Photo by Scott Bolsby | The Advertiser Adelyn Moore (gray sweatshirt) poses with her varsity girls' basketball teammates along with varsity head coach Jay Riley, front left and eighth grade girls' coach Nick Berry, front right. Moore signed with The University of Chicago to continue her academic and athletic career.
CARO — Caro senior Adelyn Moore has left a historic imprint on Thumb-area girls’ basketball.
So, it was only fitting for the 5-foot-10 forward to choose a college steeped in history to continue her academic and athletic career.
Moore officially signed her National Letter of Intent Feb. 15 in front of friends and family at the Caro High School auditorium to attend The University of Chicago.
“It feels really good to have this stress lifted off me because I found the place that covers all the areas I feel passionate about both athletically and academically,” she said. “I just feel blessed to have found and be recruited at such an amazing university that fits where I wanted to go.”
The three-time Thumb Sportswriters Association Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year is currently leading the area by averaging more than 24 points and 14 rebounds per game.
Outside of athletics, the daughter of Brad Moore and Phoebe Moore proudly carries a 4.5 grade-point average and admits that as much as she loves basketball, academics played a major role as she sought her perfect college fit.
“I’ve had a huge focus on academics my entire life. I’m valedictorian this year, so I knew I needed to go to a school where I would be pushed,” Adelyn Moore said. “I knew I wanted to get a good degree, and I also knew I wanted to be in a community different than Caro because I’ve lived the small-town life and I like the aspect that Chicago brings. It will be totally different with tons of diversity.”
The University of Chicago was established in 1856 and boasts academic accolades including 100 Nobel Prize laureates who have or had affiliations with the school as faculty members, students or researchers.
According to the September 2022 U.S. News and World Report rankings, The University of Chicago is ranked No. 6 in the nation, academically, behind Yale, Stanford, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton.
“I definitely haven’t processed I’m going there,” Moore said. “I keep looking into the history of the school and it gets more and more interesting, especially with the Nobel prize winners and historians and all the amazing people who have went there. It gets me excited about the opportunities I’ll have when I go there.”
Chicago also has a rich tradition in sports as one of the founding members of the Big Ten Conference along with Illinois, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Moore also noted that The University of Chicago “were undefeated against Notre Dame in football.”
The Maroons currently compete in Division 3 as a member of the University Athletic Association against teams in Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
“I was considering some of the other schools in their league,” Moore said. “Their league is high on academics in Division III and the league is super cool. I’ll get to fly to every game. I’m super excited about that.”
Moore will play under fourth-year head coach Maria Williamson, a former women’s basketball standout at Bowdoin College in Maine who has helped the Maroons to a 20-4 overall record this season.
“The coaches were so welcoming,” Moore said. “They were my favorite coaches out of all the schools I talked to. Right when I got the opportunity to go there, I said ‘That’s it, I’m going there.’”
Moore, who is the middle child between older sister Meredith and little brother Jacob, began coaching a sixth-grade girls’ travel team and discovered a potential career pathway while working with the younger players.
“I will be entering the health sciences field,” she said. “I’ll be majoring in biology, the medical track, and at this time I’m leaning toward becoming a pediatrician, because I really like working with the younger generation. I learned that this year working with my sixth-grade team.
“I also like the idea of physical therapy or kinesiology and sports medicine.”
Whichever path Moore takes at the next level, she made her mark during the last four years in girls’ basketball throughout the Thumb area and especially at Caro.
“It feels really good to be a part of something bigger than myself and girls’ basketball in general,” she said. “I remember going to girls’ basketball games at Caro and the program wasn’t exactly at the top of its peak, and there was no pride in the gym when the girls were playing, but now there is a shift, I’d say.
“You go to our games, like the Cass City one, and it was packed. There are sometimes more people at our games than the guys’ games, so just to see that is really good for female sports in general.”
Moore has more than 1,500 career points and just under 1,000 career rebounds. Former Reese and Central Michigan University standout Reyna Frost is the only other Thumb-area female basketball player to achieve 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in her career.
Despite these achievements, Moore wants her legacy at Caro to be about more than just the career of one of the school’s best-ever athletes.
“I want to be remembered that I was part of something bigger than just being the all-time leading scorer,” she said. “I also hope that girls’ basketball continues to strive at Caro.”
