A basketball team on the rebound needs a player who can rebound.

That goes double for Arizona’s 1A Conference girls basketball programs, especially against a pandemic-shortened schedule such as the one on which Mayer High School seeks to build a second straight state tournament berth.

Fortunately for Lady Wildcats head coach Nick Colquitt, he just happens to have one hanging around. Colquitt’s daughter, Abbigail, amassed her 1,000th rebound Friday, Feb. 12, as part of a 15-board night at Mohave Accelerated High School in her team’s second straight win, 46-16.

“My dad has always been a coach,” the junior forward said of her father. “[H]e loves the athletes and is passionate about all sports.

“Since 2011, when I started playing AYSO soccer, he has had a big influence on my love for sports and he pushes me to do my best in everything I do.” 

With any luck, by the end of the season Colquitt should crack the Top 20 career rebounders in state girls basketball history. 

With six games to play, Colquitt has collected over 200 rebounds for the season already, which is: .

• An average of nearly 20 rebounds per game.
• A statistic that ranks not only tops in Arizona, but third in the nation.
• A pace that would improve two rebounds per game on Colquitt’s average her sophomore year, when she snagged nearly 500 boards to finish ninth in the nation.

Although the AIA record books have not been yet updated to include statistics of active players like Colquitt, her 498 rebounds last season would qualify as the fifth-most in state history.

All by a young lady who remains 5 feet, 7 inches tall--four inches shorter than most of the record-holders she is chasing.

“She has a nose for the ball when the shot goes up,” Nick Colquitt said. “This allows her to snag many boards on both ends of the court.”

It also allows Colquitt to score, a category in which she leads her team as well. Her 98 points through her first 10 games means that Colquitt nearly averages a double-double in points and rebounds. 

“I don't care much about my stats,” Colquitt said. “But I know if I give everything, I have [faith] my numbers will show that.”

Her 11 points Thursday, Feb. 11, in a 37-30 home victory over Wickenburg High School tied her for the game high with older sister Gabriell Bassett-Colquitt, an honorable mention all-Central Region last season.

“My sisters have made an impact because they know how to cheer me up and make me laugh,” Colquitt said. “I have been lucky enough to play with them, [which is] sometimes a blessing [and] other times makes it tough. 

“We are always competitive, and no one likes second place.”

Without Colquitt’s 14 rebounds and three blocked shots Feb. 11--her 12th double-double in her career--it would have been fourth place or lower in the Central West Region standings for the 14th-ranked Wildcats, who needed a win over Wickenburg badly after having lost their previous two games.

As it is, third place in the region and a place among potential 1A state tournament contenders is a position the Colquitts are still getting used to. Since her opening night as a freshman at Camp Verde High School--one of just three scoreless nights in her career--Colquitt has never collected less than five rebounds in any contest.

Since the second game of her sophomore season, Colquitt has had at least 12 boards in every contest. 

In fact, it was a rematch of that second game, on Jan. 8, 2020, that first vaulted Colquitt into the Mayer High School record books. Her 27 rebounds tied the single-game school mark in that category--a feat she would duplicate just three weeks later in a loss at Mogollon--and, combined with 11 points and seven blocked shots, it enabled the Wildcats to edge Joseph City by two points.

The next night, in a blowout of Cicero Preparatory Academy, Colquitt broke that record, snagging 29 rebounds--a game-high figure she would match three weeks later in a blowout of NFL Yet Academy. 

Nine nights later, she not only broke the record again, she owned it.

The 27-point home loss to Williams would have otherwise been left to the dustbin of Mayer basketball annals, but Colquitt’s 31 rebounds made sure that would never happen. The performance, in which she also scored nearly half her team’s 29 points on the night, cemented her status that season as a first-team all-Central Region forward.

It tied for the fourth-most rebounds any 1A girls basketball player has ever garnered in a single game.

And it defined a player who is relentlessly active, on and off the court. 

“Anything that keeps me entertained or on the go is a must,” she said. “[I’m] not one for many lounge days other than after a long weekend of tournament games; then I like to nap.

It also exemplified Colquitt’s on-court goal “to always give 100 percent to my team even if we aren’t doing very well,” she said. “Also, to show good sportsmanship to the teams I’m playing.”

While Colquitt wants to continue playing basketball in college “if I get a chance,” and her father believes she will also score more than 1,000 points by the time she graduates in 2022, she also seeks to maintain a 3.5 grade-point average and “continue to grow as a person by always learning.”

To that end, she already has her specific post-basketball career in mind: teaching elementary school.

“Teaching to me is fun, and I like to see when people take what they are taught and accomplish something,” she said. “Especially my younger teammates when they finally get ‘it’.”

In the mold of the humble, hard-working teacher, Colquitt’s days are long, starting with seminary at church before school--helping out senior citizens and needy families through such volunteer activities as cleaning houses and chopping wood--and ending “well into the evenings after practices,” Nick Colquitt said, before she returns home to eat her mother’s home-cooked enchiladas.

“Those are always a welcome sight after a tough day,” she said of her mother, who also does all of the team’s laundry. ”So, without her, we would be a mess or probably forgetting stuff.

"My family plays a big role in how I act today.”