Good Sports: Sierra High Basketball star keeps mother's memory alive

Alec Nolan Image
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
Good Sports: Sierra High Basketball star keeps mother's memory alive
In this week's Good Sports, we introduce you to a player not just breaking records but keeping the memory of a loved one alive.

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- Out in Tollhouse, the Sierra High Chieftains are in pursuit of another league title.

Undefeated in league play and led by junior guard Logan Kilbert.

Whose 54 points against Parlier set a new school record.

He also joined the 2,000-point club, something accomplished in the central section by just 24 other players.

Kilbert has been playing since he could walk.

Something his head coach and family friend Ryan Watt saw from the very beginning.

"Passionate, competitive, even back then you could see his competitiveness and his will to win," Watt says.

With the rest of this season still to go and a senior campaign on the horizon, breaking the all-time point record is in sight.

"Can he do it? Yes. Is it going to be harder? Yes," Watt says.

"Honestly it depends on how far we go in playoffs this year," Logan says. "That would be the ultimate goal."

But more significant than the numbers of the records that are being re-written is the number Kilbert wears up and down the court.

"I did some thinking and I thought I would choose 34," Logan says.

"I was like Log, why are you going to be number 34? Shaquille O'Neal?" Logan's Dad Dan Kilbert says. "He goes you know what, that's the age mom died at."

Shawna Kilbert is familiar to many people here in the Central Valley. The wife mother of two and a former teacher that died from cervical cancer at the age of 34.

"That really hit. That was like wow, this kid thinks bigger than life," Dan says.

At just three and a half years old, Logan would lose his mother.

But a letter from a friend to one of America's biggest morning shows would help give Logan exactly what he needed.

"Regis and Kelly came out and honored his mother and gave the kids a place to play in the backyard," Dan says.

"Yeah I actually remember being on my balcony and just seeing it being made," Logan says. "I remember hearing a knock at the door and I just see a bunch of news cameras and I went to grab my dad."

NBA basketball players and Fresno natives Brook and Robin Lopez came to shoot around with Logan.

Now he is carrying on his mother's memory. Taking 34 with him to the next level and re-writing the record books along the way.

"I wear her number every night. I'll go anywhere," Logan says. "Anywhere that gives me a shot or opportunity it really doesn't matter."

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