by When the 2025-26 Ball State women’s basketball season came to a close, Grace Kingery was told she would have a ‘much larger’ role with the Cardinals going forward.
Head coach Brady Sallee told Kingery — a freshman at the time — this after the program lost former point guard Ally Becki and numerous pieces to graduation.
“It’s definitely nerve-wracking,” Kingery said. “But after just putting in the work over the summer and then coming back here, it’s obviously all working out.”
‘Working out’ might be an understatement.
With one game remaining in her sophomore regular season, she has risen to the occasion and been a weapon for Ball State. Kingery is averaging the most minutes per game (30.5) and has knocked down 91 triples behind a 41.6 3-point shooting percentage.
She is third on the team for points per game (13.5) and owns an overall 45.2 shooting percentage. In her last game against Ohio, Kingery scored a career-high 24 points after knocking down seven triples.
The good fortune has also spread to the rest of the Cardinals, as they are the No. 2 team in the Mid-American Conference (MAC) with a 15-2 league record. Overall, they are 24-6.
“What you’re seeing right now, I think, is a real evolution of a shooter turning into a player,” Sallee said.
But this is not the first time Kingery has found success with basketball.
Hailing from North Ridgeville, Ohio, Kingery attended North Ridgeville High School, and she said the two basketball players she enjoyed watching were Luka Dončić (NBA) and Caitlin Clark (WNBA). After choosing to play hoops instead of softball, Kingery wanted to drain shots from beyond the arc like the two sharpshooters.
Turns out, she was not too bad at shooting the ball.
“I think it’s just the work that I put in every summer,” she said. “I was just in the gym all the time on the shooting machine. My [high school] coach really pushed me. I knew when I started getting college looks, I had to improve my game.”
Whatever she did, it panned out. After four years at North Ridgeville, Kingery became — and still is — Lorain County’s all-time leading scorer. She also has the record for the most made 3-pointers in the county with 277 to her name.
She said when she goes home and is out in the community, people regularly stop and say hello. To her, it is like being a small-town celebrity.
“Everybody talks about it, and I go to high school games over winter break, and people come out to me and talk to me about it,” she said. “A lot of people come up to me and ask me about Ball State.”
But while she was chasing that mark, someone else noticed. That was the Cardinals’ coaching staff, and Kingery said she was in talks with them starting her freshman year of high school.
When Sallee first talked to her, he said he pitched her an idea that was a little different than other coaches.
“When we recruited her, she’ll remember this because I think a lot of people recruited her [this way], and they talked to her about being a shooter, shooter, shooter, shooter, shooter,” Sallee said. “I told her I was going to make her a player.”
After taking her time to decide, she said it came down to how the Ball State coaching staff worked together and valued each other.
“Brady trusts all of his assistants and his staff,” Kingery said. “Just the relationships you can build with them one-on-one make it really easy to have an off-court and on-court relationship, which comes together as one.”
As a freshman, Kingery averaged 4.8 points per game and hit 38 3-pointers. Throughout the campaign, she said the attention to detail from the upperclassmen was something that inspired her.
The one Cardinal who specifically stood out was Becki, Ball State’s all-time assists leader.
“It was really crazy the way that she was able to find her shooters and just move the ball,” she said. “Just how she played and how she carried herself was really, really good to see. … As a freshman, to jump in and play with that roster was actually insane.”
After Ball State won the MAC regular season and tournament titles, it was apparent to her that this type of effort is what it takes to earn success. Due to that, she said she spent the entire summer working on her game.
While she was doing that, she said she was glued to her phone. Kingery did not want to miss any news about who she would be calling teammates.
“Every day, I was looking at social media [because] I had no idea who we were going to get,” she said. “I see we get all these international players, so it was definitely interesting over the summer.”
As the new Ball State roster was assembled, many new faces made their way to Muncie. That included two transfers in senior forward Bree Salenbien and junior guard Karsyn Norman. Then there were six new freshmen, with all of them being international players.
For returners like Kingery and senior center Tessa Towers — who are roommates — they knew what their role was going to be.
However, it did not take long for the new pieces and returners to click. Both Kingery and Towers — who is averaging 15.1 points and 8.2 rebounds per game — have delivered at their jobs. But Kingery said her production has come because of the Cardinals’ team-based mindset.
“Obviously, Tessa being in the paint and Bree and Karsyn being able to find me really makes it easier for my game to open up,” Kingery said. “I think it all started when we all met in the summer.
“I think just our relationship on and off the floor is really good. I think we all are still learning how each of us plays, and I think that when we learn that, it really helps us out.”
This is no surprise to Sallee.
When he gave Kingery a larger role, he knew she could handle it. From passing the ball and seeing the floor to handling the basketball herself, there was something there. Now, everyone, including the Ball State faithful and the MAC as a whole, is witnessing it as well.
“In high school, she had to play with the ball in her hands a ton,” Sallee said. “Now I think what you’re seeing is an understanding of, ‘Okay, if this is how teams are going to guard me, I’m not just one dimensional.’ So we’re seeing that [change] in front of our own eyes this year.”
Contact Zach Carter via email at zachary.carter@bsu.edu, zachcarter039@gmail.com or via X @ZachCarter85.
