Lady Griz Orientation :: Kennedy Moore

Erik Moore, standing 6-foot-5 and looking like he could have rocked the rim back in the day, like he could have jumped out of the gym, gets the question a lot.

You must have taught Kennedy everything she knows about basketball, right?

That's how these stories go. Dad, a former professional athlete, turns daughter into the type of player who gets noticed by a school in the ACC. She signs and plays for Wake Forest. Pretty straightforward.

Except nothing about the story of Kennedy Moore is quite what it seems. You look for her on the path most often taken but she's not there. She's over there, on another one. It might be the one less traveled. Or she just might be creating one of her own, one never taken before. And she's fine with that.

She got to Wake Forest after only playing one year of travel ball, for Missoula's Pfahler Hoops? She did. Then she passed on playing her junior year because there was high school track and her job with the Glacier Range Riders and all that travel to and fro just wasn't her thing? True, all of it.

You think you're about to put your finger on her story, then it changes, goes where you weren't expecting it.

The story takes us to Great Falls in the spring of 2024, everyone wishing they were somewhere else, the rain coming down, the temperature making one think only of a warm fireplace, not standing outside the fence at the Class AA track and field championships watching the high jump.

Everyone was miserable, parents, spectators, the meet officials, the athletes, everyone, seemingly, except Moore, who could have passed for a kid in oversized rubber boots stomping around in muddy puddles, the smile never leaving her face.

"I thought I was going to hear this groan, it's freezing, I want to go home," Kennedy's mom, Cindy, says. "Instead, I hope it just dumps the whole time. I love jumping in the rain.

"Kennedy has always been that kid who's always wanted to play, doesn't matter what the sport is. She has that sense of fun in her no matter what she's doing. Even if it's not fun, she'll make it fun."

It took Logan Todorovich, who broke the Baylor school record in the heptathlon this past spring as a sophomore and competed at the NCAA Championships, to survive a bouncing bar that somehow stayed aloft on the stanchions to finally win that day and hand Moore a second-place finish.

Because she can still have fun while also trying to rip your heart out. "She also has that competitive nature, that if we're going to go out there and do it, let's win," adds Cindy. "That's just how she is."

After she had committed to Wake Forest, the students at Glacier High had Moore, who prepped at Flathead High, in their crosshairs when it came time for the next cross-town basketball game. And when Moore missed her first shot, a 3-pointer, those students were on it. OVER-RATED!!! OVER-RATED!!!

Another mom sitting next to Cindy leaned in and asked, how can you sit here and listen to them? Easy. "I want them to do that," she replied. "If you watch her, it will fire her up, and it did. She had a game like nobody's business and they won. They had no idea what they were lighting."

So, back to basketball. That must have come from Erik, right? Six-foot-five, looks like he could still throw down, just give him a rim, a ball and 30 seconds to limber up.

Except nothing of this story is quite what it seems. He has to tell them, No, she got all her basketball skills from her mom. I played volleyball. What? "That fits, that it wasn't the normal path. From the beginning, that was Kennedy," says her mom.

And that was Cindy as well, lone girl in a household of boys in Yakima, growing up on a fruit farm, playing against her brothers until dark, getting roused at 4 a.m. to get to work. "If you wanted to go out and play with your brothers, you did what they were doing, and that was a lot of sports," she says.

She would letter in volleyball, track, tennis and basketball. "A lot of my basketball shots I learned because I'd get swatted all the time as the only girl. It was more self-preservation."

She started college at Washington State, flipped her allegiances and finished at Washington, began working in acquisitions and mergers for Washington Mutual, which sent her to Southern California, where there were small banks on the market. And a happening sand volleyball scene.

It was everything she could have wanted, so she found that red pay-phone booth, the one that's still there, called her mom and said, yeah, I won't be home anytime soon. "I went down there and loved it. I started playing beach volleyball and didn't want to move back to rainy Seattle," she says.

She was just following the family belief, passed down to her from her grandfather. Do today what will make tomorrow better. If a better tomorrow was more of the same, more sun, more volleyball, then seize the moment, even if it's not the expected path walked.

It's what drew Erik from Salt Lake City to Laguna Beach, where he played on the AVP, where Karch Kiraly, who won the first-ever Olympic gold medal in beach volleyball in 1996 in Atlanta, would ring him up to come train.

"That's how promising his athleticism was. I worked and he played. Beach volleyball was kind of our life," says Cindy. But then grassroots and big money bumped heads and the AVP went bankrupt at just the wrong time.

When Kennedy arrived in 2005, not long after Erik and Cindy had moved to the Flathead Valley, she was 22 inches and, from opening day, seemingly on the route to being a standout. "We were like, yay, we've got a volleyball player!" says Cindy. "Early on we started teaching her how to handle volleyballs."

