KAYSVILLE — Kendra Kitchen stood up in front of family members and her Davis High girls basketball teammates, got about five words out of her mouth, paused and kept talking through tears and a smile.

“I’m just a crier. Yeah, I cry over everything. It’s like no stopping, I knew from the beginning I was gonna cry from the beginning,” Kitchen said.

Kitchen, a senior forward/post, signed her college basketball national letter of intent Monday night to Utah Valley University and the emotion in her voice showed and told everyone just how she felt about not only signing but also having everyone there.

“On my wall, I have like a phrase that says, ‘Play college basketball,’ and I’ve always looked at it every day. Just being able to, like, really do it is something that I dreamed it would happen, but I never thought it would actually come true. So it’s really cool to do it,” she said.

Kitchen got an offer from UVU in late July, then left soon after for a 17-day service trip to Brazil where she and a friend deliberated the college decision. Kitchen came back to the states and verbally committed in late August.

She picked the Wolverines, who play in the Western Athletic Conference, over Weber State in the Big Sky, plus Mountain West schools Utah State, Fresno State and Colorado State.

Of the many things that drew her to UVU, one was that she plans to serve an 18-month mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after playing her freshman season.

“I really like the coaching staff; they’re really fun and really good to me. And (former Davis teammate) Kylee (Mabry) goes there and she’s said it’s really good. And they were also OK with me going on a mission after playing a year,” Kitchen said.

Kitchen averaged team highs of 18.7 points, 9.3 rebounds, 3.4 blocks and 3.0 steals per game last year. She also shot 45.2% from the field, 32.2% on 3-pointers and 81.8% at the free-throw line.

Last year, Kitchen was the driving force behind Davis’ 20-3 season that saw the Darts win their first region championship since 2013 and advance to their first state semifinal since 2007.

“There were multiple games when I would — maybe things weren’t going our way, and I could look at Kendra and I could tell that she was in the zone, and she was gonna put us on her back and carry us. She just had that look,” Davis High head coach Anne Jones said about Kitchen in March.

Davis opens up this season at 7 p.m. Nov. 21 at Viewmont.

Newsletter