Greenville High School’s Jeanee Anderson recently signed a scholarship to play basketball at Coahoma County Community College. Anderson’s signing should have been celebrated with her friends, teammates and coaches inside of her school’s library.
Instead, because of the times this country and community are in, Anderson had to share her excitement with her friends and teammates over the phone.
“It really hurts not being able to share this moment with all those people I care about, but I think this situation we are living in is teaching me a lot about life,” Anderson said. “Life is not always fair, but you just have to do your best and deal with it.”
Anderson was named the Delta Democrat-Times Girls Basketball Player of the Year last month, and on Tuesday morning she picked up her trophy at the newspaper with her mother, Tonya Holmes, and her niece Kalyn.
Anderson, a four-year starter for the Honeybees, saw her hard work payoff as as a senior. This year Anderson had her best season yet. Playing in Class 6A basketball, the highest division in the state of Mississippi, Anderson averaged 17 points, five rebounds, four assists and three steals a game.
Anderson said she chose Coahoma County after going on a visit and liking the school.
She said this is the longest she has gone without shooting a basketball, but she still hopes to be prepared once the basketball season starts.
“I am shooting a lot of paper towels in the trash can,” she said before her mother chimed in with a laugh that she is also “dribbling the ball a lot in the house.”
Along with Anderson’s fine play this season, she also leaves a legacy of being a key component on, perhaps, the greatest Honeybee team in school history. Averaging 14.4 points a game, Anderson was Greenville’s second leading scorer on last season’s team which started the season by winning its first 31 games.
“Jeanee has always had a God-given ability to score, but this season she became a leader of the team and helped all of her teammates get better,” Greenville coach Dakedreon Lampkin said a few days after the season ended. “Jeanee is a very laid-back kid, but she is also mature. A lot of kids her age have mood swings and you never know what type of mood they are going to be in each day. But, with Jeanee, she always came in everyday with the same drive and work ethic. I always knew what I was going to get with her.”
