Like Mother, Like Daughter: CHBC Junior Heckert is Latest Arrival to Area’s Mother-Daughter 1,000 Career Point Club

In the past five years, the area has seen three notable milestones shared by mothers and daughters on the basketball court. In 2018, Vandalia senior Olivia Marquardt scored her 1,000^th career point during a home game to become the 13^th Lady Vandal to join the career points list. By doing so she joined her mom, Meg (McKellar) Marquardt who was the first Lady Vandal in program history to reach the career points mark back in 1982.

Just two years later on January 8, 2020, Vandalia senior Lanee McNary hit a left elbow buzzer beating jumper at the end of the 3^rd quarter during a home game against Gillespie to reach the career milestone, joining her mother Michelle (Kaiser) McNary (1991) on the list and becoming the second mother-daughter duo to do so for Vandalia. For McNary, she not only joined her mom on the list, but did so with her mother on the sidelines as her coach. McNary did not even realize she had reached the mark until Coach McNary informed her daughter once she reached the huddle for the quarter break.

On Monday, CHBC junior Gracie Heckert scored her 1,000^th career point during a game against Brownstown-St. Elmo. Heckert’s mom Katy (Heckert) Noble reached the feat during her junior season for Brownstown-St. Elmo in 2003. While Heckert and Noble will not be listed as accomplishing the feat wearing the same uniform, the mother-daughter duo will share the fact that their 1,000^th points were scored in almost a mirror-like fashion. Both players hit the milestone at Brownstown High School, both scored the point on the east basket of the gym and both hit the achieving shot from the left block area. While Heckert’s career point mark happened on January 31, it was still just one day off from Noble’s mark setting basket 19 years ago which happened on February 1, 2003. Like Lanee McNary, Heckert also was able to instantly share the moment with her mom as Noble rejoined the basketball coaching ranks this year as Assistant/JV Coach for CHBC. Following celebrating with her CHBC teammates and then her mother, Heckert was also greeted by hugs from several BSE basketball players who had grown up with Heckert in St. Elmo during her grade school years.

After the game on Monday night, Heckert talked with I70Sports about the entire experience and what comes next as she plays out her junior season with the Bobcats and looks ahead to her senior season.