INDIANAPOLIS — There’s no doubt that Eastern Hancock’s Grace Stapleton and New Palestine’s Isabella Gizzi are among the all-time great girls basketball players at their respective schools and in Hancock County.
The two senior guards had a chance earlier in the week to see how they matched up with other great players in the state.
Stapleton and Gizzi were at Beech Grove High School Sunday participating in Hoosier Basketball Magazine’s 42nd annual Top 60 Senior Workout. The workout was hosted by HBM in conjunction with the IHSAA and the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association.
Stapleton, a 5-6 point guard, led the Royals in scoring (15 points per game), assists (5.1) and steals (3.3). She set school single-season (85) and career records (202) for 3-pointers and became just the fourth member of the school’s 1,000-point club (1,110).
At 23.7 points per game, Gizzi, a 5-8 guard, ranked eighth in the state. She averaged 5.8 rebounds and 2.6 steals to go with a team-best 49 3’s.
During her senior season, Gizzi became the school’s all-time leading scorer (1,676). She surpassed her mother, NP head coach Sarah (Haynes) Gizzi (1,172) during the regular season. In sectional play, she became the school’s all-time basketball scoring champ by passing her brother, Maximus Gizzi (1,612).
“It was good, and really fun to be around all the top-level recruits,” Eastern Hancock’s Grace Stapleton said. “I felt like I did well. I know that those girls are good, and, it was like, so am I.”
The workout was broken down into two sessions. Stapleton and Gizzi were part of the second session of the day that mostly included players from Central Indiana.
They senior standouts were broken down into smaller groups that worked in different stations to show ball-handling, shooting, defensive skills and team work. Following the six-minute sessions, the groups were split into teams and scrimmaged against each other with a 10-minute running clock.
“It was good,” Gizzi said of her experience. “I loved playing with those girls. It was kind of my last time playing with them before we go to college. It was sad, but kind of fun to have one more time like this. They’re all really good so it made it really competitive.”
Gizzi, who had played with and against a number of the Top 60 players either in AAU or high school ball, recently committed to play collegiately at the University of Saint Francis, an NAIA school in Fort Wayne. She will become teammates with former Mt. Vernon standout Lexi Shelton.
Stapleton has yet to commit to a school, but said she hopes to in the next couple of weeks.
IU-Southeast, an NAIA school in New Albany and the University of Illinois-Springfield, an NCAA Division II school, are among the programs that have offered the talented point guard.
“A lot of people (at the workout) were already committed to places like Ball State, Butler and one girl was committed to North Carolina (Zionsville’s Laila Hull, Indiana’s Gatorade Player of the Year), I was just trying to see if I could hang with them and I did,” Stapleton said.
“I did OK,” Gizzi said. “There is so much talent out there on the court at once. It’s kind of hard to take over like I would do in our high school games. It was definitely an honor to go and I was glad I got invited.”
