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Times Leader Player of the Year Alexis Lewis had more than a few balls of fun this season while setting the Wyoming Valley Conference’s all-time career scoring record and leading her Holy Redeemer Royals to the PIAA Class 2A state semifinals.

She has an aunt who played major Division I college basketball for the University of Pittsburgh.

Her father was an NBA draft pick.

Her older brother once burned the nets around the Wyoming Valley Conference before going off to the football field to become a starting wide receiver for Penn State.

And Alexis Lewis just may have topped them all.

“I told her,” Pastor Eugene Lewis said of his daughter, “she had the best high school career of all the Lewises.”

That may be saying something coming from a guy who was taken in the second round of the 1989 NBA Draft, but it’d be difficult for anyone to argue.

Not after Alexis Lewis set the all-time Wyoming Valley Conference girls basketball career scoring record while averaging 27.1 points and 15 rebounds and driving Holy Redeemer to the state semifinals while earning the Times Leader Player of the Year award for the second straight season.

“I thought the season went very well,” said Lewis, who lives in Pittston.

Very well?

Before heading off to play Division I women’s basketball at Iona next season, Lewis had one final high school season for the ages at Redeemer.

She scored her 2,000th career point during one game. She scored a career-high 41 points during another, Redeemer’s upset of traditional national power Riverdale Baptist. During Redeemer’s PIAA Class 2A playoff opener, she broke the conference’s scoring record and finished her four-year career with 2,393 points.

“At Iona, she’s going to be a star there,” Holy Redeemer coach Chris Parker predicted.

She shined at Redeemer, and not just on the scoring end.

Lewis wrapped up her dizzying career by averaging 4.8 steals, electrifying crowds around the conference with majestic moves and timely blocks around the basket and adding some deft dribbling and pinpoint assists to her head-spinning game.

Behind her eye-popping plays, Holy Redeemer rode to a 26-3 record to the Class 2A state semifinals. Lewis scored 20 or more points in 25 of Redeemer’s 29 games and shrugged off a sore ankle late in the season to score a combined 93 points through four state playoff games.

“I’m telling you, she carried Holy Redeemer on her back,” said Pastor Eugene Lewis, whose son Eugene caught a key touchdown pass in Penn State’s Pinstripe Bowl victory over Boston College at Yankee Stadium in December. “Anybody who watched her, you couldn’t ask for any more from her. She impressed me big-time. Very rarely did she have a bad game.”

That didn’t happen by accident, or even purely through natural ability.

“You would always see Alexis,” Parker said, “you would see her in the park shooting, you’d see her at the Pittston YMCA, I’ve seen her shooting on her own in the gym. She’s tremendously invested. She’s a very talented kid. She just possesses things that other girls don’t have. She’s very athletic, very strong.

“And her skill level is through the roof.”

So is her desire to win.

When she thinks back on the final ride at Holy Redeemer, it won’t be personal records or point totals or her penchant for making pretty plays that Alexis Lewis remembers.

It’s the excitement she shared with her team that will be forever embedded in her mind.

“We had a great year,” Lewis said. “We didn’t get some of our goals at the end, we didn’t accomplish what we wanted. We’re still happy with the outcome and with getting back to the Final Four.”