Fort Wayne Sports History recently posted on its Facebook page information about the Mohr Magic basketball team that captured in 1992 its third successive AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) national championship in a six-year period.
The team was made up of some of the finest girls basketball players in the area, including Krista Reinking of Bellmont. More Decatur flavor was added by the coach, city native Gary Andrews.
According to the FB post, “Snider’s Tiffany Gooden and Kris Booker, Northrop’s Leslie Johnson, Angie Harris of Bishop Luers and Bellmont’s Krista Reinking were the cornerstones for Gary Andrews’ AAU summer club.”
Just how much talent was assembled? Well, Reinking later played at Illinois (and became All-Big Ten), Gooden at Iowa, Johnson at Purdue, Booker at DePaul, and Harris at Notre Dame (in volleyball).
If that wasn’t enough, along the way they added future all-state players Tiffany Longworth of Kokomo, Jennifer Howell of Mount Vernon, and Abby Conklin of Charleston, later to become 1993’s Miss Basketball in Indiana.
The team won the 13 and under national title in 1989 as the Decatur Thunderbirds.
The posting says the following:
“They regularly played older teams led by high school stars or even college players during their warmups for tournaments, and usually lost by only a basket or two.
“The group won six state championships and three national titles in six years. The might have won another title, but Gooden suffered a torn ACL injury early in the 1993 tournament and they finished third. They also finished fifth in 1990.
“In their best season, they won their second title in 1991 by an average of 30 points per game.”
“The next year Johnson and Harris decided not to play. Gooden was the only player to play in each tournament during the six-year run, and Booker played for five years.”
The story also notes the three state titles Andrews later won at Bishop Luers before going on to coach at Saint Francis, where he won a NAIA Division II national championship with a 38-0 record in 2014. He is now the head boys basketball coach at Fort Wayne North Side.
Reinking, a 1994 Bellmont grad, currently resides in St. Louis with her partner, Allison. Krista is manager of applied analytics in Human Resources with a giant company called Centene.
She left coaching in 2010, her last post having been as an assistant at Oregon State. She tells her dad, Denny, of Decatur, that she still misses the game somewhat and her favorite month is March – because of March Madness.