Lady Griz Orientation :: Kamryn Reinker

The markers were there. They are always there in these stories, always easy to point out in hindsight.

One day a girl is out on a family bike ride, the only one with training wheels, the one who says, at just two-and-a-half years of age, yeah, I'm not doing that anymore, not if the rest of you are rolling on two, then grabs her brother's bike and takes off like it's nothing.

And a mom thinks to herself, okay, this one might be wired a little differently.

The next she's playing on the Adidas 3SSB circuit, on courts with the nation's top players, on courts that draw the interest of Geno Auriemma, Dawn Staley, other coaches of the nation's top programs. And there she is, Kamryn Reinker, holding her own.

And a mom might think to herself, How did we get here?

Rebecca Reinker points to another marker, that day her daughter, then in second grade, played at a day-long tournament at Billings Central Catholic High and was drawn to a spot in the gym where there was a bracket on the wall and a table filled with little trophies, one for each player on the winning team.

It all started to make sense now in her eight-year-old mind, this idea of competition, so deliciously laid out in straight bracket lines that funneled down, left to right, until there was only one left, the one reserved for the champion, the bracket staying there but the trophies heading home with the victors.

Another: How the middle-schooler finally became too much for her mom, who played a year of Pac-10 basketball at Washington State, too much for her to handle on the court, the daughter's burgeoning strength and skills more than the mom wanted to deal with, could deal with.

"It started to creep up. It finally hit when she was an eighth grader," says Rebecca, who got beat off the dribble, then listened as her daughter told her how her feet were positioned, so she just attacked her in a way that made it easy. "She started doing things where I said, I'm done."

Now she's in high school, another marker, in the fall of 2022, a ninth grader just a few months into her time at Billings Central, the Rams having won four of the last five Class A state volleyball championships, but not this time, not after Reinker sent an attack over the end line, sending Havre to state.

But there might be another way, through a play-in match, so Reinker got home and told her mom, queue it up, please. Queue what up? The match-ending hit that she sent long. She wanted to both internalize it, the pain it brought, and clinically diagnose it, what had gone wrong with her swing.

She went from hands on head as Havre celebrated to monitor for further review to looking at the bracket to find a path. And Billings went from 4E on the eight-team state-tournament bracket, after winning the play-in, to seeing Havre again for the title, this time Reinker ending things with a solo block.

One season, one title, the first of three she'd win in volleyball, with another two coming in basketball, five in eight seasons in the two sports, with two other runner-up finishes, one in volleyball, one in basketball. The off year? A spot in the semifinals in basketball as a freshman, a mere fourth-place finish.

"She's a winner. She's won at everything she's done," says Montana women's basketball coach Nate Harris, who had a feeling and got a jump on everyone when he offered Reinker not long after he got the job in March 2025, when Reinker was a junior and about to set the world on fire.

Her Twitter timeline is an easy historical visual, early offers posted from MSU Billings, Mount St. Mary's, Carroll, Mary. Then came Montana's offer, which seemed to set Reinker free, a player now with nothing to lose, house money in her hands.

"When I got my first call from Nate and the offer, it was one of the best feelings ever," Reinker says. "I had a coach who believed in me before anything's happened yet. That allowed me to have a really good AAU season."

Back to that timeline: Montana, then Hawaii, Air Force, Santa Clara, Boise State, Cal Baptist, San Jose State. Her game was blowing up just as her phone was, with requests for calls, with texts of "Good morning! Thinking how great it would be to have you here on campus!" from coaches from all over.

Sometimes it's good to be first. "She got a lot of offers that were very appealing, but they all came after Nate," says Rebecca. "He was pretty pumped he was the first because she played so well that spring.

"She had games in front of Geno, Dawn, and Kamryn had games. The joke was, what are you thinking? I'm waiting for Geno to call. Nate and all the assistants did a good job of building the relationship and that was big for her, that she felt important to them."

On July 22, 2025, she posted: ALL IN!!!! Go Griz. "I loved it here," she said last week. "There was nothing not to love about this place. Loved it here so much."

It's the latest marker, tethered back to one of the first, the day she saw that bracket and those trophies in the Billings Central gym, all of it essentially begging her: come get me. That her team, mostly playing against fourth and fifth graders, lost every game it played that day was immaterial.

"That hooked her. Okay, I'm in, here we go," says Rebecca. "That was her sport from that moment on."

Reinker was born and raised in Billings, has never lived anywhere but Montana, but the Cat-Griz divide never reached the family home in any one-sided, emotional way, Paul embracing the Big Red of Nebraska after early years in Lincoln, Rebecca growing up in Arizona.

It is part of the state but was never part of the family. "It was never, oh my gosh, this team all the way," says Reinker. "I think it was different for us because neither of my parents is from Montana. My family was never either-or." Unlike now. "Now we're all in on the Griz," Rebecca says.

