Three years have passed since Kiandrea Cherry and Kemper County girls’ head basketball coach Jennie Vance first met, but the two recall their initial meeting as if it occurred yesterday.

Cherry, at the time, was a ripe underclassman, and Vance had recently been named the Lady Wildcats’ head coach.

“At the beginning of the season, we kind of bumped heads a little bit,” Cherry, now a senior, said. “But during our first summer league game against Southeast Lauderdale, she saw what I was capable of, and she liked it. I played hard to let her know that I was all for the team and wanted to play, and she liked that. She believes in me, and that’s what makes me play hard.”

Vance shared a similar story, albeit, with a bit more color.

“Actually, when I first met her, she drove me crazy,” Vance said with a chuckle. “I swore she was never going to play for me because she was too lazy in practice. She almost quit on me my first year here. I showed her that a good player was going to have to be one of the hardest workers on the team, and she ended up being that player. For the rest of that year, she shocked me with how hard she came in here and worked. She’s been one of my best players ever since.”

Cherry ended that season as Kemper County’s leading scorer, and one of Vance’s better defensive players.

Cherry’s and Vance’s bond has only gotten stronger with time.

In 30 games last season, the point and shooting guard averaged 17 points and 4.2 rebounds per game. This season, she’s already off to a strong start. Against Philadelphia High School last Friday, Cherry navigated through the Lady Tornadoes’ defense with ease as she scored a team-high 13 points in Kemper County’s 51-40 win.

Cherry, who has a 3.2 GPA, said she feels her role as one of Vance’s leaders includes more than just turning in strong performances on the floor.

“My role is to get out on the court and be a big example for the ones who are coming up, and try to play hard,” she explained. “When I go out there on the court, I try to give it my all, just so they can feed off of my energy.”

Before arriving in De Kalb, Vance spent time as an assistant for the Houston Comets and head coach Van Chancellor, where she was part of a staff that won two WNBA championships. She was an assistant at Texas A&M and an associate head coach at Henderson State University as well.

Part of Cherry’s dominance, Vance said, comes from an arsenal of intangibles that aren’t taught.

“She’s naturally talented,” Vance said. “She has what I call basketball sense — that’s something you can’t coach. You just luck up and a few of them have it every now and then, and she’s one of those kids who has it. She knows the game very well, and if she does have any inadequacies, she makes up for them with her smarts. For her size, she rebounds the ball well for a guard — she follows her own shots. She knows her teammates well, especially Mercedez (Jackson) and NeKeida (Rencher), because they’ve played together for so long.”

Despite her business-first attitude on the court, Cherry said there’s another side to her that she only displays to the privileged few with whom she shares a locker room.

“I love to clown,” she said. “I just like to get everybody together and for them to be in a good mood and to think positively at all times. I don’t like negativity and all of that.”

Vance said Cherry’s affable personality is endearing.

“She’s an absolute mess,” Vance said with a laugh. “She is a prankster and a jokester. She has a lot of personality. She may not show it, but with her teammates, she has a lot of personality. She’s always playing jokes on the rest of them, and she makes things fun. She’s a likable kid. The whole team likes her, and they look up to her.”

With just a few months left in her prep career, Cherry is focused on continuing to play basketball collegiately. She’s drawn interest from East Mississippi Community College and the University of Montevallo (Ala.). Cherry, however, said she’s open to going anywhere to play at the next level.

“Right now, I’m willing to go to any college that wants me,” Cherry, who hopes to study nursing, said. “I’m not trying to be picky, I’m really looking at any college that accepts me, and I’m willing to go and play.”

It’s safe to say the relationship between Cherry and Vance over the past three years has been mutually beneficial, and when watching the two interact, it’s evident that their bond spans beyond Kemper County’s gymnasium.

“It makes me happy,” Cherry said of the relationship with her head coach. “She’s experienced a lot, and now she can show me all of it, and maybe get me to somewhere where I want to go with college.”

For Vance, she’s thankful the story had a happy ending.

“I think she realized that day that she really wanted to play basketball, and she made the choice not to walk out of the gym, and she stayed. And I think we’ve all been the better for it,” Vance said.