What drives Butler girls basketball’s Amelia McMichael ahead of senior season?
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Butler girls senior varsity basketball player Amelia McMichael. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle
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Butler girls senior varsity basketball player Amelia McMichael. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle
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Butler girls senior varsity basketball player Amelia McMichael. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle
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Butler High School girls basketball senior Amelia McMichael takes a jump shot during a practice on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, at Butler High School. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle
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Butler High School girls basketball senior Amelia McMichael goes to the rim during a practice on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, at Butler High School. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle
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Butler High School girls basketball senior Amelia McMichael practices dribbling during a drill during a practice on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, at Butler High School. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle
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Butler High School girls basketball senior Amelia McMichael guards the ball during a practice on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, at Butler High School. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle
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Butler High School girls basketball senior Amelia McMichael congratulates teammate Addi Geibel for making a shot during a drill during a practice on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, at Butler High School. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle
“Driven” is the word that comes to mind for Mark Maier when he thinks about Amelia McMichael.
Perhaps ambitious is another.
McMichael will be Butler girls basketball’s tone-setter this season. The senior guard/forward wants to lead the Golden Tornado out of the first round of the WPIAL playoffs for the fir st time since she joined varsity.
But she also has shadowed doctors and nurses during open-heart surgery, wants to become a nurse and do cosmetic work, became a PIAA referee and wants to compete in weightlifting after her basketball career ends.
Busy. Unsatisfied. Active.
All more words to describe McMichael.
“She’s driven, and what’s that mean?” Maier said. “She’s working outside of our open gyms, outside of our practices, summers.
“It’s easier to take the bucking out of the bronco than to put the bucking into the bronco.”
McMichael is the former.
She got into basketball when she could walk, she joked, because her dad, Chris, played at Butler as a teenager. While she hasn’t developed into the 6-foot-8 frame Chris, who served in the Marines as well, he and wife Selena instilled a restless work ethic in a young McMichael (5-11). She also has a younger brother, Joey, who plays basketball for the middle school.
She played youth basketball, tried soccer for a while and track for one season — but it was “too slow for me” — and always found herself up early on weekends doing something.
Over the years, that grew into a dedication to working out in the gym— she loves the feeling when she knows she’s stronger than her opponent — or with a basketball to get stronger and better.
“I feel like if I don’t pick up a ball every day I’ve done nothing,” McMichael said.
“I always feel like if I don’t do anything, I’m disappointing my parents.”
It continues as she prepares for her senior season, which begins 1 p.m. Saturday with the season opener at Armstrong. When that campaign is over, she’ll then play collegiately at West Chester, where she committed in October over four other Division II offers.
McMichael, who played AAU for Pittsburgh-based Drill for Skill, focused on her shooting and ball-handling, among other skills, during the offseason at the urging of her future WCU coach.
“I’d say she’s confident in her abilities and she doesn’t shy from the big moments. She wants to take the game-winning shot,” said Maier, who has known McMichael since she and his daughter, Avery, began playing youth basketball together. “No fear in her eyes. ... I t hink it’s the want-to. Every coach wants some body who’s all-in.”
Her work ethic doesn’t end with playing basketball.
She became a PIAA ref, one of the youngest in Western Pennsylvania, she believes, and officiates up to the junior high level. It’s given her a different perspective on the game.
And in the fall she shadowed nurses during a catheter procedure and open-heart surgery — she admitted was “a little frightening” to hear ribs crack. She developed a passion for the medical field because of her mom, also a nurse, and wants to help people.
“I always love hearing her stories when she comes home from work,” McMichael said.
She chose West Chester in part because of its nursing program; she also liked the distance — not too close to home and not too far — and will get athletic and academic scholarships.
One day she wants to become a nurse practitioner and eventually get into cosmetic medicine.
“I just love beauty and makeup,” McMichael said.
All of that will wait — for now — even if McMichael talks like she’s ready to do it all.
She has one more season of high school basketball, this time with the responsibility to lead.
McMichael averaged 16 points and eight rebounds per game last season, proving a capable scorer inside the paint but also from range, where she made 37 3-pointers. Butler will need more of the same to make a playoff run for the first time in her four years with the program.
“I think we’re gonna do great,” she said. “We have all the tools ... I think we can do it.”
