From Nerf hoopster to Falcon hoop star

She scored 35 points in a double-overtime win over Lone Peak, and it was her 3-point shot that forced the game's extra periods. She plays hard every second of every game, no matter what the score, which is what her coaches love about her. They don't have to ask her to leave it on the floor, she wouldn't play any other way.

"She's a pretty motivated kid," said Dorne Hall. "She's always trained hard, but she really trained even harder all summer, even after she'd already committed to BYU."

Adds her mom, "She's self-motivated and self-disciplined . . . She is equally intense in all areas of her life. She can't stand not to have anything to do."

Haley Hall is not, however, all work and no play.

"She's just a lot of fun," said her mom. "When she shows up the party begins."

Most of Hall's friends are not athletes so her social life gives her a break from competition.

An honor student, she played soccer, as well as basketball, until a couple of years ago. At 5-5, many may think she's too small to play Division I basketball. Watching her compete in girls basketball tournaments the last few years convinced Hall's club coach otherwise.

"She has such good quickness," said Dave Hammer, the coach of the Salt Lake Metro, the team Haley Hall played on last summer. "She can just break people down. She's got quickness and strength . . . Haley is tough."

Hammer said Hall's strength is her ability to "take over a game."

"She's just special," he said. "I was lucky to have her in my first year coaching girls. I won't be able to replace her, and we won't be as good without her."

Haley Hall takes it all in stride, often crediting her teammates with the Falcons' success. That trait, said her dad, has made coaching her a pleasure. She's unselfish, but still able to take control when she needs to. Kristin said Haley has leaned on her father so much over the years that she worried their relationship might deteriorate when Dorne agreed to take over the Falcon program this fall.

"I worried about their father-daughter relationship," she said. "They used to talk about the game and break things down, and I thought maybe the coach-player relationship might get in the way. But they've done a really good job keeping them separate."

"It's harder than I thought," Dorne Hall said of coaching.

Both Kristin and Dorne said the emotional toll each game takes is something they didn't expect. But being able to work with his daughter in her final year of high school basketball is worth the extra energy he's expending, he said.

"It's been a lot of fun," he said.

Adds her mom, "I couldn't be more proud of her."

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E-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com