Kayla McBride: Hungry, Humble, and Thankful… But Never Satisfied

Kayla McBride Media

An alum of Villa Maria Academy in Erie, Kayla McBride has gone on to represent her hometown as a key team player at Notre Dame University and ultimately the WNBA for the Minnesota Lynx, where she recently made her fourth appearance in their All-Star game.

This summer, Erie native and Minnesota Lynx guard Kayla McBride made her fourth appearance in the WNBA All-Star Game. Erie Times-News sports writer Tom Reisenweber in 2019 had already noted that McBride had "put together one of the greatest basketball careers in Erie history." With each passing season, she continues to add to that legacy.

McBride is one of the WNBA's "most efficient scorers" and "one of the league's deadliest jumpshooters," SB Nation recently published. Minneapolis-based journalist Terry Horstman clearly agrees, writing in July, "McBride is playing some of the best basketball of her career."

"I know this league," McBride, now in her 11th season as a pro, told Minnesota's Star Tribune. "I have to bring the energy and experience. We have people who want to prove themselves. And I want to help."

I want to help. For Kayla McBride, that's always been more than merely a mantra.

The Villa Maria Victors

It was the midpoint of the 2006-2007 high school basketball season. The Girard Yellowjackets were leading the region, but a win by Erie's Villa Maria Victors would tie it up. The two rivals had been battling it out for four quarters in front of hundreds of spectators on Girard's home turf.

It was a low-scoring, sloppy game. As was often the case, Villa Maria had staged a second-half comeback. The game was tied. Now with only seconds remaining on the clock, they had possession of the ball. The timer ticked towards zero as a potential game-winning shot sailed over the rim. It landed in the hands of a 14-year-old freshman guard, Kayla McBride. She put it back up. Time expired as the ball went in. The Victors were victorious.

"It was so exciting," McBride, shedding "tears of joy," told Erie Times-News sports reporter Joe Mattis. "That's the first time something like that ever happened to me." It wouldn't be the last.

The regular season culminated in a dramatic rematch against Girard at Gannon University's Hammermill Center. Villa Maria won again to take the region outright. Their win streak continued to the District 10 Class AA championship where they defeated Lakeview at Edinboro University's McComb Fieldhouse.

Reporter Ron Leonardi described them as a well-balanced, deep-benched, defense-first team that knew how to disrupt an opponent's comfort zone. Their win streak continued into the state playoffs all the way to the PIAA state championship game against the undefeated York Catholic. While they lost, being second in the state with region and district titles was an exceptional achievement.

The team retained three starters the following season, along with a sophomore McBride and a promising transfer. The team was off to a solid start when senior and team captain Brittany Wilwohl went out with an elbow injury in mid-January. She'd miss the next eight games while the rest worked strenuously to keep up their momentum. They succeeded.

"Just a sophomore, Villa Maria basketball player Kayla McBride seems to have unlimited potential," printed the Erie Times-News, adding that she was "a pure treat to watch." Villa Maria head coach Scott Dibble described her as "team-oriented and a tremendous player." The 5'11" McBride, tall for a guard in the region, was gaining a reputation for her fearlessness, meticulous mid-range jump shots, and "piercing, shifty drives" to the bucket.

"If she plays as hard as she can," Dibble stressed, "I don't think anyone can hang with her."

McBride always found a way to shift the conversation to the team. "Our whole team has been working really, really hard on defense," she noted in a post-game interview. "It was a really good team effort."

Wilwohl returned from her injury in February as they clinched the Region 2 title and went on to again win the District 10 championship a few weeks later against Girard. But their season came to an early end in the state playoffs with a surprise 50-45 loss to Johnstown's Bishop McCort High School.

Falling short of a state championship two years in a row was motivating. McBride spent the summer playing with the Erie Irish club team where she demonstrated her "run-and-gun style," almost streetball-like at times, which kept "defense[s] guessing almost every time she touched the ball." They played in Chicago and Washington, D.C., bringing her attention outside of Erie County. ESPN soon ranked her nationally as a top 10 guard in her graduating class. Numerous NCAA Division I schools began expressing interest in her. Even though she planned on waiting until after junior year to make any verbal commitments, a single visit to Notre Dame changed that.

"When I stepped on campus as a 16-year-old, it was just this feeling, almost like butterflies," McBride reflected in 2020. She very quickly informed legendary Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw that she planned to join the Fighting Irish in two years. "I knew I found the right college for me — one that went beyond basketball and one renowned for academics," McBride said at the time. "It's overwhelming … I'm just trying to take it all in right now."

McGraw, who coached Notre Dame from 1987 to 2020, led the team to nine Final Four appearances with two national championships throughout her career. She tells me that she immediately connected with McBride. Earlier in her coaching career, it was mostly about what the players could do on the court, but in her later years, she found there needed to be more than that.

