Braden River’s Gordon is a star on the basketball court. She shines even brighter at home

O’Mariah Gordon wakes up each morning facing yet another busy day.

The Braden River High junior spends her days taking honors classes and holding down a 3.77 GPA and then stars at point guard on the basketball court. But perhaps the busiest part of her schedule comes after all of that, when most of her teammates are done for the day.

Gordon helps take care of her six siblings to help her single mother, Dawanna Davis, and then spends as much time as she can playing pickup basketball or working out. If she’s got time, Gordon fits in her work at McDonald’s, something she’s done for the past year.

“I’m always occupied but in a good way,” Gordon said. “I’m not stressed out. A lot of kids, they have too much time on their hands, and they may get into trouble and stuff like that. But I feel like I always have something important to do. I’m always doing something.”

One of the things she’s doing is helping turn around the Pirates (17-9), who play at 6 p.m. Thursday against Apopka Wekiva (23-7) in the Class 6A state semifinals at the RP Funding Center in Lakeland. Wekiva won the Class 9A state title last season before moving to 6A.

The Pirates won just 13 games in the four seasons before Gordon arrived and 44 games in her first two seasons. They’ve suffered nine losses this season while playing what the FHSAA rates as the toughest schedule among all 6A teams and the third toughest of any team in the state.

The impact Gordon makes on the Pirates is immense.

One season after being named the Gatorade Florida Girls Basketball Player of the Year, Gordon is averaging 23 points, 6.9 rebounds, 5.8 assists and 4.2 steals per game. Because of her talent, teams are forced to adapt their game plans to stop her.

“When teams are box-and-one and double-teaming, it opens up so much more for my teammates, just being able to let everybody get their shot,” Gordon said. “If they’re going to triple-team me, I’m going to move the ball and let everyone get a couple of points.”

Gordon is the top player in Florida and the No. 7 point guard and the No. 26 player in the country in her recruiting class, according to HoopGurlz’s recruiting rankings for ESPN. Dan Olson, who creates the rankings, describes the four-star recruit as “jet-quick” and a “confident playmaker with offensive arsenal at all three levels” and having “a scorer’s mentality.”

Her talent has drawn the attention of many college basketball programs, and she’ll host several college coaches on home visits next month. Florida and Florida State have been recruiting her heavily, as have Kentucky, North Carolina, Ole Miss, Tennessee and USC.

But Gordon still has 25 to 30 high school games before she moves on to college. Pirates coach Stephanie Smith would like her to improve her on-ball defense during that time, understanding when to dial back her aggressiveness in attempting to get a steal in order to make sure the opponent she’s defending doesn’t get past her for a layup. Aggressiveness is good, Smith said, because she’s focused on creating offense, but picking her spots to be aggressive is important.

Her coach believes Gordon can add that to the skills she’s learned over the past two seasons under Smith: running an offense, being a good leader and shooting a mid-range jumper.

“I always preach about being a complete player,” Smith said. “You don’t want to be one dimensional, and she’s definitely not.

“To see her face last year light up when she said, ‘Coach, there’s a scout that said I had one of the best mid-range jumpers he’s seen in 20 years for girls.’ I told her, ‘O’Mariah, the mid-range game is a lost art. You perfect that game. You already have the layup, you already have the 3, you can pass. You went from a good player to a great player and almost a Hall of Famer.’”

With just 1½ years left in high school, Gordon has a limited amount of time left to spend helping raise her siblings on a daily basis, whether it’s dropping them off at the bus stop, dance class or basketball practice, whether it’s dancing and singing in an “American Idol”–like competition with them in their house or whether it’s taking them to eat at Mr. and Mrs. Crab and paying with money she earned.

Helping her mother raise her siblings can be a challenge for Gordon, but it’s one she enjoys. There are days she’ll be up early taking care of her infant brother, which means she might be a step slow in practice that afternoon because of a lack of sleep. Smith brings up the importance of sleep to her star player but knows Gordon will always want to care for her family.

“She’s willing to put her dream aside to make sure that her family’s taken care of,” Smith said. “It’s just who she is. She’s got a pure heart. We can’t fault her for that.

“She’s been doing this her whole life. For some people, it may seem like a lot. To her, it’s her life. If she wasn’t doing it, she’d be bored. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself.”

Gordon will keep pushing herself as hard as she can, whether it’s working to maintain her high GPA, to improve on the basketball court or to help care for her siblings.

“If you want something, you have to work hard for it,” she said. “You have to work when other people aren’t working. Work hard, and it’ll come. Everybody has their time.”