To know Kennedy at 20, as she is now, with interests across the board – wait, she can play the electric guitar? – is to know that hers was not a volleyball-or-bust upbringing. "We tried to give her a menu," says Cindy.

"I'm going to put as many things out there for you as I can. You pick what you want to do and I'll support you. It made her think, I can do anything. It was natural gravitation."

If anything, they were a ski-first family, taking Kennedy out of school at a young age at the first report that it was to be an epic snow day, the holidays not for spending down time huddled all warm in the home but on the mountain, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, that sweet period from then to New Year's.

Erik was then the manager of the Big Mountain Club at Whitefish Mountain Resort, where Kennedy first gave her mom that ah-ha moment, that whatever she chose to do, she was going to be good at it. She just had it.

"She loved getting height, loved getting air, loved going fast. She was amazing. If I asked her, do you want to go skiing? Her eyes would light up," says Cindy.

It led to an appreciation for being untethered to the world at large, ski pole in hand, not a phone, life slowing down, simplified, an independent streak developed that she carries to today. "Probably rare for someone in college or my age," she says. "I like being around other people but I'm fine being by myself."

Her family tree is a bit complex but still oak-solid. Her half-brother, Carter, lives in downtown Vancouver and works for Draganfly, for which his father, Cameron Chell, is CEO and President, a company Cindy works for remotely in sales, the company one step ahead in drone technology since its founding in 1998.

Her older stepbrother, Brody Thornsberry, runs on the track team at Montana. Her younger stepsister, Addison Thornsberry, plays volleyball at Providence, a top-10 program at the NAIA level.

Her stepmom's parents are Scott and Patty Carlson, he a graduate of the University of Montana School of Law, she in the Bulldog Athletic Hall of Fame at Montana Western, all-conference in both volleyball and basketball, the conference MVP in volleyball.

It's a lot to keep track of but it's all one unit, functioning at a high level.

"People come up to us and ask, who are all these people and how do you all get along so well?" says Cindy. "(Kennedy's stepmom Steph) calls us the Blended Casa. It's just the way our family is. There is no time for the segregation of families. This is a village of athletes. We all have to pitch in."

Her parents had their history with and affinity for volleyball, and her stepmom used to be the head volleyball coach at Flathead High and coached young Kennedy while she was growing up, but it was always basketball that most did it for her, keeping that mostly to herself.

How far back does this go? "I think basketball would have been the obvious choice for me in sixth grade but sixth grade me would have been nervous to voice that," she admits. "I was doing both and had so many people in my life who loved volleyball. I didn't want to make anyone mad."

That's Kennedy Moore, going one direction just when you think she's headed the other.

"Volleyball felt slow to me. I like the faster pace of basketball and that it's a contact sport," she says. "You're always stopping and resetting in volleyball. You can get momentum in basketball, and when you do, it's really fun. Whether you're on offense or defense, you're always engaged."

She played volleyball through her sophomore year of high school, then opted out, initiating what she thought was going to be a difficult conversation. Her mom made it easy, told her, if basketball is what you love, then that's your thing. Let's make it count.

She joined Pfahler Hoops as a sophomore and put herself on the map, immediately getting on the radar of schools around the West.

"There are not many six-two players out there who can run and jump and do the things she can," says Montana coach Nate Harris. "She was tall and athletic and always someone who had a ton of potential.

"Immense physical gifts and trending in the right direction, then Wake swooped in pretty quickly."

She was in contact with schools around Montana, others, then "Wake reached out to Pfahler and my high school coach. We'd love to get Kennedy's number," she says. "Wait, who? It was way out of the blue.

"I knew I wanted to move out of state. I like trying new things and I'm independent, so that would fit my personality. I went on a visit and thought, wow, this would be a big step."

After building an NCAA Tournament team at American, where she is the all-time winningest coach, Megan Gebbia was hired by Wake Forest in May 2022, the same month Moore was going 5-foot-3 as a sophomore to tie for fourth at the track and field state championship.

It was also the first spring Moore began playing travel basketball, she and current Carroll College Fighting Saint Maddy Moy and a parent chauffeur making the drive from Kalispell to Missoula and back over and over again.

But it's the traditional path taken by someone in her position and it's how Gebbia's first recruiting coordinator at Wake Forest, Millette Green, found video online of Moore and thought, okay, I'm intrigued.

"I loved Kennedy's athleticism matched with her fundamental skills," Green wrote this week from Virginia State, where she is the head coach.

"Offensively, I noticed her ability to run the floor, her soft touch around the rim, especially her turnaround jump shot, her range to the 3-point line and her ability to pass the ball. On the defensive end, I liked her ability to rebound and block shots."

