In December 2025, Colerain High School girls basketball senior Kamea Sharp made a trip to the cemetery to visit her aunt Ire's gravesite.

What followed was a wave of emotions that Sharp hadn't felt since her aunt died in summer 2022, just weeks before Sharp entered Colerain High School for the first time. For as long as she could remember, her aunt had been like a mother to her.

"If my father wasn't there, she was there. It was something I never expected to happen. It was hard. I just didn't believe it was real," Sharp said.

Losing someone so close to her had a lasting mental effect. The cemetery visit gave her peace and a renewed purpose to finish what she started at Colerain.

Sharp wanted to play basketball as a freshman but skipped tryouts while still grieving her aunt's passing.

Throughout her high school career, she has been eligible by the Ohio High School Athletic Association's standards but didn't meet Cardinals head coach Abby Meyer's requirements.

"I felt like I wasn't mentally stable for school and it was hard. I tried but I didn't make it until sophomore or junior year," Sharp said.

Four years of hard work pay off for Kamea Sharp

She went out for the team as a sophomore and was placed on junior varsity while still trying to improve her grades. Meyer said she also observed that Sharp didn't yet possess the level of maturity required for the varsity team.

"We want to hold them to a higher standard and put the student before the athlete," Meyer said. "A lot of what sophomore year was for her was, she would be in the gym, but she'd be at a table doing her homework."

While walking through the hallways at Colerain or in the gym before practice, Meyer constantly makes sure her students are where they need to be. She cares about them and wants them to be present with the team while keeping their priorities straight.

As a junior, Sharp realized that she needed to clean up her grades if she wanted to succeed after high school, starting to see the potential that Meyer, her teammates and teachers knew was there.

Sharp said math is one of her least favorite subjects, but teachers Nicole Forcum and Lauren Young never stopped supporting her.

"I was in their classroom every day trying to get my grades together. Even if I couldn't do it, they were still trying to help me and not letting me give up on myself," Sharp said.

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