Kayla Spruill is having a strong career as the La Salle women’s basketball team celebrates its seniors

On Jan. 9, with her hair tied up out of her face, the now-signature look of determination and intensity fixed in her eyes, Kayla Spruill needed two more points to reach 1,000 as the La Salle women’s basketball team entered the fourth quarter against Fordham. Just over a minute in, she sank a three-pointer.

It was a defining career milestone in the midst of a season that has been all about Spruill. The 6-foot senior guard/forward from Baltimore has scored in double figures in 18 games, including six with more than 20 points. She is first in the Atlantic 10 in three-point field goal percentage, sixth in scoring, and eighth in rebounding.

The Explorers take a record of 13-11 overall, 6-6 in the A-10) into Saturday’s home game against St. Louis. It will be Senior Day at Tom Gola Arena.

She attributes her excellence to teammates and to coach Mountain MacGillivray and his staff.

“What really helped me develop my game here was a supportive coaching staff,” Spruill said. “[They knew] my potential and let me know that each year, you can grow and be better than you were last year. The expectation was always for me to be great.

“The mentality is to just take it one game at a time and knowing that, no matter what, if I’m not hitting shots, then I’ll be doing something on defense. If, for some reason, my defense is off, then I know I need to be doing something else, something productive for the team.”

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She also leans on fellow seniors Molly Masciantonio and Erin Morgan for support.

“Someone that I can talk to when I have a bad game or caught up in my own head is Molly Masciantonio. She’s one of my closest friends and has been here around the same time I did. … Also Erin Morgan, she’s one of my oldest friends. She was here with me from the very beginning, so it’s really easy to talk to her.”

Morgan and Masciantonio aren’t just great friends, they have the added bonus of being the kind of teammates who help improve Spruill on the court.

“[Masciantonio] is also our point guard, so it’s easy to communicate back and forth and having someone on the court to help me through whatever mental block I’m going through,” Spruill noted. “[Morgan’s] basketball IQ is really great and getting feedback from her is always really helpful. She’s just a really good friend, so being able to talk to someone that knows you since freshman year is really nice too.”

With Spruill’s playing style, it would be natural to assume that she’s always had faith in her abilities. Since she began playing in middle school, she had her sights set on Division I basketball but understood that it’s an opportunity not everyone gets.

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“[Playing Division I basketball] was kind of always the goal since I started playing AAU basketball in sixth or seventh grade,” she recalled. “It can be the goal, but it was also one of those things that not a lot of people do. It was like, ‘Oh, that can be my goal, but I need to have other things on the back burner because I’m not really sure if that’s going to happen.’ ”

It obviously happened for Spruill, and with her Senior Day beckoning, she has been able to accept her role as an influential figure on the team, one whom the younger girls can emulate after she graduates.

“I do [see myself as a leader],” Spruill acknowledged. “Coach Mountain talks to me about it all the time, how I’m a leader on the team and how he wants me to continue to set a good example. I think I’ve kind of come into that role, I’ve kind of had to learn to because I like to just get my job done and leave. I’m more like the quiet type, not really trying to do too much, but I’ve really come into that role. Compared from freshman year to now, there’s been a lot of personality growth.”

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That quiet assuredness is evident to anyone who sees her play, but there haven’t been many of those people as of late.

“I want people to look at women’s basketball as a whole and not just see it as, ‘Oh, it’s Title IX, if you have a men’s team, you have to have a women’s team, they have to be here,’ ” Spruill said. “We’re competing, too. We’re fighting hard, too. We put in time and effort, just like [the men] do. So just for people to come out and support us and be like, ‘Wow, these are actually talented girls out here putting all their work and effort in.’ Just being able to look at us as, you know, great like they do with the men. And expect greatness, too.”