If you went to a Lakota West High School football game last fall, and if you crossed paths with the Firebird mascot, then you may have already met the 2008 Associated Press Ms. Basketball in Ohio.

Amber Gray — daughter of an NFL star, part-time mascot and full-time basketball whiz — is Ohio’s top prep girls player, based on the balloting of a state media panel.

“I’m the type of player that if you need me to score 30 points a game, I would do that,” Gray said. “But if you’ve read the news over the past couple of days, our team won by 14 points (over top-ranked Dublin Coffman in the regional final) and I only had 10. But I was able to come off the bench and cheer my team on and get everybody else into the game.”

So not only can she play the game, she’s also pretty good at inspiring others to play well — whether wearing a feathered costume or not.

A 6-foot-1 senior, Gray averaged 18.2 points, 8.1 rebounds 4.5 assists and 3.5 steals a game for Lakota West (26-1), the state’s No. 3-ranked team. The Firebirds advanced to the state title game Monday largely because of the versatility of their top player.

Lakota West coach Andy Fishman has worked with Gray since she was 10 years old.

“We have so many incredibly hard workers in our program, and there’s so many talented girls in the state of Ohio,” he said. “But you’d be hard-pressed to find one who came in her freshman year and was at a certain place and every year elevated her game to an incredible level.

“You know, what is this girl going to do next?”

That’s a good question — apparently one which Tennessee women’s coach Pat Summitt could answer. Summitt recruited Gray to Tennessee, seeing in her a physical presence that isn’t afraid to do the dirty work under the basket.

“She doesn;t mind using her body,” Summitt said on signing day.

All this talk of her physical abilities seems to lead directly to her father. Carlton Gray was a Cincinnati high school product who starred at UCLA before playing in the NFL from 1993 through the 2000 season. He had 12 interceptions in 102 games with Seattle, Indianapolis, the New York Giants and Kansas City. He now is on the Lakota West coaching staff.

But Fishman said Amber gets a lot of her personality from her mother, Tonya Carter. He adds that hard work is one of the reasons that Amber is as good as she is, and will be.

“I believe that, yes, Amber was blessed with incredible genes from two parents,” Fishman said. “But there is no way that she is where she is now because of those genetics only. Anyone who wants to say she’s where she is because her father played in the NFL, or because she is so talented, they don’t really know her.”

Amber puts it much more, uh, succinctly.

“I worked my butt off,” she said when asked if her talents come from her bloodlines. “Whether it’s before school or after practice, I’m in the gym for at least another hour, hour and a half, two hours. I don’t get a day off. It is to my advantage that I have a professional athlete as my father because he helps train me, but at the same time I have worked for what I’ve gotten.”

She has a 3.0 grade-point average and hopes to major in sports management with a minor in communications at Tennessee.

Communication — and relating to people — has never been a problem. after all, she’s the great-granddaughter of Benjamin Hooks, the colleague of Martin Luther King Jr. who has served as a Baptist minister, lawyer and judge and used to head the NAACP. He has been awarded the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom.

No wonder she’s comfortable in her own skin.

“Amber is just as comfortable being the firebird, as she is out on the court playing basketball, as she is when she’s in a classroom as a peer counselor, and as she is in front of 150 girls at our Firebird Hoops Camp where she’ll take the microphone out of my hand and lead the camp,” Fishman said.

© 2008, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.