This fall, Zar’ria Mitchell will enter her junior year at Saginaw Township’s Heritage High School as an honors student and as a standout point guard on the tradition-rich Lady Hawks basketball team.
She also will begin as a newly selected member of the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Student Advisory Council.
Her assignment is to begin considering ideas for improvement in athletics at more than 500 prep programs across the state, but she already had a pair of topics in mind even before she achieved a seat at the table.
“I want to be a voice for our school,” says the speedy long-court dynamo, who teammates and friends often simply refer to as “Z” and who favors an “up tempo” brand of basketball.
First, she says officials should find ways to organize safe sports competitions even during the covid-19 era, because so many college athletic scholarships are at stake when shutdowns have taken place.
Second, she says equality for female athletes still is not fully achieved.
“Boys get more opportunities,” she asserts, pointing to practice times and especially to weight room training, a comparative issue that emerged in national news reports during the college March Madness men’s and women’s tournaments last March.
Zar’ria bills herself as 5-foot-6, but that might include a couple inches of her curly hair piled on top when she plays.
“It doesn’t matter,” says Coach Eugene Seals Jr., with a chuckle. “No matter what her size, everyone’s afraid of her. She’s fast, but also shifty. She’s the type of player who can hold her own with the guys.”
Support from the school
Zar’ria comes from athletic lineage. Her father, Troy Mitchell, played basketball and football at Bridgeport High School. Her mother, the former Jodi Erwin at Pinconning High School, was good enough in softball to achieve a scholarship at Ball State University.
When Mom first discovered the MHSAA opportunity on the internet she figured this would be a perfect fit for her daughter, already an activist in Heritage’s Black Student Union and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority’s Ivylette Youth Group.
Athletic Director Justin Thorington provided the letter of recommendation, noting that Zar’ria faced the freshman challenge and pressure of entering a program that had won state championships in 2017 and again in 2018.
“While her talent certainly contributed to her making the team, it was her ability to be a leader on the court that made her a no-brainer to making the team and to start,” he wrote. “Zar’ria is a leader in our community, having volunteered for the Saginaw Children’s Zoo, African Festival, Greek Festival, and Coats for Kids, to name a few of many.”
Thorington also explained that Miss Mitchell, who aims beyond basketball for a career in nursing, also has performed the sensitive service of supporting students with autism, “all while having a contagious smile on her face.”
“Z” also was smiling after she achieved her personal athletic highlight, sinking a buzzer-beating half court shot last winter to win a big road game at Detroit Renaissance High School. She earned Saginaw Valley League postseason honors as both a freshman and a sophomore, and as she grows older and stronger she potentially will be a candidate to contend for SVL Player of the Year.
Coach Seals recalls not only the super shot at Detroit Ren, but also significantly a game that the Lady Hawks ultimately lost after a good battle.
“It was against Holt, and Zar’ria wasn’t playing like herself,” says Seals, who was a Saginaw High statewide standout two decades ago. “Like any athlete at times, she was down on herself, and I was trying anything for her to keep her head up.
“All of sudden, she went out and got a bunch of steals, played great defense, and hit a lot of shots. We still lost by four points, but is would have been a whole lot worse if not for Zar’ria. That’s the same sort of drive that will make her great for the state student advisory commission.”
Future outlook
She would treasure a chance to continue in college and ultimately the pros — if not in the WNBA, then overseas — not only for the higher level of competition, but to enhance her potential as a future coach. Her busiest season is the spring, when she plays soccer at a second Heritage sport and also takes part with an AAU youth travel team, the Michigan Elite Storm.
Unlike many of her peers, she says she doesn’t have a particular favorite player, although she admired the efforts in the NCAA women’s tourney from Arizona’s Aari McDonald, a role model to Zar’ria with her speedy flashes, who gained fans while she led her team to a narrow one-point finals defeat to Stanford.
She followed the Heritage High champs while she was prepping at White Pine Middle. She admires Moira Joiner, an all-stater who is entering her junior year with the Michigan State Spartans and whose footsteps she hopes to follow to East Lansing.
“I just like watching everybody, and learning from them,” she sums up. “I don’t have a whole lot of time to watch on television, but I have learned to watch game film to prepare for our next opponents.”
Her MHSAA duties will include bimonthly online meetings during the next two years, along with annual in-person overnight conferences in Lansing. As her teammates and friends know, Zar’ria won’t hesitate to speak up.