"I really cared more about them, their competitive drive, their work ethic, how coachable they were going to be," says McGraw. "Along with [Kayla having] all of those things, I just loved talking to her. I just felt like I had a connection with her. I think being from Erie, her family was so important to her, and she was somebody who felt like she had something to prove, something that she wanted to prove. She had that drive to be great."

McBride still had two more high school seasons left though and, now a junior, she and her teammates would demonstrate that competitive drive. As the season began, she was asked about her "ultimate sports fantasy." It wasn't about breaking school records or playing in the WNBA. It was about winning a state championship. It was about the team.

"The Notre Dame-bound junior could score 40 on any given night if she wanted to, but always seems to find the open teammate," wrote Tom Reisenweber that season. Her unselfishness on the court was highlighted often. Even on the night she crossed 1,000 career points, she said that it was nice, but she'd take a state championship over it any day.

This team understood their respective roles — and while they clearly knew how to get the ball through the hoop, they also continued to dominate teams defensively, many times keeping their opponents under 30 points. "When we play as a team," said McBride after a win, "we can do anything." And, indeed, they did. One could write a book about these two seasons, but the short of it: they won the state championship against York Catholic.

Then they won it again the next year.

On top of her personal accomplishments, in McBride's four years playing for the Villa Maria Victors, the team had a remarkable 106-15 record.

On a team that eventually swept the region, Kayla McBride got this taste of victory as she helped lead the Villa Victors. Her team-first attitude and humble confidence has made her a valuable asset to the many teams she has helped towards success over the years.

Photo: Kayla McBride Media

Putting the Work In

Of course, Kayla McBride's story starts long before high school. The daughter of LaMont and LuAnn McBride and the oldest of four, she fell in love with the game very young, spending countless days, basketball in hand, with her father who refereed and worked summer basketball camps. As she got older and better at handling the ball, she'd study DVDs of Michael Jordan highlight reels and by age 12, she was playing pickup games at Erie's Burton Park. She was often the only girl present. She worked relentlessly to be taken seriously, focusing on her crossovers and pull-up jumpshot. "You can't back down," she later reflected on these games. She wanted to be known there by her name and not just "the girl on the court."

"I just loved the game," McBride later said. "I loved the feeling of the ball going through the net."

Then there was the Charlie Ward basketball camp. Around the same time she started playing pickup games, her father was coaching at the all-boys camp in Erie led by Ward, point guard for the New York Knicks. She was permitted to participate and soon, McBride had opportunities to work directly with Ward.

"I remember her vividly," Ward shares with me. "She was definitely a gifted athlete. She was very similar to myself. When I was a little kid, I used to follow my dad around... and there she was, dribbling the basketball." It was also confirmation to McBride that she could play this game. Charlie Ward and his camp were so influential that she wears his jersey number, 21, on her uniform to this day.

Next, she headed to play for NCAA Division I Notre Dame.

"She was so humble," reflects Coach McGraw. "I would always tell players, we can help you, but you have to want it too. And boy, Kayla wanted to be so good and she was never afraid to put the work in."

McBride started off the season with solid stats: averaging 8.7 points per game making 55.7 percent of her shots. There were challenges though and her academics suffered, which sidelined her for the second half of the season. By her own account, it was a low point, and in recent years, she's been open about her mental health struggles since childhood battling anxiety and self-doubt.

At the season's end, she had a choice to make.

"She had tremendous mental toughness," McGraw says. McBride, she remembers, spent the entire off-season in the gym. "She came back a much better player. I think that's something the other players really respected, how she responded to adversity."

McBride earned a starting spot on the team, averaging 11.6 points per game and sinking half of her shots. She was also simply there for whatever role was needed of her.

"She loved her teammates and she wanted to win," explains McGraw. "She didn't care if she had two points or twenty points. If we won, that was all that mattered."

And they won a lot. The team made it all the way to the NCAA National Championship that year, although Baylor University came out on top. It only served to motivate McBride to improve even more and she never shied away from her coach's critiques.

"The other thing that made her special was that she really knew how to take criticism and work on it. She really responded well to feedback," McGraw says. If she scored 20 points, but only had three rebounds, McGraw reminded her to improve her rebounding. "She was somebody who responded well to being challenged like that."

McBride embraced a leadership role her junior year. "She was always well-liked and well-respected, but she could really relate to the younger players and help them along because she had some struggles," continues McGraw. "She was somebody who could really be an example for them to look up to."

The team again made it to the Final Four, but was knocked out by Connecticut in the semifinal game. McBride had averaged 15.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 2.4 assists per game across the season. During her senior year, she averaged 17.6 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game. The team advanced all the way to the championship game, although again lost to Connecticut.

Despite these tough losses, McBride always elevated her game against UConn. "They called her the 'husky-killer,'" says McGraw with a laugh. "Every time we played Connecticut, she responded with a huge game. She has a winning record over them in her four years, which not a lot of people can say. She always really rose to the occasion."

