Not many basketball players can say that they won a State Championship, let alone two back to back. But senior Molly Ly can.

Her career began in the first grade after watching her father play basketball as she grew up. For the past 11 years, she’s played every season without any off seasons in between. Even though her father guided her to start playing basketball, the reason she continued to play through high school was completely different.

“My friends, like the seniors that graduated last year, we’ve been on the same select team and club team since fourth grade,” Ly said. “So watching all of them play in high school while I was in eighth grade made me super excited to play.”

Knowing people on the basketball team when entering high school took away some stress, according to Ly. But the stress that was lacking in the earlier years of high school was replaced with draining practice regimens from the club basketball team Ly was on, Nike CyFair.

“Club is a lot more stressful,” Ly said. “And then you’re playing two to three games a day, then in a weekend you’re playing like six games. There’s not really any tournaments in Austin, so it’s like Dallas, Houston, or in a different state. It’s pretty taxing on your body.”

Even though basketball was demanding for Ly’s mental and physical state, she couldn’t take time off. Not because of outside factors, but because of her mentality.

“Just the fact that I couldn’t stop,” Ly said. “You know, I would try to take breaks, I’d try to give myself two weeks off at the end of every season, but I can’t. I just have the itch to play.”

Her mindset towards the adversities she faced helped prepare her for the success she found later in her career. With countless practices, skills training sessions and teammates, the Cedar Park girl’s basketball team won two UIL State Championships in a row, in 2021 and 2022.

“It was pretty expected,” Ly said. “The first year we won, and the following year the whole team was returning, and we only graduated two seniors. So, it was pretty expected that we’d repeat. Having that confidence, because we’d already been there, was nice. Winning the two championships just made me want to win another one but at the next level. So it’s kind of like, once you get used to the feeling of winning, you just want to keep doing it.”

Now Ly is committed to playing basketball at the University of Texas at Dallas. The process of being committed didn’t take long, and was quite simple, according to Ly.

“Playing club helped a lot with getting looks from colleges,” Ly said. “So my coach’s name is Shotland, and I got a text from him out of nowhere and he was like ‘Hey, I’m the coach at UT Dallas. I got your number,’ and at first, I was like what the heck, why would I want to live in Dallas? But he gave me a call and he was super nice, so I really liked him over the phone, and I think a month later, I went up there to visit and it was amazing. It was super nice, and the whole recruiting process was pretty easy.”

Outside of the basketball world, Ly will be majoring in mechanical engineering, and she hopes to transition into civil engineering later. Even though she hasn’t pursued engineering for the past 11 years, she’s excited to experiment.

“That [mechanical engineering] stuck out to me because I’m not a huge fan of biology, chemistry, or any of that,” Ly said. “I didn’t really want to do business, but I like math. So I figured I’d go with that. I didn’t [take engineering classes in high school] so it’s completely new to me. It didn’t really click with me until three weeks ago if I’m being honest.”

Moving three hours away to Dallas will be quite different from the life Ly has built in Cedar Park, and there are a lot of things to miss, she said.

“I’ll probably miss the familiarity,” Ly said. “We know where everything is, and Dallas is completely different. Like, if I want to go somewhere that’s five miles away, that’s going to take me 15 minutes because of traffic. Just because it’s Dallas, it’s huge. So I’m definitely going to miss being able to just hop in my car and go to Sonic that’s like two seconds away.”

Even though she’ll miss Cedar Park, Ly is excited for her future in Dallas. There are a lot of nostalgic memories here, but even more memories to be made at UTD, according to Ly.

“I’m most looking forward to competing at the next level and hoping to contribute to my team,” Ly said. “As for college I’m looking forward to meeting new people, getting my degree in engineering, and being able to live in such a beautiful city.”