Aniya Saddler has waited long enough.
Stardom for the Columbus High School girls basketball team comes in due course, coach Yvonne Hairston explained, and Saddler started at the back of the line.
“At Columbus, you kind of have to wait until it’s your time,” Hairston said.
Saddler, who moved up to the varsity team her freshman year, has seen that time come for plenty of Falcons. Kiki Patterson played her final season before Saddler got to the team, but Zaria Jenkins ended her Columbus career in Saddler’s freshman year, and Hannah White wrapped up her high school days last season.
“It was always somebody,” Hairston said. “She’s just had to kind of wait for it.”
Now, in the midst of a standout senior season, Saddler isn’t waiting anymore.
The Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College commit is Columbus’ leader and its leading scorer — and she might just be the Falcons’ newest star.
“It’s been stellar,” Hairston said. “I can’t emphasize enough her progression over the years, and to see her right here, right now … She has really worked hard to be where she is. She has become a big-time player.”
Unfinished business
In the third quarter of Friday’s 61-26 win over Grenada, Saddler and sophomore teammate Charity Yeates crashed into each other going for a rebound. Both players hit the floor hard, but Saddler was on her feet and walking to the bench within a few seconds on a sore leg she had to ice postgame.
Getting up like that is hard sometimes, Saddler said, though she made it look easy.
“But at the same time, when you’ve gotta handle business, you can’t leave unfinished business on the floor,” Saddler said. “You have to pop up, shake it off and go ahead.”
That toughness and aggressiveness have long been present in Saddler’s game, but in her fourth season with the Falcons’ varsity squad, she’s truly learned to control them.
When Saddler first came onto the scene, Hairston said, she was all over the place.
“She was so inconsistent,” Hairston said. “She couldn’t control her speed. She’s just so aggressive. She couldn’t control her energy. … She would drop her head when her shots and stuff wouldn’t go.”
Those bad habits have melted away, Hairston said, as Saddler has become what junior point guard DJ Jackson called “an all-around player.”
“I don’t see a lot of that now,” Hairston said. “She just plays hard all the time.”
Saddler’s grandmother, Sarah Grays, who comes to almost all of her granddaughter’s games, wore a custom jersey with “Aniya” and Saddler’s No. 31 on the back as she took in Friday’s win over the Chargers. Grays pointed out the same improvement from Saddler, who also runs track and plays softball.
“She just gets better and better every year,” Grays said. “She’s just really athletic.”
So what helped Saddler take the leap?
“I grew into this role by watching others and practicing and realizing that you can go as far as you can as long as you put your mind to it and your heart to it,” she said.
‘Whatever comes next’
One of the players to whom Saddler credits her success is White, the star guard who went from Columbus to Division I Alabama State.
White, like Saddler, doesn’t have much in the way of height. White is listed at 5-foot-8; Saddler at 5-foot-7.
But, Saddler said, White can do it all — shooting, rebounding and passing effectively, even as a short guard.
In White’s senior season, she shouldered the load for the Falcons, scoring 22 points per game and managing 10 rebounds per game. She was named one of the Clarion-Ledger’s Dandy Dozen and headed off to the Southwestern Athletic Conference school in Montgomery.
And Saddler stepped right into her vacated role.
“Hannah was taking the bulk of the shots then; now Aniya takes the bulk of the shots,” Hairston said.
Like White, Saddler has begun to receive interest from Division I schools and plenty of junior colleges — but she plans to honor her Nov. 3 commitment to Gulf Coast.
She will be joining a Bulldogs team that is among the best in the state, owning a 12-2 record as of Sunday night, and Grays plans to visit as often as she can.
“Every junior college in the state of Mississippi wanted her,” Hairston said.
Saddler said she wanted to enjoy the community college experience in Perkinston, including “extracurricular” activities like skydiving and spending time at the beach.
“I don’t like to just sit around and be bored,” she said. “I want to do stuff, and they’ve got a lot of new stuff coming.”
Going the community college route will also put Saddler in the footsteps of Patterson and Jenkins, Columbus’ stars prior to Saddler’s emergence.
Jenkins, who graduated from high school in 2017, joined the team at Itawamba Community College before playing for NAIA program Stillman College.
Patterson initially signed with Mississippi State but never played for the Bulldogs, heading to East Mississippi Community College instead. She played for the Lions for two years before heading back into Division I at Jacksonville State.
If Saddler follows a similar pattern — though she may move on after a single season, Hairston said — her coach wouldn’t be surprised.
“I think that one year will be great for the maturity of her as a person and as a basketball player, because she may go to the next level and have to sit on the bench,” Hairston said. “I think that’s a good fit for her. The coaches at Gulf Coast, I think they’ll love her and take care of her just like I would.”
And just as she has done at Columbus, Saddler said she plans to do what it takes to succeed in “whatever comes next.”
“Whatever they need out of me, I’m willing to work for it and go higher and higher,” Saddler said.
‘I know she’s gonna get that bucket’
Hairston plans to make a trip to watch White play at Alabama State sometime this season, since the coach hasn’t been able to see her former star on TV yet.
But Hairston won’t be upset if she can’t make the trip because the Falcons’ season is going longer than she expected.
“We’re hoping we’re still playing,” Hairston said. “We’ll see.”
Columbus is 16-3 on the season and is in complete control of its district, offering a reminder that there’s a lot more basketball to come before Saddler can take her next step.
“Everything’s going good for us,” Jackson said. “A lot of people doubted us a lot, and I feel like we kind of proved to these people that, ‘Oh, these girls can actually really play.’ I feel good about this team. I feel like we’re gonna do great things.”
Hairston said the Falcons have exceeded her expectations in what she expected to be a rebuilding year.
“(T)hey have believed in our program and our process and what we teach the Lady Falcon basketball (team),” Hairston said. “It’s just continued to reproduce itself, and that’s a great thing to see that, to exceed.
“We’re having a great year, but we’ve got a long way to go, and we’ve got some really tough games coming up,” she added.
When those contests arrive, the Falcons will turn to Saddler to carry them through.
“She does a little bit of everything,” Jackson said. “She’s one of the players I count on. I know she’s gonna get that bucket. I know she’s gonna help come together for this team.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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