Sharp shooter

Lilly Panda has a chance to become a national Elks Hoop Shoot champion. Don't count her out.

In the movie “Hustle,” an NBA scout played by Adam Sandler discovers unknown talent Bo Cruz on a basketball court in Spain. It wasn’t quite the same, but when I walked into the Beverly YMCA sports center the other day, past a group of 6- to 8-year-olds dribbling around cones, and beyond the curtain separating the two courts, I got my first glimpse of Beverly’s own hidden basketball gem.

Lilly Panda is a 13-year-old seventh-grader at Beverly Middle School. She’s also 6 feet tall with a shooting stroke straight out of a basketball fundamental video. And she has a chance to achieve something no one else from Beverly has ever achieved on a basketball court — an Elks National Hoop Shoot championship.

Lilly with her New England championship trophy. Next up? The Nationals.

You might not have heard of the Elks National Hoop Shoot, but it has a special place in my basketball-loving heart. It’s a free throw competition for girls and boys from ages 8 to 13. It starts out at the local level and ends up in the national championship, which this year is in Chicago. The six winners of their age groups — three girls and three boys — get their names and pictures in an exhibit in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.

So why do I like the Elks Hoop Shoot so much? First of all it’s a great example of what groups like the Elks Club do for the community. Social clubs have been struggling for years to keep up their membership and remain financially viable. But Elks like Charlie Summit of Beverly have remained committed to putting in the time to organize the local Hoop Shoot.

Charlie has been running the Hoop Shoot in Beverly for almost 40 years, with his wife, Sheila, assisting him for most of that time. They reserve the gym at the Beverly School for the Deaf, order T-shirts for all the participants and jackets and trophies for the winners, and help out at the district, state and regional levels. When I coached Kiwanis basketball years ago, you always knew the Hoop Shoot was coming because you’d see Charlie at the Y, passing out flyers.

I asked Charlie what keeps him going with the Hoop Shoot and he said, “When you run it through the Elks and you get to know the people in the districts and the states and the New Englands, it’s like a family. We look forward to it every year. It’s a lot of fun.”

I’m also a big basketball fan and love free throw contests. My two daughters both competed in the Elks Hoop Shoot. They’re now in their 20s, and when they asked what I wanted for Fathers Day a couple of years ago, I said, “A free throw contest against you guys at the Y.” (Winner, Elizabeth.)

All of this brings us to this year’s competition and Lilly Panda. So far she’s won four events — local, regional, state and New England. She made 22 out of 25 free throws in each of the first three competitions. At the New Englands, in Portland, Maine, she was tied with another girl with 20 out of 25 shots and had to go to a shootout. The other girl made four out of five. With a trip to the nationals on the line, Lilly had to make all five of her shots — and she did it.

“I just took my time,” she told me. “I took deep breaths.”

Take a look at Lilly’s shooting form and you can see why she’s so good:

The rebounder in the video is Lilly’s mom, Britta. Britta grew up in Germany and played basketball professionally starting at age 16. Eventually she had to decide between basketball and becoming a doctor. She’s now a specialist/physician for high-risk pregnancies at Tufts Medical Center.

I asked Lilly how long she’s been playing basketball. “My whole life,” she said. Her brother, Connie, a 6-foot-7 sophomore, plays for the Beverly High basketball team. Lilly plays for the MCW Starz AAU program, which is run by Mandy Carter-Zegarowski and Zach Zegarowski. The MCW stands for Michael Carter-Williams, their son who played in the NBA and was rookie of the year in 2014.

Lilly said her goal is to play Division 1 college basketball, and “my big dream is the WNBA.”

Speaking of the WNBA, the Hoop Shoot national finals will take place on Saturday, April 18, at Wintrust Arena in Chicago, home of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky. The event will be livestreamed here. The only other Beverly girl (or boy) to make it to the national finals was Becca Moriarty, who finished two shots behind the winner in the 12-13 age group in 2007.

Here’s a cool graphic from the Elks Hoop Shoot website about Lilly:

Lilly has been taking 50 to 200 free throws per day to get ready for the nationals. “I’m really excited to go, and I think I have a good chance of winning,” she said.

So OK Beverly, let’s get behind Lilly on her quest for the national championship. Either way, she’s already a winner.