Not much about Finley Chastain’s life has been conventional.
Last year, the basketball prodigy committed to national power Tennessee as an eighth grader at Lorene Rogers Middle School in Prosper. Only after that did Finley determine where to attend high school.
She decided on Florida’s Montverde Academy, a prep school about 25 miles west of Orlando. Finley’s father, Shawn Chastain, said he didn’t feel comfortable sending his freshman daughter to live in Florida by herself, so he and Finley’s mom, Heather, moved with her.
Had Finley attended public school, she wouldn’t be able to spend as much of her day on basketball, and all the resources that would help her succeed on the court — gyms, trainers, equipment — would be spread out. At Montverde, they’re in one place.
Along with everything else that makes Finley unique, her decision to leave North Texas for an out-of-state prep school sets her apart from other elite girls basketball players from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Over the last few years, several of the area’s top boys basketball players have left public schools for prep schools, which are boarding institutions set up to offer athletes college-level training and help them gain exposure.
This is a relatively new phenomenon in Texas, though elite girls players from Dallas-Fort Worth aren’t leaving at the same rate as boys. There aren’t as many girls programs, but parents also express concerns about the quality of education at prep schools and the prospect of sending their daughters to a far-away place by themselves.
Attending prep school is far from a traditional high school experience, which is often as much about teens fulfilling rites of passage as it is about getting an education. But Finley doesn’t mind.
“I take basketball very seriously, and that fuels my entire life,” she said.
A lack of resources and opportunities
After Tre Johnson won a Class 6A state championship with Lake Highlands last March, the five-star Texas signee announced in the summer that he would attend Missouri’s Link Academy for his senior year.
The school’s first boys basketball season was in 2021, and in two years, Link was the champion of the 2023 Geico Nationals tournament.
But Link didn’t start a girls basketball team until this season. Dynamic Prep, an Irving-based academy NBA alum Jermaine O’Neal started in 2022, still doesn’t have a girls program.
“The funding behind the girls in that particular area is not there resource-wise,” said Jason Key, who works for Premier Basketball, a player evaluation and recruiting service. “There’s not as much funding yet as there is on the boys’ side.”
Donald Walker, who in 2015 opened Dallas-based Legion Prep Academy with his wife, Nishia Walker, said not as many girls see prep schools as an option.
He said girls basketball players tend to have better fundamentals than boys, who often rely more on athleticism, and the increase in highly skilled girls basketball players has helped change the narrative about their on-court performance and marketability off of it.
“With the way NIL deals are going now, how college has picked up and the WNBA has picked up a little bit, so now [girls] see that ‘Yo, we can do this at the next level,’” Donald said.
Legion Prep started with a girls program, and a boys program will follow next year. But this isn’t typical at prep schools.
“On the girls’ side, we’re kind of late to the party,” Nishia said. “The word is getting out more. I think we’ll see more girls changing over.”
Safety and logistics concerns
Private school athletics are often superior to public schools on the East and West coasts, but public schools are king in Texas. While the UIL has some of the best competition in the country, parents aren’t sure it’s challenging enough for high-caliber players.
Like Finley Chastain, Jacy Abii started receiving interest from colleges before starting high school.
The Frisco Liberty sophomore, a five-star recruit with more than 40 college offers and the ability to dunk, may be one of the best basketball players to come out of the Dallas area.
For Liberty’s pre-district schedule, coach Ross Reedy set up games with Etiwanda, a California public school girls basketball power, and DeSoto, which at one point this season was the No. 1 6A girls basketball team in Texas.
Jacy’s father, Haskell Abii, said Reedy has also tested Jacy and her teammates in practice.
“He stacks all the cards against her,” Haskell said. “But he keeps telling me, she keeps winning.”
Jacy’s need for college readiness and the inflexibility of the public school day have made Haskell consider sending her to prep school.
“It’s really difficult for me to find the time to do the things she needs done,” Haskell said. “She’s got a coach that can help her get stronger with her body, but I have a hard time [getting her to that]. She gets home at 5:30 and she’s been up since 7, 6:30 in the morning.”
At Montverde, Finley attends classes — three in the morning and one in the afternoon — for about four hours. Then, depending on the day, she heads to a two-hour weightlifting or conditioning session around lunchtime. After that, Finley practices for three hours in the afternoon. She can sprinkle in skills work and individual shooting before and after practice.
To reduce the potential for burnout, the Walkers modeled the Legion Prep school day after international academies in Finland and Australia, where athletes focus on skill development rather than spending hours in academic classes. It’s a path that worked for the Mavericks’ Luka Doncic and AC Milan’s Christian Pulisic, among other elite athletes.
But Haskell Abii is concerned about sending his teen daughter away from home, especially out of state.
“The biggest thing is safety,” he said. “I do feel it is somewhat unfair. … I would let the boys go a lot easier out of state, before I would let her go.”
But even if more prep school options for girls arise in Texas, alleviating some of the safety concerns, parents question the quality of the education their children would receive when classroom time is significantly reduced.
The Walkers wanted to make sure their curriculum at Legion was top tier to appeal to academically inclined girls and their parents, so they designed it before the athletic program.
“A lot of schools fail and don’t give the students academically what they need,” Nishia said. “Boys will kind of hop and go wherever they want to go, but with girls, you have to make sure the academic part is together.”
Different psychology
Legion Prep being local made leaving Denton Braswell manageable for senior Kennedy Evans, and it helped that two teammates joined her, as well as girls she played with on the AAU circuit.
“They make everything a lot better,” said Evans, an Oklahoma State signee who also considered Missouri’s Link Academy.
“It would prepare me for college, but I feel like [Legion] was better because I’m home,” Evans said.
Evans’ comments reflect observations coaches and parents say they have made about girls needing more social connections than boys and wanting a more predictable experience.
" ‘Do I really want to move to Florida or Missouri to just go play basketball with kids I don’t know?’” asked Premier Basketball’s Key. “Boys, and I’m talking in generalities, tend to be OK with that, whereas girls are like ‘Eh, do I really want to do that?’”
Taking that sort of risk is more characteristic of boys who dream of landing an NBA career and the money that brings, added Key, who also serves on the McDonald’s All-American selection committee.
But there are always exceptions. Finley’s father, Shawn, said he wishes she would be more social.
“I don’t really stay too attached to one place or another, so it was pretty easy for me to just up and leave Texas,” Finley said.
In D-FW, she trained with athletes such as Ja’Kobe Walter of McKinney, Plano Prestonwood’s Jalen Shelley, John Paul II ex Liam McNeeley and Johnson, the former Lake Highlands standout.
All of them left for prep schools.
“Finley looked at the game more like they did and less like the girls that she went to school with,” Shawn said. “She watched all of her workout partners all head off to prep schools across the country and I think she thought, ‘Well if they can do it, why can’t I?’”
Maybe in time, more girls will be asking that same question.
On Twitter: @t_myah
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