Highly touted recruit Kennedy Henry will join a standout Westtown School team for her senior year
The guard from Hockessin, Del., played three seasons at Blair Academy in New Jersey. She'll spend the offseason playing alongside her new Westtown School teammates on Philly Rise.
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The area’s most dominant girls’ basketball squad will have another major talent at its disposal next season.
Kennedy Henry, from Hockessin, Del., announced April 2 that she will attend Westtown School for her senior year, joining a core that won its fourth straight Friends Schools League title and third consecutive PAISAA championship this season.
The 6-foot guard and wing spent three years at Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J., where she won three Mid-Atlantic Prep League titles, earned three consecutive all-league honors, and eclipsed the 1,000-point mark.
“I’m super excited. I feel like I’m going to better my basketball game as well as growing as a person,” Henry said. “I loved Blair, but I feel like coming to Westtown for basketball purposes, I’m going to get extremely better. Playing with good competition against my own teammates during preseason is going to make me extremely better.”
Henry will get to know her new teammates before she arrives on campus. She’s competing on the Philly Rise EYBL 17U team this offseason alongside Westtown’s Olivia Jones, Atlee Vanesko, Jordyn Palmer, and Jessie Moses, who were all on the Rise 16U team a season ago.
She played with them in one tournament last summer and went against those four when Blair Academy lost to Westtown, 60-39, in the City of Basketball Love Girls Winter Classic in December.
Henry toured the campus a few weeks ago. She returned to the Moose’s gym for her first game action with Philly Rise at the Ohio Basketball Philly Takedown event April 13 and 14.
“I didn’t really get to play with them or get to know them on a friendship level or team chemistry-wise,” Henry said. “I’m playing with all of them now, so it’s pretty exciting.”
Henry received interest from Division I programs before high school. St. Joseph’s was the first school to offer her a scholarship before her freshman year in 2021-22. She verbally committed to play at Virginia Tech in June 2022.
However, Kenny Brooks, the former Virginia Tech coach, left for the Kentucky job in March. He led the Hokies to four straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including a Final Four appearance in 2022-23.
Brooks was replaced by former Marquette coach Megan Duffy on April 4. Henry announced six days later via Instagram that she was reopening her recruitment.
“The coach left, and I felt like I wanted the new coach to recruit me and get to know me on a different level,” Henry said. “But I feel like in order to do that, I needed to reopen my recruitment and get to know other coaches as well to further my basketball career and see what’s best for me.”
» READ MORE: High school recruiting tracker: Where the area's top basketball and football players are heading to college
Pittsburgh, Arizona State, Princeton, Miami, Florida State, Harvard, Columbia, Boston College, and Penn are some of the schools that had made offers to Henry before her commitment to Virginia Tech, and Florida State, Wisconsin, and North Carolina have recently reached out.
And she’ll likely get more interest from other programs after playing with the Rise on arguably the top girls’ team on the AAU circuit. Her teammates won the NIKE Elite Youth Basketball League 16U championship last summer.
Jones, Vanesko, Palmer, and Moses are Division I recruits. Palmer and Moses are ranked among the top high school freshmen in the nation.
The Rise also include 6-4 forward Olivia Vukosa, ESPN’s No. 2 player in the class of 2026, Garnet Valley’s Haylie Adamski, Audenried’s Shayla Smith, Penn Charter’s Kaylinn Bethea, and Kailah Correa, an all-state player from Lebanon. All of them hold offers from Division I programs.
Henry is a versatile player who can fit in a number of lineups with a star-studded group.
“Some say I have really good intangibles,” Henry said. “I do the things that aren’t necessarily scoring, but I can also play different positions on the floor.”
Henry’s first priority when considering a college program is finding the right academic fit. She plans on studying criminology, political science, or sociology with goals of becoming an FBI agent or a lawyer someday.
“I’m really excited to tour new schools, get to know different coaches,” Henry said. “But it’s a little nerve-racking because it’s a lot of pressure.”
This story was produced as part of a partnership between The Inquirer and City of Basketball Love, a nonprofit news organization that covers high school and college basketball in the Philadelphia area while also helping mentor the next generation of sportswriters. This collaboration will help boost coverage of the city’s vibrant amateur basketball scene, from the high school ranks up through the Big 5 and beyond.