Growing up in Atlantic City, you get used to 24-hour action and flickering white bulbs. You get used to noise and energy and Lady Gaga concerts.
So forgive Tasha and Tiana Cannon, both former stars for the city’s high school basketball team, if they had trouble embracing the move to Coffeyville, Kan. – 1,300 miles away.
“It was totally different. The opposite of what I came from,” the 20-year-old Tiana said. “This was country.”
One year apart, they attended Coffeyville Community College, a school that offers rodeo as one of its athletic programs.
In a 9-to-5 sort of town, where running to the beach was not an option, they found themselves and rediscovered their basketball success.
After high school, there was no way Tasha thought she would go to Kansas, even though many Division I schools from the state tried to capture her basketball talents.
“I had almost every Division I school up and down the East Coast looking at me,” Tasha, 22, said. “I wound up in Kansas anyway. I turned them down before because Kansas was too far.”
The Cannon sisters have moved up from Coffeyville and are playing basketball on the NCAA level. Tasha is playing at Newman University, a Division II school in Wichita, Kan. Tiana recently transferred to Division I Radford University in Virginia.
“The Cannon girls were our best players two years in a row for us,” Coffeyville women’s basketball coach Emily Washburn said. “It worked out great and they did a great job for us.
“But neither one of the Cannon girls like Kansas,” Washburn added. “That’s understandable. It’s a different culture. Just a different part of the country.”
Tasha’s story
Most area high school basketball fans remember Atlantic City High’s Tasha Cannon. She was The Press Girls Basketball Player of the Year in 2006, and the first player from Atlantic City to finish with more than 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in a career.
Tasha had that ability to score at will. She pounded the glass and made other girls pay for getting in her way.
Tasha’s basketball success created educational opportunities for her – the basketball dream. She chose between Georgetown and Rutgers, finally settling on the Hoyas. Her decision surprised many because Tasha said early on she was going to Rutgers, since she played AAU basketball with one of coach C. Vivian Stringer’s disciples.
“I was looking forward to playing at Rutgers,” Tasha said. “But when it came time to make a decision, I wanted to go a different route even though my dream school was Rutgers.”
That was it. Tasha’s future was set. She was going to Georgetown to have a stellar career – and hopefully play professionally one day.
But two weeks before she was supposed to report to the Washington, D.C., school, Georgetown coach Terri Williams-Flournoy called. The academic committee that approves student-athletes didn’t want to take a chance on a student with average grades. The school had done so the year before and it didn’t go well, Tasha said.
“I already told Rutgers I was going to Georgetown and they didn’t have a scholarship for me anymore,” Tasha said.
Tasha had few options. She could go to junior college or sit out a year. Rutgers offered her a scholarship for the following season, Tasha said. She just had to wait one year.
Rather than sit around during that time, she played junior college ball at Monroe College in New York City.
Now, she wishes she didn’t. She didn’t get along with the coach and she said he played the sophomores over her because she already had a scholarship offer from Rutgers. The other girls needed to be seen.
So she left after the first semester, essentially breaking the contract she had with Monroe. By leaving school early, she now couldn’t go to Rutgers, either, due to certain eligibility rules.
She had to finish one year at a junior college before moving on to the next level.
“If I could go back, I would have taken the year off,” she said. “That way I would have had time to think.”
Her opportunities didn’t end there, not for a player who seemingly could do it all.
Through a local AAU coach, Allen Ragland, Tasha got in contact with Coffeyville’s basketball coach. Washburn was thrilled to have her, and bought a plane ticket for her.
“We didn’t know what we were getting. We knew she could score,” Washburn said. “When you look back and Google Tasha Cannon, there were so many articles about her having 25 points and 24 rebounds. That’s what we needed.”
Except Tasha never left Atlantic City.
Not then, anyway.
Tiana’s story
Tiana was so much like her sister. Everyone was sure she was going to play Division I basketball.
Tiana wasn’t as confident.
The slick, 5-foot-10 swing player wasn’t sure if she could compete at the highest level of college basketball. She needed a test. Tiana wanted to prove she was good enough, while ensuring that she could maintain her grades.
“I wanted to see how I would do on my own for the first time,” Tiana said. “It was just a mental thing, I guess. I didn’t want to jump the gun when there are 1,000 people better than me. That was my main key, to see if I am ready or not.”
Tiana heard about Coffeyville through her sister and Ragland. So the year after Tasha transferred, Coffeyville got a second Cannon sister to lead the team.
Tiana shined with the Lady Ravens. In her one year at the school, she averaged 18.5 points and 7.8 rebounds. She also led the team with 59 assists in 32 games.
It didn’t take Tiana long to realize she was ready for college ball.
“It hit me after the first semester at Coffeyville,” Tiana said. “I thought, ‘I am ready now.’ I just had that mindset.”
Radford University recruited Tiana out of high school. It’s coaches followed her career but realized in the spring of her senior year at Atlantic City in 2010 that she was going to junior college.
But they didn’t forget about Tiana as she was hidden away in Kansas.
“We found out she was one of the people eligible to go to college this year and we definitely jumped on it,” Radford coach Tajama Ngongba said. “The one thing that she has pretty unique, she has this internal motor on the court that is just the type of energy we need to continue building our team. I think she is the perfect piece because of that internal motor.”
Finding a way
Tasha Cannon sat in a valet cashier’s booth at Resorts Casino Hotel.
Graveyard shift. Her friends would visit her at work and tell her she lost her game and they could finally beat her.
A few miles and years removed from the high school hardwood court she dominated, and Tasha Cannon wasn’t Tasha Cannon anymore.
“I found myself letting go in every area of my life. I was gaining weight, eating,” she said. “I couldn’t watch basketball on TV. I wound up hating the thing I loved the most.”
One night at work in January 2009, she listened to one of her co-workers talk about his life before he had a child. He was a hockey player and had to give it all up.
It ate her up inside.
After that shift ended, Tasha stopped going to work. She called Washburn and said she was ready to go to Coffeyville. Washburn welcomed her, but this time Tasha had to buy her own plane ticket, which she did.
Coffeyville resurrected her life and basketball career. She averaged 11.1 points at Coffeyville in 2009-10. She was bound to be recruited by a four-year school – the only problem was that she was too late for Division I programs.
Maybe four years ago that’s something that would have derailed Tasha. Not this time.
“After you have been out of school and you transfer, it looks kind of terrible,” Washburn said. “She went down the wrong way, but she worked herself back in. She looked for the best option for her to get a full scholarship and finish school.”
At Newman, Tasha led the Jets with 15.0 points and 8.8 rebounds last year. But she’s proudest of making the dean’s list twice.
Tasha, now a senior, wants to play professionally overseas after her senior year is over. She hopes to become an art teacher one day.
Both these women have Coffeyville to thank for showing them the right way and instilling a confidence that was lost in both.
“Sometimes God puts things on the back burner and then brings it back to your attention when you’re ready,” Tiana said. “That’s what I came to realize. Coffeyville helped me get ready.”
