When Jaylyn Gordon prepped at West St. John, she quickly became one of my favorite athletes to cover.

She drove by larger defenders to get to the basket and posted up smaller guards. She shot the 3 at a high clip and percentage. Most importantly, while I believe Gordon could have averaged more than 30 points per game if she chose to do so, game in and game out she made a point to get her teammates involved, whether it was a major scorer or a role-player.

Today we feature a story on the success she’s had at ULL, where her team captured the postseason Women’s Basketball Invitational championship this year with Gordon playing a key role, the team’s second leading scorer on the season.

One of the toughest games I’ve had to cover was West St. John’s 54-52 championship game loss in 2013 to Vermilion Catholic. That Rams team deserved a championship — those girls won 50 of 52 games over one amazing stretch. It was just a bad shooting night for most of the team. Gordon kept the Rams in it. She played a magnificent game and could leave WSJ with her head held high.

While WSJ hasn’t yet captured that elusive state title, they’ve firmly established the Lady Rams program as being among the elite, and that ascent began with the emergence of Gordon as an eighth grader. Since she helped lead WSJ to the state semifinals in her junior year of 2011, WSJ has reached at least the state quarterfinals in every season since.

********

I haven’t really weighed in on it in this space since it was passed, but the prep sports realignment for next season looks like it’s going to really heat things up in our area, and for the better.

St. Charles Catholic, Riverside and West St. John will all be in the same district. Lutcher and St. James will compete for district honors as well. Of course, East St. John, Destrehan and Hahnville will once again count themselves as fierce district rivals.

That first district, obviously, is truly exciting for those prep sports fans in St. John the Baptist Parish, especially in football, where all three schools reached the state semifinals last season. That could happen again, but what we know for sure is only one of them can win an outright district title. We’ve seen Riverside and St. Charles as district rivals in recent years, and if you go a little further back, West St. John was in that same 2A district mix. Who could forget that rivalry with Riverside, peaking with a Rams state championship victory over what had been an undefeated Rebels squad — and one that had pocketed a district victory over WSJ in the regular season.

But when St. Charles and Riverside have competed in district play most recently, John Curtis always lurked; the three teams were simply always grouped together when all played in Class 2A. Curtis is now in Class 3A, meaning that usual roadblock for a district championship is long gone.

When our local teams play one another now, titles will be on the line — and that starts in October.

Of course, these rivalries will extend throughout the school year, meaning in all sports, plenty of bragging rights are up for grabs all year long. Nothing could be better.