Here’s a story about Ariel Rogers:
She walks into her first basketball practice with the Illinois Hustle last spring and sees that one of her teammates will be Celia Franklin. Rogers attends Evanston, Franklin New Trier. Not exactly your mutual admiration society.
“I remember that practice,” Rogers said. “And I’m thinking there’s no way I’m going to be friends with that girl. But they [Franklin and her mother, Sue] turned into the nicest people in the world. It’s definitely a friendship I did not ever expect to have.”
Here’s another story about Rogers:
She’s in the top 10 percent of her class at Evanston and had the highest grade-point average–a 4.5–for a class in trigonometry and physics. Her overall GPA was a 4.2 as of last year, “but I guarantee you it’s going up,” she said.
Rogers was so intent on improving that average that she took engineering with a pass/fail option. Otherwise, even getting an “A” in the course would have dragged her GPA down.
Competitive? That’s one term to describe Evanston’s best girls basketball player. Intelligent is another. So it’s not surprising that the Evanston senior is going to continue her playing career at Princeton.
“My coach tells me, `Don’t save yourself,'” Rogers said, referring to Steve Wool. “You don’t want to look back and say, `I wish I could’ve done this better or worked harder on that.'”
It’s unlikely Rogers will have to worry about those words entering her thoughts. What hasn’t she done at Evanston? She’s a three-sport athlete who has been named All-Central Suburban South in volleyball, basketball and badminton. Besides engineering, she also is taking advanced-placement physics, AP calculus, economics and honors creative writing.
“She is the funniest person I’ve ever met,” said Franklin, a senior whose sister Shana plays for Harvard–an Ivy League opponent of Princeton’s. “I wish she played on my New Trier team.”
When Rogers came into that club practice, Franklin took notice and thought, “Uh-oh. I’ve got a Wildkit on my team.”
“But then we started joking around,” Celia said. “And we thought, `What are we going to do when the high school season starts?’ We became so close. `We can’t let our high school teammates know.'”
Challenges have become an essential part of Rogers’ life.
She became intrigued with the thought of playing badminton after following around older sister Akilah, who played in high school and is now a senior at Williams College.
“I was the little sister, tagging along with a racket and a birdie,” Ariel said. “I went to state last year but didn’t do as well as I wanted. I’m looking to be top five this year.”
Her challenge in basketball is playing the post at “5-10 and change,” she said. “It makes me feel good that I’m an undersized post.”
What doesn’t make her feel so great is not winning.
“It can be frustrating when you don’t do as well as you can,” she said. “We know we have yet to reach our potential. We know there’s a lot of room for improvement.”
The Wildkits have had some disappointments and some success. Evanston lost by 27 points to New Trier in a big game at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Dec. 18. But the team came back to beat Fremd and Regina during the Dundee-Crown Holiday tournament. The Wildkits (11-6 entering Friday’s game against unbeaten Glenbrook South) also played Fenwick tough in a 51-45 loss.
“You can’t waste energy and time being upset about not playing well,” said Rogers, whose father is a professor with Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and whose mother is in the school’s admissions office. “You need to focus. There’s always something any person on the team can contribute.”
