Hannah Frazier looks up, and can look back.
On the Batavia senior’s bedroom wall is a newspaper clipping from her first high school basketball game. Two nets from regional championships hang above her bed.
They are tangible reminders of Frazier’s legacy at Batavia.
It is large.
Frazier will graduate as Batavia’s all-time leading scorer with 2,089 points, after passing Liza Fruendt in February, and top rebounder, with 1,029.
Batavia won two regional titles in 35 years before Frazier arrived. The Bulldogs won two in her four years alone, in addition to the program’s first sectional game and a record 26 victories this season.
Frazier, who averaged 22.3 points and 8.9 rebounds, was named First Team All-State by the Associated Press. She is the Beacon-News Player of the Year for the second consecutive season.
Humble to the core, Frazier is blown away by it all.
“Unforgettable is the best way to describe it,” said Frazier, a 6-foot-2 forward who will play collegiately at Saint Louis.
Frazier’s statistically dominant junior season on a 15-15 Batavia team seemed hard to top.
Winning made it possible.
Frazier and Batavia opened eyes right off the bat, upsetting Trinity in the fourth game of the season. At the Montini Christmas Tournament, the Bulldogs knocked off Huntley and were tied with Montini in the final minute before losing by five.
In January, Frazier scored 27 as Batavia beat Geneva on the Vikings’ court, then had 30 against St. Charles East to clinch a share of the Upstate Eight River.
“When we beat Trinity we realized that we were way ahead of last year,” Frazier said. “It makes it that much more satisfying when the team is winning.”
With an eye toward her basketball future, Frazier expanded her repertoire.
Almost exclusively a post scorer her first three years, Frazier made her perimeter game more than a secondary thought. She hit two 3-pointers in the Geneva win. She also embraced her inner superstar.
“She tried to be more of that alpha dog, which I think is still a little out of her comfort zone but is what our team needed,” Batavia coach Kevin Jensen said. “You could see her get more and more confident.”
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Jensen anticipates Frazier blossoming even further in the years ahead.
Frazier came to basketball relatively late. Her mom Erin, who played basketball at Wheaton College, started her daughter in a recreation league in fifth grade. Future Batavia teammate Bethany Orman talked Frazier into joining the Lady Lightning travel program the summer before eighth grade.
“I think Saint Louis is getting a steal,” Jensen said. “I’ve seen the girls playing in Big Ten schools. She’s just as good as them.”
Frazier can thank her home base for her humble nature, but so too her inner competitor.
Her dad, Jeff, played football and wrestled at Wheaton College, and is now the pastor at First Baptist Church in Geneva.
Frazier is one year younger than her brother Noah, a star defensive end at Batavia who, like Hannah, was No. 1 in his academic class. Brother and sister were in geometry class together her freshman year.
“We compete in everything. We’ve had most of the same teachers, and they tell me how he did in their class,” said Frazier, who carries a 4.375 GPA and plans to study engineering. “He is an amazing role model and a standard for hard work.”
Frazier, likewise, has set a standard as a competitor that even Batavia’s biggest rival admires.
“I can honestly say that Hannah is respected by everybody on our team. You earn that respect,” Geneva coach Sarah Meadows said. “It says a lot about the kind of person she is.”
Joshua Welge is a freelance writer for The Beacon-News.