McBride graduated from Notre Dame in 2014 with a degree in marketing. She left college ranked fifth all-time in career points for the Fighting Irish (1,876) and the highest ever in free throw percentage (88.2 percent). She also pulled down over 600 rebounds.

"I made some mistakes. It wasn't easy," McBride reflected in 2018. "I grew up a lot in my four years at Notre Dame. I wouldn't change anything. I came in as a girl and I left as a woman."

At 32 years old, McBride is now a key player for the WNBA team, the Minnesota Lynx, where she has transformed into one of the most prolific three-point shooters in the league. (Photo: Kayla McBride Media)

K-Mac in the WNBA

In 2014, McBride was drafted into the WNBA by the San Antonio Stars, the third overall pick. She started every game that season, led the team in scoring, and earned All-Rookie Team honors.

Fast-forward to this season and now, at 32 years old and a seasoned veteran playing with the Minnesota Lynx, McBride is one of the most effective players in the league at a time when the WNBA is more popular than ever. She's also transformed into one of the most prominent three-point shooters in the league, despite, by her own recent admission on the Lynx Unleashed podcast, not considering herself a three-point shooter before going pro. As she told the host, she'd known that she needed to expand her skillset and extend her shooting range in the WNBA. So, in typical Kayla McBride style, she made herself one of the best in the league at it. It's a testament to her work ethic.

In July, WNBA sportswriter Myles Ehrlich shared a clip of her on social media spotlighting just how clean of a game she plays in Minnesota's five-out motion offense. "It honestly feels like we're watching her hoop in an empty gym sometimes with how smoothly she moves around the court and finds openings," he wrote. "One of the coolest athletes in the [WNBA]."

Indeed, Kayla McBride really is just downright cool — and really fun to watch on the court. She moves seamlessly on offense with and without the ball, still with a bit of that streetball finesse.

So, when it was announced that she'd be making her fourth appearance in the WNBA All-Star Game, it likely wasn't a surprise to any of her fans. In typical fashion, she also found a way to make it about the team. "[I]t's the most talented team that I've played on and that's the reason I'm an All-Star," she said. "It's my teammates giving me confidence, allowing me to be myself day in and day out."

In her professional career, there have been injuries and setbacks. There have been trades and stresses, starting all over in a new city with a new team. Like many in the WNBA, she plays during the off-season professionally in Europe where she's been very successful — but that experience comes with its own challenges, such as being away from family and potential burnout. Yet, with McBride, there is always a sense of gratitude.

"There was a time when playing ball was grassroots and there was no pay associated with it," reflects Charlie Ward. "You just did it because it was great enjoyment and a gift that God had blessed you with. And then it afforded you the opportunity to make a living doing it as your work."

"I never want to lose the love of the game. I never want anybody to say, 'Man, she just looks unhappy out there,'" McBride said in 2020. "I don't ever want to have to question why I play the game. It's because I love it."

"It all stems from the love of the sport," adds Ward. "Her team is playing well and she's a big part of it, so I'm happy."

As Minnesota's Star Tribune pointed out, McBride's past few seasons have been "a study of steady play." She brings an intensity to her game, but also genuinely looks like she's having fun. There's a joy in her game. In her recent conversation with Lynx play-by-play announcer Wendell Epps on Lynx Unleashed, they discussed this specifically. "I'm just playing with a lot of joy," she confirmed. "I want to be known as a great leader, a great teammate, and somebody that's just all about winning."

The conversation often circles back to this in recent years. "Happiness comes and goes, right?" she said in another interview. "But the joy that I have is consistent." In June, she brought it up again, noting that, sure, happiness itself fluctuates and the season is a grind. "You're traveling, you're tired, your body hurts," she explained. "But when you have that consistent joy, even in the hard moments, that's when you know you're in the right spot."

There aren't many with a bad word to say about Kayla McBride. "She's just so likable," observes McGraw. "I don't know anybody who ever had a problem with her because she cares so much about people and relationships and values those relationships. I can't wait to see what's next for her."

"She's just a pro," says Ward. "She's found a way to continue to improve her game and her leadership. If you play for an extended period of time and people still want you to be on their team, that shows you have great leadership."

"Hungry and humble and thankful," McBride likes to say, "but never satisfied."

"Sometimes we may not know the impact we have on people," Ward remarks. "People are watching what you do and say and how you hold yourself. [Kayla is] one of those that has just exemplified that and has been a great mainstay on her teams."

How many young players McBride has impacted may not be quantifiable, but it is certainly substantial. Whatever comes next for Kayla McBride and her story, it's very clear that there is a lot left to tell.

Jonathan Burdick runs the public history project Rust & Dirt. He can be reached at jburdick@eriereader.com