She was a natural in every sport she tried, whether it be soccer, gymnastics, swimming, t-ball, softball, lacrosse, the goal being to keep their kids active and get the rewards of being productive members of teams, learning the value of you, me, together.

It was never, let's turn you into a college athlete, though both kids are, Sam in his second year as a left-handed pitcher at Iowa Lakes Community College, on his way to becoming a commercial pilot, Kamryn less than two months out from playing her first game as a Lady Griz.

Growing up in Arizona, Rebecca held dreams of joining Joan Bonvicini's program in Tucson, but an ACL injury her junior year derailed her best-laid plans and landed her at Washington State for one season. "I enjoyed basketball up until I didn't," she says.

"That's why we got our kids involved in sports but didn't push. We wanted it to be enjoyable for them while getting the huge takeaways for life."

That's why when the recruiting push for her daughter's commitment felt more overwhelming than fun, mom said, "You know, you don't have to do this. You don't have to play college sports. That's not a requirement in your life."

She knew she was telling this to the girl who went to bed at 8:30 every night during high school just so she could get up early to get shots up at the gym at Saint Francis Catholic School or travel 35 minutes to Lockwood to train at Signature Hoops with Shannon Blake.

She had a drive and commitment, like few others, to make herself the best possible version of herself she could be. She wasn't doing all of this to have her ceiling be her senior year at Billings Central. "I never let it be a choice," she says. "I'm playing college basketball."

Rebecca just wanted to know. "I just wanted to make sure it was her dream."

Before Reinker became a Lady Griz, she had a secondary connection to the Bobcats, getting coached for the first time as a sixth grader by Jenny Heringer, the 2004-05 Gatorade Montana Player of the Year who would go on to become an All-Big Sky Conference performer at Montana State.

First it was individual training with Heringer starting in fourth grade. When Heringer started Crafted Basketball, a travel team, when Reinker was in sixth grade, she was all in.

The journey from there to here came with splits in the road, either-or's, emotional tug-and-pulls, first, where to go to high school, second, with whom to play travel basketball.

Sam would go to West High and its 2,000-plus student body spread across four classes. Kamryn thought she might want something different, something smaller, something more personal, where relationships might be fewer but they'd grow deeper.

"She went back and forth. Academically it felt like Central was the better fit. Fewer students, better relationships with teachers. The smaller group setting was what she needed to have. The athletics were a bonus," says Rebecca.

A bonus and nothing but successful. Volleyball: three Class A championships, three times voted All-State. Basketball: two state championships, twice being named state tournament MVP, three times voted All-State.

"Winning is the expectation," says Jetton Ailes, who coached the Billings Central girls basketball program to a 209-46 record over 11 seasons before stepping down in April to do a different kind of coaching, her two boys and their travel team.

"Everybody is going to have something to say about Central. Everybody you play, you're going to get their best game always. The biggest thing we talked about was embracing the target on your back and doing it with a smile."

Ailes prepped at Billings Senior, played at MSU Billings, then immediately got into coaching at Billings Central, first as an assistant, later the head coach.

"My high school coaches talked a lot about accountability and embracing the challenge and doing whatever you can to make it a positive outcome, win, lose or draw," she said.

Lessons also came from Shel Hanser, former principal at Billings Central. "He said, there is a bar you can set and you can always challenge the kids to meet it. They will always meet it and you can continue to raise it. That was the standard we had at Central, constantly learning and growing."

Reinker spent early years at Saint Francis, pipeline to Billings Central, but later entered the public-school system. Despite Yellowstone County having enough kids to support nine high schools, Reinker still made a name for herself on the basketball court, playing alongside longtime friend Annika Stergar.

"I knew of Kam because she played with Annika. Those two played all the way up together, so I had heard of who Kamryn was but I had never seen her play," says Ailes. "It was a blessing to have her come to Central. She's one of one in a lot of areas."

Reinker's freshman season was one of transition for the Rams, one year after Mya Hansen earned Gatorade Montana Player of the Year honors before taking her talents to Boise State.

With a senior class that could have taken the attitude that this is our time, they instead welcomed Reinker and Stergar into the program with a loving embrace. "That was part of the culture we built," says Ailes. "Those four seniors were incredible in every aspect.

"It was always about what we can do collectively. They knew Kam and Annika were going to make an immediate impact and that if we wanted to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, we had to do it together."

Billings Central opened the 2023 state tournament with a victory over Hamilton before falling in the semifinals to eventual champion Havre. State titles would follow in Reinker's sophomore and junior seasons.

"The biggest asset of her game and who she is as a person is her composure," said Ailes. "You never see her high when things are going well, never see her low when she's battling something. She is a constant. She is a coach's dream.

"A value that can get overlooked is what kind of kid are you going to get on a certain day. You can have the perfect game plan, but if that kid doesn't show up, it can make thing go awry really quickly.

"With Kam, there was never a doubt. She was going to show up consistent, every single practice, every single game and she did it for four years with zero waver."

