NCAA Women’s Basketball: Cumberland Valley grad Kelly Jekot announces return to Penn State for final season

Jake Adams The Sentinel

Kelly Jekot is giving it one more go.

The three-time state champion with Cumberland Valley, 2,000-point high school scorer and 1,000-point collegiate scorer announced Thursday afternoon her intent to return for one last season with Penn State’s women’s basketball team, for what will be her fifth season on the court and sixth year in college.

“I’m so thankful that I have the opportunity to get back on the court to play the sport I love for the 2021-22 season,” Jekot said in a social media post. “We have unfinished business. We are!”

The high school standout who began her NCAA career at Villanova will return for the 2021-22 season after a midseason injury this year that ended her first campaign with the Nittany Lions.

Jekot averaged 15.9 points (team high), 6.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists in nine games before an injury in mid-January. It was the second season-ending injury of her collegiate year after she tore her ACL late in her junior year at ‘Nova.

The 6-foot guard redshirted in what would’ve been her senior year and announced a transfer to Penn State in November 2019 to play as a graduate transfer.

Her return this year was off to an impressive start before injury. Despite playing in nine games, one more than the NCAA allows for a medical redshirt, Jekot told The Sentinel she gets an extra year of eligibility due to the NCAA’s COVID-19 eligibility policies enacted in 2020 that gives every basketball player an extra year.

Now she’ll rejoin a young Penn State program that started multiple underclassmen and went 9-15 this season.

Jekot is the oldest of four sisters who are all basketball standouts. Katie Jekot wrapped up her redshirt-junior season with St. Joseph’s this year. And Julie and Jill won CV its second District 3 title in the last three years. Julie will play at La Salle next season after graduating high school, and Jill is already fielding multiple Division I offers.