YOUNGSTOWN — When Brian Hall looked at his roster heading into this school year, he thought it was going to be a rebuilding year.
Lewiston-Porter lost eight players from last year’s roster that made it to the Section VI Class A2 title game.
And they did not seem to have many players to replace that production. That is, until Amya and Jianna Jacobs joined the team after transferring in from Niagara Falls High School.
“We started the school year and then when they moved into the district in September that was really a nice surprise,” Lewiston-Porter head coach Brian Hall said. “… They gave us two great guards to start off with and kind of built the team around. We were able to keep a couple guards down on JV that we felt needed more time down there because these girls were ready for varsity.”
The sisters moved to the Lewiston-Porter school district because their mom, DaNelle, wanted to move her kids into a safer neighborhood.
Once they did come into the fold, the two did not waste any time making an impact on their new team. In the Lancers opener, the duo scored 40 of the team’s 61 points in a 61-50 win over Starpoint.
That level of success has carried over throughout the entire season where freshman Amya is averaging 14.5 points, 1.2 assists, 1.8 rebounds and 2.7 steals per game. This year, Jianna is putting up a stat line of 13 points, 6.7 assists, 6.6 rebounds and 3.5 steals per game.
The move to Lew-Port has seen both sisters scoring average sky rocket. Last year, Amya was averaging 8.3 points per game in 19 games while her sister averaged 4.2 points.
The increase has come as they have developed and grown as players. It has come with a lot of hard work and plenty of hours in the gym putting up shots.
“Being a young shooting guard and a young point guard as us two, it’s a big role to know when we have to shoot or when they have to shoot,” Amya said. “Whether it’s a three or a layup, we can all make that. So it’s just easier.”
The sisters’ individual success has translated into team success with the Lancers currently sitting at 12-2 overall and 8-1 in Niagara Frontier League play.
The success that they have seen has been a direct result of putting in the work, even when they didn’t want to.
It has also come from the Lancers building friendships with one another. The friendships they have made on the floor have helped the Jacobs sisters get used to their new surroundings off of it. The sisters went from a high school with 2,031 students to now a school with 657 students.
“I think it’s easier to bond with people, it’s smaller groups so you all just come together and push each other,” Jianna, a sophomore, said.
Heading into this season, they had to get used to more than just the world off the floor. They had to get used to the differences in how the two teams play.
On the court, they both notice the differences between the two teams. While the Lancers put a big emphasis on the fundamentals, the Wolverines concentrate a lot on defense and defensive pressure.
“Especially coming into a new system, the Niagara Falls system is good …” Hall said. “But, ours is just a little bit different. So it took a little bit of time to adjust to our system. But they’ve bought into it, they’re learning and they’re getting better.”
When they stepped on the floor as a Lancer this year, that was not their first experience with the Lew-Port squad.
Last season, the sisters faced the Lancers. In that game, Amya scored nine points while Jianna scored four points in a 48-40 Lancers win.
Early in the season, Hall showed the duo the scouting reports on each of them from that game.
“I had them both in our scouting report of how we wanted to defend them,” Hall said. “So we were aware of them as players and then it was pretty fun getting them in the gym and seeing where they were at and making adjustments to try to help them improve as players.”
Through coaching both, Hall and his staff have learned each of their strengths and weaknesses.
But, regardless of how this year ends for the Lancers, the Jacobs sisters careers will continue under Hall. They will have two and three years left respectively to grow and develop under Hall’s tutelage.
“Right now we’re 8-1, 12-2,” Hall said. “I think we’re ahead of schedule and where we could be at a year from now and where we could be at two years from now and three years from now, it’s going to be a fun few years. I believe with the effort they put in, we’re going to have a lot of success.”