Girls' Basketball Player of the Year: James Wood's Brynna Nesselrodt

James Wood’s Brynna Nesselrodt got to know a lot about the opposition this high school basketball season.

It wasn’t that she was spending countless hours pouring through volumes of film on the Colonels’ foes. She got to meet them up close and personal because often opponents would throw three or four different defenders against her over the course of 32 minutes.

And while they did nearly everything to stop her, it rarely happened.

The 5-foot-9 guard kept putting up the kind of scoring numbers that no other player in the area neared and kept a young Colonels squad competitive in the tough Class 4 Northwestern District. Her outstanding play earned her top honors in the district and The Winchester Star’s Player of the Year.

Despite teams throwing multiple defenders and trick defenses at Nesselrodt, the senior averaged 20.9 points per game, six points better than any other player in the area. What makes those numbers astounding is that the Colonels averaged only 46.5 per game on the way to a 16-8 campaign that included victories over powers Sherando and Millbrook.

“I thought Brynna’s last season couldn’t have been any more spectacular than what it was,” James Wood coach Sanford Silver said. “… Every obstacle that came our way and her way, we adjusted to it very well.”

“Personally, I thought my senior season was a big accomplishment overall from the team and individually,” Nesselrodt said. “We did a lot better than a lot of people expected us to do, beating Sherando and Millbrook. Individually, I was able to accomplish all of the goals I wanted to. I got my 1,000 [career] points, Player of the Year and First Team All-Region. It was really nice to be able to reach them because I worked so hard for it.”

That senior season didn’t start out in grand fashion. The Colonels opened up 1-5. Nesselrodt even missed a late free throw in a one-point loss against Central, a team the Colonels would beat later in the season.

Nesselrodt said it took awhile for her and fellow starters Jolie Jenkins, Nayah Edwards, Maddie Shirley and Josie Russell to get into a rhythm together.

“When our team — Nayah, Maddie, Jolie and Josie — once everybody started to figure out how to score on their own without me, then that’s when it flowed even better,” Nesselrodt said. “They helped me get those points by helping open me up and also taking pressure off of me.”

Silver said their was still plenty of pressure on Nesselrodt to score. But unlike her freshman season where she did most of the damage from outside, Nesselrodt hurt foes primarily inside the arc.

While she could still shoot the deep ball (making 41 percent on the season), Nesselrodt would mix it up inside and drive to the basket. And if the opposition fouled her, she’d make an area-best 78 percent of her free throws.

“She was getting it the hard way,” Silver said. “She played old-school basketball. There were a couple of games where almost all of the points came from the free throw line.

“I call them dirty buckets,” he added. “You really earn every bucket. It’s good when you sit out there and shoot threes and they go in for you … but there’s a difference when you’re pounding the rock. People are leaning on you and you are getting beat up. The kid walked out of a game with a black eye. She had bruises and cuts.”

The competitive Nesselrodt liked the challenge and seemed to get better the longer the games went on. She seemingly wore down her defenders over the course of the 32 minutes.

“I think the second half was when I would light it up most of the time because I knew that I was conserving my energy for that last push because of how in-shape I made sure that I was,” she said. “I knew I would be playing all game, every game. I would go in with the mindset that I have to be ready.

“Most people are tired at the end of the game. The second half was where I had my most energy. I got my little break [at halftime] and I was ready to go again.”

The conditioning started long before the season. Nesselrodt played AAU basketball, worked out locally and also trained with Jason Lansdown, who has been coaching her since middle school.

“It was a lot at a time,” Nesselrodt said. “That was kind of like my job, which it’s not a bad job to have. I would go to school and have two or three workouts every day. … I think it shows that I truly love the sport. Even through the bad times with it, that feeling of being on the court and succeeding, it fills me with excitement and joy. It’s just really nice.”

Nesselrodt found that she loved the game and had special motivation from when she started playing at age 5 in Parks & Recreation action.

“The reason I played is because I watched my sister [Brooke] and I was like, ‘I’m just going to be like her,’” she said. “I would get mad at her because she would get these trophies and I never got one. I would cry and I was like, ‘I’m going to get more trophies than her.’ That was what I thought and I think I do have more trophies than her now.”

