Westtown looks for a state title with Rutgers recruit Kaylene Smikle. First, the versatile wing found her footing.

Kaylene Smikle had excelled on the floor for Long Island Lutheran and built a reputation as a top player for Exodus NYC on the Nike Girls EYBL circuit. Her parents wanted her to find a place free from distraction.

That search led them to Westtown, with the boarding school offering a place for Smikle to prepare for her Division I basketball future. Nearly two years later, Smikle is set to continue her career at Rutgers and hopes to lead Westtown School to the program’s first state title.

Before she became Westtown’s offensive centerpiece, Smikle was a junior trying to find her footing at a new school. It wasn’t just the distance between Westtown and Smikle’s Farmingdale, N.Y., hometown that proved challenging. It was also that, for the first time, Smikle was boarding at school and following a tight schedule, all while dealing with the effects of the pandemic.

“I didn’t even imagine myself leaving for high school,” Smikle said. “I’m the youngest, so it’s hard for me to leave home since I’ve been home so long. … I’ve always been [at] a school like 30 minutes away from home, so going to school three hours away from home was hard for me.

“I definitely had to adjust to it because my mom would bring me to practice, [and] I never had study hall. … It was harder coming [during the pandemic] because we couldn’t have anybody in our room … you were just by yourself the whole time.”

Smikle also arrived at Westtown a few weeks after the formal start to the school year. By that time, classes were in progress and basketball had already begun. That posed another challenge for Smikle. The four-star wing had to adapt to Westtown coach Fran Burbidge’s style of play in just a few weeks.

Burbidge came to Westtown in 2019 with decades of experience in coaching girls’ basketball. He had coached nine McDonald’s All-Americans and 11 Gatorade State Players of the Year before joining the Moose, and his most recent career stop involved coaching on the Nike EYBL circuit with the Philadelphia Belles. Over the course of his career, Burbidge built up a style of coaching that sometimes takes new players time to adjust to. Smikle’s case was no exception.

“It took us a little bit to kind of really get on the same page,” Burbidge said. “But I think the thing was, we were both willing to work at it and hope that we eventually could get to that point where there’s a deep trust factor in each other.”

For Burbidge, talent is important, but it’s the intangibles, like effort in practice, that determine a player’s success at the next level. His philosophy led him to push Smikle to improve, as he knew that while talent might be able to get Smikle to the Division I level, it was the intangibles that would help her be successful there.

“If you’re going to be that player, and if you’re going to be successful at that next level — which your talent dictates you can be — there’s other things you’ve got to work on,” Burbidge said. “My thing that I say to Kaylene, and I’ve said it to all the kids that I’ve had over the years, is that ‘we want you to be better prepared for the intangibles that come along at that next level.’”

Smikle became even more committed to the sport. With so much changing during her transition to Westtown, basketball proved to be the one thing she could focus on.

“Playing basketball definitely comforted me and made the transition easier,” Smikle said.

Once Smikle and Burbidge started to build their relationship, Smikle began to do exactly what helped her become a top-15 wing and the No. 64 overall recruit in espnW’s rankings.

“I think that once that trust factor really started to build, it really opened it up for her to allow us to kind of coach her up to our style,” Burbidge said. “She just keeps getting better and better, and she was pretty darn good when she walked through the door. But she’s now doing a lot more things with her game. … She’s having as good a year as anybody that I know out there.”

Smikle’s success at Westtown didn’t just help her rocket up recruiting rankings, but it also gave her a bigger audience during her games. When she took the floor, colleges were watching. While it might have made some recruits nervous, it excited Smikle. After being classified as a big for much of her early career, Smikle welcomed the chance to prove to people that she could have an impact not as a post player, but as a 6-foot wing.

Although recruiting interest in Smikle developed quickly, she took her time in making her decision. When it finally came time to make her commitment, while staying close to home hadn’t been at the top of her recruiting priority list, Rutgers’ proximity to her hometown turned out to be a bonus.

“I didn’t really know if I wanted to be far from home, [and] I never really put that on my [list] of what I wanted to do,” Smikle said. “But when I went there, I just knew it was the right fit … the culture and the family that they had was so strong that I knew that was the school.

“My trainer is going to be able to come to the gym to meet me, my parents won’t miss a home game, and I’ll be able to go home if anything happens.”

While Smikle’s focus will soon be on preparing for her future in the Big Ten, her current focus is on helping Westtown make history in this year’s state playoffs for independent schools.

“I definitely want to win states; Westtown is going to win states this year,” Smikle said. “Westtown girls’ basketball has never won states before, and I want this to be the first year that we win states.”