Riverview High School’s Brooklyn Kastor adjusting to playing basketball on the high school level

SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) - This week’s ABC7 Athlete of the Week is Riverview High School’s Brooklyn Kastor. She’s a freshman for the Lady Rams basketball program, and they are just getting things started up on the hardwood.

“It’s very intense,” Kastor said. “In middle school, you’re so focused on making friends. You don’t really put as much hard work into it [basketball] as you do with a high school team.”

For Kastor, it’s been a change in pace of play as she adjusts to playing on this level, but at the end of the day she knows it’s just basketball.

“I’m a very visual person, and basketball’s very visual sport,” Kastor said. “The way that all of the coaches coach here, it’s very not difficult. It’s very easy for me to pick up.”

Something that’s making the adjustment more simpler for Kastor is that she gets to learn the game in this program from somebody who means the world to her. Her dad, Gerald Perry, is the head coach, and he says the opportunity is special for him too.

“It is new for me,” Perry said. “I treat al of the kids like they are my own. Having your own, and having the opportunity of being able to watch her is special.”

However, Kastor wants everyone to understand that just because she’s the coach’s daughter doesn’t mean that there’s any favoritism towards her.

“People would think that my dad would think that I’m good and automatically put me on the other teams, but I really have to show what I’m capable of,” Kastor said.

Perry says this is a year that is about development for his daughter as a student and an athlete. “She knows that she has to work for everything,” Perry said. “It’s just the approach that you go in with.”

Kastor tells ABC7 that she welcomes each challenge, and is excited to earn her spot up the basketball playing ladder. “Hopefully, [I’ll be] getting way better than I am right now and getting onto Varsity,” Kastor said.