Father-daughter duo aim to rev up Service High girls basketball and build a lasting legacy

There’s a rich history of elite female basketball players who were born, raised, and made a name for themselves in Alaska.

Some of the most recent and notable include Ruthy Hebard of Fairbanks — who currently plays for the Chicago Sky in the WNBA — as well as Alissa Pili and Sayvia Sellers of Anchorage, who play Division I hoops in the Pac-12 for the University of Utah and Washington, respectively. Wasilla High School junior Layla Hays will be Division I-bound herself, with offers from dozens of the top programs in the country.

And then there’s Service High freshman sensation Aryanna Watson, who is widely viewed as the next generational talent and hasn’t disappointed so far in her first season competing at the high school level.

According to MaxPreps, she has already amassed 422 points in 17 games and is averaging a whopping 24.8 points per contest.

“I feel like I was very prepared for this,” she said. “I just want to get to the point where I feel like I’m good enough to play college at the Division I level.”

Her father, Harvey Watson, is also the head coach of the Cougars’ girls basketball team. He wanted her to play with mostly boys growing up to challenge her more so that when she went up against exclusively female competition, she’d be able to dominate.

“Ever since fifth or sixth grade, when she started to develop the skills that other girls didn’t have in her grade, she played with high school kids,” Harvey said. “She’d be going against good-quality and even all-state basketball players, going hard at them and they’re going hard at her, so those reps helped her gain confidence as a good basketball player.”

Being forged in that crucible of higher-level competition made the transition to the prep level easy for Aryanna, to the point that her father isn’t surprised in the slightest by how she is already putting up prolific numbers.

“There’s really no surprises,” he said. “When we worked out this summer, I told a cousin of mine who thought she’d average 15 or 16 points that I wouldn’t be surprised if she scored 40 points in her first game, and anything other than that, I’d be disappointed.”

Aryanna isn’t surprised by her immediate success either, and she “definitely” believes that all the years she spent playing against older and more experienced competitors prepared her to seize this opportunity to showcase her ability.

In her first high school game, she came up just two points shy of her father’s projection by dropping 38 points against 2022 and 2023 state runner-up Wasilla in a narrow 67-61 loss in Service’s season opener.

“It’s a blessing and it was a great game, even though they didn’t have their best player,” Aryanna said. “I still came out and balled out, and it was a good start for my season.”

[With Sayvia Sellers’ reign over, Alaska girls 4A basketball has more title contenders]

Growing together through adversity

The Cougars aren’t just led by their young rising star; their varsity team is very young overall. In addition to Aryanna Watson, they have three other freshmen in their starting lineup and play six regularly.

That lack of experience playing together at this level as a whole shows sometimes when they play against some of their top competition, but those growing pains were expected.

“We make freshman mistakes, and we don’t expect to come out and dominate every game,” Harvey Watson said. “We just want to play hard and we want to grow, so whether it’s a win or a loss, it’s a learning lesson for us.”

Even though they have yet to beat one of the other top contenders in the state, the fact that they’ve delivered tight competition gives the Cougars confidence that they’re growing and heading in the right direction as a program.

“We’re an aggressive team, and are always going to play hard no matter who we’re playing,” Aryanna said. “That’s what we practice to do, win or lose.”

Opposing teams have already adjusted their game plans to try to limit her impact on the court by regularly double-teaming her throughout games.

“I’ve realized that the last couple of games, but it also gives my teammates the opportunity to get open and score,” she said. “It will become easier because they’ll start having to guard them too.”

[Colony girls basketball erupts in third quarter to blow past Service in Lady Lynx tournament]

This young group is excited for the opportunity to grow together over the next few years and develop the mentality to be more resilient and start consistently beating the better teams.

“Once we get to that sophomore year, we’re going to be really good,” Watson said.

The Watsons’ goals are to transform the program into a perennial contender and eventually have Aryanna’s jersey retired after an illustrious career.

“We want a jersey retired, we want to bring some light to Service, we just want to grind,” Harvey said. “We don’t want the ‘It’s acceptable to lose’ mentality that’s been in the program for the last decade or so. We have a winner’s mindset.”

Emulating trailblazers and role models

The Watsons don’t shy away from the lofty comparisons to some of the greatest female basketball players to hail from the 49th state, because that has always been the expectation.

“We’ve put a lot of time in, working out and grinding,” Harvey said. “I feel like just myself and a few other people would be able to coach her. We wanted to take advantage of her talents and push her to the next level.”

He believes that they have an advantage in their ambition to have his daughter go down as one of Alaska’s best players because he’s had a front-row seat studying who he believes are the “three best guards to ever play (in Alaska)”: Laura Ingham and Natalie Jones of East Anchorage fame, as well as Sellers.

“My goal was to have Aryanna as good as those girls who I know personally were when they got to high school,” he said. “Natalie Jones was my favorite player. She dominated growing up, did her thing at East and went on to play at (University of) Arizona.”

During their workouts, he tries to have Aryanna mimic her game after a collection of all the best attributes of the aforementioned trio, including Jones’ athleticism, Ingham’s “competitiveness and fire,” and what it means to be a true point guard from Sellers.

“I’ve had the luxury of really studying them, and I believe (Aryanna) can be all of those three in one,” he said.

Sellers is the one Aryanna looks up to the most and is the only one she has played with.

“She has always been a role model for me ever since I started playing her in the sixth grade,” Aryanna said. About Pili, she said that “Alissa is tough, and as a team, we all look up to her and will watch her games.”

Dissecting success at an elite level

Female basketball players from Alaska have more frequently made it to the highest level of competition at the collegiate level than males over the past decade and a half. Harvey said that common threads he’s seen among the state’s elite female players since he became a coach over a decade ago have included their strong work ethic and their sense of humility.

“They’re more humble, they listen, and they just want to compete and not necessarily run from the competition but embrace it and work hard,” he said.

Watson also thinks that some parents often overestimate the abilities of their sons and daughters, thinking that they’re already three- or four-star athletes when they might not be there yet.

“They can’t dominate here, and then they want to go somewhere else and think that they’re going to be great all of a sudden,” Watson said. “You have to dominate where you’re at first, and then you spring off and do your own thing.”

Aryanna believes that the success of herself and trailblazers such as Sellers and Pili has begun to pique the interest of a younger generation of girls in Alaska and show them what’s possible through hard work and dedication.

“It’s started to change the culture more and a lot more girls like basketball now,” she said. “I feel like it is more competitive and aggressive than the guys sometimes, watching certain games. I also think we encourage each other more no matter who is on the other side of the team.”