the next step and be on the team."

Adjusting to college basketball

Guevara highlighted Gamble's ability as a player and a winner. She scored more than 1,200 points during her career at Sacred Heart and was named Associated Press Class D Player of the Year in 2015-16.

"She knows how to work," Guevara said. "She knows how to win and our players have really embraced her. She's going to benefit from this and so are we. I'm just really happy to have her."

Gamble's goal this season is to be a "supporting factor" for the Chippewas and help make her teammates better.

“I’m still transitioning from high school to college," she said. "(The team) has been working all summer and I haven’t. It’s just about getting back into shape and I'm totally OK with that.”

Gamble has appeared in two games for the Chippewas so far this season.

A basketball family

Gamble is the daughter of former NBA player and CMU's current assistant men's basketball coach Kevin Gamble.

Kevin Gamble played for Men's Head Basketball Coach Keno Davis' father, Tom Davis, at Iowa in the late 1980s. 

Though her father's NBA career influenced her to start playing basketball at a young age, Averi said she has always had the freedom to "be her own person" on the court.

"I don’t want to be compared to my dad," she said. "He was a guard in college and in the NBA. I’m a whole different type of player than him. It’s cool that he was in the NBA and I like saying that he has directed me toward basketball, so I guess it can go both ways.”

Gamble described her father as more of a parent and less of a coach when it comes to her athletic career. 

Kevin Gamble said he has always encouraged his kids to "do their own thing." When they chose to play sports, he left it up to their coaches to guide them.

"I taught her how to shoot free throws and that was it," Kevin Gamble said about his daughter. "I said if you're going to play basketball and your dad is Kevin Gamble, you're going to at least know how to shoot. The rest was on her."

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About McKenzie Sanderson

McKenzie Sanderson is the Sports Editor at Central Michigan Life. She is a senior at Central ...

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