Ms. Independent took all her recruiting calls alone, in her room, her mom admitting to slowly passing by when she could, trying to hear at least a bit of one side of the conversation through the closed door.

"It's dangerous because you're talking to 17-year-old kids who are doing it without their parents," says Cindy. "You don't know what they're being told. It's scary to let your kid make that big of a decision."

And off to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, they went. "As a parent, you have to sit back and pay attention to the things they are not showing you behind the curtain. They are going to show their best face. Wake has a dialed-in program.

"I told her, school-wise, you're not going to get a better opportunity. You're watching them get wooed and you're trying to keep them grounded at the same time. That's a challenge. Kennedy can be wooed pretty easily because she is all about fun."

She would be the first player from Montana in Wake Forest program history.

Wake went 9-20 when Moore was a freshman, 2-16 in league. She played in 22 of 29 games, averaging 9.5 minutes. Cindy was there, her job allowing her to relocate for a year and a half. "I loved it," she says. "Winter was cute. After three days it was over."

Last season the Demon Deacons improved to 14 wins and doubled their number of ACC victories, getting selected at the end of the season to play in the Women's NIT. Moore played in all 32 games, getting 10 starts. She averaged 2.8 points, 2.5 rebounds.

After a 59-48 home loss to Maryland-Eastern Shore in the first round of the WNIT, Moore, who went scoreless on one shot in the defeat, took the steps necessary to move on.

"It was a good time for her to learn that maybe what she was told maybe wasn't going to happen," said her mom. "It woke her up a bit and turned her into a more thoughtful person in terms of where her path is leading her and who to believe and who's going to help get her there."

She dropped her name into the transfer portal pool and watched as a feeding frenzy commenced. After all, she was still 6-foot-2, still athletic. "Over eight days, it was a full-time job," says Cindy. "When the portal opened at 5:30 a.m., the phone started ringing."

But instead of feeling adrift, she had the helm firmly in her grasp this time around. "She knew what to ask and knew who to ask the question to. She was very confident," says Cindy. "She went out of her way to contact people who transferred out of the schools that were courting her. Why did you leave?

"There is a lot of scuttlebutt that happens in the background. The players have gotten smart at finding out what really goes on."

Once again, it was Scott and Patty to the rescue, escorting Moore to East Carolina, to other stops, just as they had during her initial recruitment while still a student at Flathead High.

"If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be in college basketball," says Moore. "My parents were working all the time, so it was Grandma and Papa who took me to AAU tournaments, on recruiting trips. Their grandkids are No. 1 on their list."

That was last spring, when Harris was in the process of flipping over a roster for a team that had gone 9-22 in 2025-26. "No-brainer for us to try to get her when she decided to transfer," Harris said.

The family has another saying, beyond Do today what will make tomorrow better, though that certainly fits when making a college decision. "Don't paddle upstream. That's kind of our motto," says Cindy. "Turn around and embrace the opportunities that are going where you're going. Stop fighting life."

Montana was calling her home.

Erik was hired as the general manager of the Glacier Range Riders shortly after the team was established five years ago, the kind of position that is unlike its counterpart at the professional level.

The restroom is out of toilet paper! Contact Erik. One of the ticket takers didn't show up! Contact Erik. A fan on the first-base line has been drinking too much and is becoming unruly! Contact Erik. One of the concession stands is running low on hot dog buns! Contact Erik.

Kennedy began working in those concessions stands, along with her best friends, when she was 16. When she turned 18, she was able to start bartending. She was back on the job this past summer season, back home, back where everything felt full again.

It reminded her that she made the right decision when she chose Montana in the spring. "I'm super happy," she said. "Talking on the phone is one thing. Getting to spend the summer with my friends I didn't get to see for two years is completely different. Really nice to have that back."

She has the length and athleticism of Avery Waddington, giving Montana more of what it lacked last season. "Duplicating that with someone who will be closer to the rim will be a huge opportunity," said Harris.

"She can puncture the defense with the way she can run to the rim and she will shrink the floor defensively. She'll be effective on the glass on both ends. Offensively she fits in with what we want to do by having a really versatile offensive game."

And after that? After she's finished her degree and her years of eligibility? She'll always leave you guessing.

When she was younger, when she was on the way home from another day on the slopes, she told her mom, When I grow up, I want to be a hair washer and I want to be on the ski team. Go be you, Kennedy.

That has now changed. She'll be a sociology major, load up on criminology courses, maybe try to play in Europe as a way to see another part of the world and extend her sporting life, then attend a police academy, work her way up to U.S. Marshall. Go be you, Kennedy. She always has and always will.

University of Montana Athletics

Related News

Players Mentioned

Kennedy Moore

Avery Waddington

Related Videos