Once she made it to James Wood as a freshman, she’d find herself matched up against arguably the school’s best player ever. Makayla Firebaugh (2,031 career points for the Colonels) didn’t like to lose at anything and spent her final season mentoring a promising talent.

“I learned a lot from Makayla,” Nesselrodt said. “In practice, I was always paired with her because she was going to make me better. She did make me better, I still watch her and learn from her. … In practice I had to guard her. I was like, ‘There’s no way I’ll ever be able to guard Makayla,’ but I will never forget the one time that I scored on her that I was so proud of myself. And she was so mad.”

Nesselrodt, in a January game against Fauquier, topped 1,000 points for her career at James Wood. Firebaugh, who just completed her junior year, also topped 1,000 points at Rider University.

“We saw each other [recently] and got to congratulate each other,” Nesselrodt said.

As a sophomore, Nesselrodt had to endure a season without basketball, during a preseason tournament that November, she fell while trying to foul an opponent and tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee.

When Frederick County schools finally got around to playing basketball in the COVID shortened campaign in the spring of 2021, Nesselrodt had to watch from the sidelines.

“It was devastating for her because basketball was the majority of her life,” Silver said. “She had put so much time and commitment into it.”

“Emotionally, it was a big toll because my sophomore year I had really just started figuring it out,” Nesselrodt said. “I was starting to go on this roll. I was so excited and was like, ‘I know I’m going to reach that success point.’ I didn’t and that was a hard thing to accept. That only pushed me more to be able to play again.”

She started physical therapy within the first week after the surgery and would often stand and shoot when she couldn’t do anything else. “I wanted to do it so badly,” she said. “I just couldn’t keep away from it.”

As a junior she would average 16.2 points and 6.9 rebounds as the Colonels finished 12-8. She’d improve her scoring average this season and maintain that 6.9 rebounding average.

This season also provided an opportunity for the Colonels to honor some special people who meant a lot to their lone senior. In a contest against Sherando, James Wood wore shirts in warm-ups that honored Brooke Nesselrodt, who died in 2018. Later in the season against Handley, Brynna wore jersey No. 13 to honor former AAU teammate Colette Baine, a standout from Woodgrove High School who died in August from epilepsy.

Nesselrodt had a game-high 19 points in a 40-38 triumph over the Warriors and scored a game-high 24 points in the 54-47 win over the Judges.

“Emotionally, it was a very heart-warming thing,” said Nesselrodt said. “I never took it negatively or put that pressure on myself. I did want to do well and I had that [drive] to do well for them. Having the success was really important to me and I couldn’t thank my team and coaches enough for helping put on those games.”

Silver said the Colonels will truly miss Nesselrodt, but they won’t have to go very far to see her play in college. She recently announced that she was headed to Shenandoah University to play for coach Melissa Smelzer-Kraft’s Hornets, who placed second in the ODAC Tournament this past season.

“I had other schools interested in me, but I never made a good connection with any of those coaches,” Nesselrodt said. “When I met Coach Kraft and we actually sat down and talked with each other, I felt that honest connection and that same view through her eyes of how we see things. I just felt like she does believe in me and I can succeed there. Overall, the school is a good fit for me, too.”

Nesselrodt says she will major in business administration and minor in biology with the hopes of landing a career in health care management.

She’ll be able to stay in an area where she can shop and get her toes done, a few of the things that she likes to do when she’s not busy with school or basketball.

“I never would have thought I would stay at home, but now it’s going to be exciting because I’m going to have a lot of family and friends that are going to be able to watch me still which doesn’t happen a lot for people in college,” she said. “I think it will be nice to know I have all of that support there with me going through the whole experience.”

And Nesselrodt wants to make sure the experience remains positive whatever obstacles come her way.

“I just want to keep building more relationships and keep doing the best that I can,” she said. “I’m going to have goals when I go to college and I want to achieve them, but at the same time it’s not just about the physical part. It’s about having fun and enjoying it for the amount of time I get with it. I want to keep making good memories and enjoy it as much as I can.”

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