Reinker's high school career started with a title-match victory over Havre in volleyball. The Blue Ponies would win that year's basketball title. Billings Central knocked Havre out of the 2024 basketball tournament in the semifinals and the Blue Ponies had to watch the Rams make it back-to-back in 2025.

In March, after Billings Central had defeated Havre twice earlier in the season, the Blue Ponies stifled the Rams 52-28 in the championship game.

"There is always a lesson to learn, whether you win or lose. That one stung and it lit a fire under her," says Rebecca. "Havre had girls who had lost to our girls in volleyball, in basketball and they just decided they weren't going to lose again. You need to have those moments when sports beat you up, right?"

One fork in the road – Billings Central or one of the city's other high schools? – was a winning path. "One of the best decisions I've ever made," Reinker says.

The other she faced? She had been playing with and against Billings girls her whole life, now doing the same at Crafted Basketball. Maybe she needed to swim her way to a larger fish bowl, where the Auriemma's and Staley's cast their nets.

In her sophomore year she reached out to Boise's Meta Hoops. Before long she was playing alongside Avery Howell, who would be a two-time Gatorade Idaho Player of the Year, and Brynn McGaughy, a Gatorade Washington Player of the Year and five-star recruit.

"That first year was the most uncomfortable thing I've ever done," Reinker says. "But I learned how to play with new girls, with new coaches. It's one of the best things I could have done before going to college."

It was an eye-opener for all of the Reinkers. "The Adidas 3SSB circuit, those girls, they can play," says Rebecca. "You watch some of those games and you wonder, how do coaches even pick a kid out? They are all so good.

"Then you see Kam on the court and you think, she can do this. It was good for her to challenge herself. It was an important step up, for her and for us. Okay, she can do this. It was good to get out and see what she could do."

Then the calls started coming, which Reinker would take alone in her room downstairs, which she'd follow up with her own investigation, about the school, the roster make-up, where and how she might fit in the future. "She just had a mature way of going about it," says Rebecca.

But, man, Hawaii? For a girl who loves the ocean? It was love at first offer. "She came upstairs and said, I'M GOING TO HAWAII!" Rebecca recalls.

It was the current state of airline travel – Will this flight happen or will it not? – that played in Montana's favor. On a return from Austin, Texas, for basketball, with a stopover in Denver, they were told it would be 48 hours before they could get the Reinkers back to Billings.

So, the family rented a car and drove all day Monday, Denver to Billings, missing work, missing school.

"She started to see the big picture and what that looked like," says Rebecca. Hawaii wasn't just an exotic, warm-weather destination, it was home base from which the team would travel to the mainland throughout the season. And having mom and dad in the stands? They would do what they could.

"After that she said, I want to be where I'm one drive or one flight from where I want to go."

It came down to Montana, Boise State and Santa Clara. Then she remembered the time Harris drove to Billings to have dinner with the family, then drove right back to Missoula, a relationship-based guy, a relationship-based player, connecting on that level.

She remembered the time she sat with him and he pulled up her game film from Billings Central and compared it to how Harris runs things at Montana and how it would fit her game.

"One of the best high school offensive rebounders I've ever seen," said Harris of Reinker. "That will translate. Her offensive game diversified through her career. She got more comfortable with the ball and comfortable shooting. You'll see her play all over the floor."

She comes in as a freshman who looks like an upperclassman, a nod to her belief that it was basketball plus strength training that would get her to the next level. If the Grizzlies had a women's football team, tackle, not flag, Reinker would likely be the top overall choice. Position: linebacker.

"Strength-wise, she is more than ready for the Division I level. That's one of the strengths of her game," added Harris. "She is a tremendous rebounder, someone who has a nose for the ball. She is always around the basketball. She is really scrappy and not going to be overwhelmed by anyone."

She committed after Montana had played in the Big Sky Conference championship game, when Harris was the interim head coach, when the Lady Griz were a last-second put-back from going to the NCAA Tournament.

There were – let's not call them doubts but concerns – last season as she watched from Billings as the Lady Griz went 9-22. We can go there, right? Get personal in a deeply personal article? That's why we write these, to make the players relatable, to make them human, players to follow, cheer for.

"She'd watch games and get kind of quiet. How are you doing? I don't know, Mom, the Griz are struggling," Rebecca says. "Where does that put you? I'm worried about it.

"So, why did you pick the Griz? She went through her list. Okay, what has changed? Nothing. I chose this thinking we're going to bring the Lady Griz back, help them rebuild, get to where they were. That's still what I want to do."

Let's plant another marker right there, one we can go back to next spring, two years from now, when Reinker's career is wrapped up and we're writing about her on her way out, a milepost of: this is where the Lady Griz were, this is where they are now, partly because of her.

"I think Kam is going to make a big splash in the Big Sky," says Ailes. "She is right where she needs to be and living her best life. The Griz got a great one."

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