Girls basketball: For Dawson-Boyd’s Justine Lee, team is all that matters

Justine Lee scored 46 points and had eight rebounds, five assists and nine steals in Dawson-Boyd’s 70-51 victory over Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg on Tuesday, which means she accounted for 73 percent of her team’s offensive output in the Camden Conference win.
Impressive? Yes. Unusual? No.
Lee’s outing put her at 1,726 career points. She’s averaging more than 30 points, 7.8 rebounds, 7.4 assists and 5.8 steals per game this season for the 15-2 Blackjacks. While 2,000 career points may be out of reach, she has a shot at finishing among the Tribune-area’s top-five all-time scorers.
But it isn’t just the gaudy numbers that sets the 5-foot-9 senior guard apart from her peers. Four years ago, she didn’t even know if she wanted to play basketball in high school.
“I didn’t really like basketball until ninth grade,” Lee said. “In junior high, I was in it and it was fun to be with my friends, but I didn’t realize how much I liked it until I got on a team in senior high.”
Team is an important theme running throughout Lee’s distinguished career. For all her personal achievements, what she’d like for her prep legacy is helping the Blackjacks finish about .500 in all four years she was a starter.
“The last thing she’s worried about is statistics,” said Blackjacks head coach Doug Wold, a 2001 Dawson-Boyd graduate in his second year on the bench. “She’s all about team. She wants to see her teammates do well and she’s happy for them when they have success. She’s a very good leader for us. Very team-oriented.”
Lee comes from a strong sports family. Older brother Joey, now playing football at Bethel, was a standout three-sport athlete who quarterbacked Dawson-Boyd to a state football championship and scored 1,634 career points for the Blackjacks’ boys basketball team.
The Lees have a hoop at their house and Joey and Justine would square off from time to time. Justine would give him her best shot.
“I tried, but … ,” she said with a laugh. “Sometimes in H-O-R-S-E I’d beat him but never one-on-one.”
But that competitive spirit didn’t surface in her prep game until former coach Randy Haakenson, now the head girls coach at Yellow Medicine East, challenged her to be more.
“In junior high, it’s all about having fun with your friends,” Lee said. “But in (high school), you realize you’re on a team and it was a lot more fun. Coach Haakenson pushed me more and helped me realize what I could do.”
When Wold moved into the head coaching job in 2013, he took notice of Lee’s skills immediately.
“One thing I saw right away was her ball-handling against pressure and keeping her head up, seeing cutters, seeing traps,” Wold said. “Her vision and seeing the floor. It’s a little bit of a lost art, keeping your head up and seeing what’s ahead of you, and I was very impressed with her on that right from the get-go.”
Lee also is willing to adapt and learn. The Blackjacks lost key seniors from last season and Wold asked her to take on other roles. She can play point, but she can also post-up her defender when needed. She can drive or fire away from the outside with equal success.
Lee also puts in a lot of time on her game, both during the season and in the summers in league games and on her own, Wold said.
“It’s just her understanding of the game,” he said. “When to attack, when to pull back and run some offense. She’s done a great job this year on close-in shots but also playing through contact. She’s had quite a few and-ones. She’s just got a knack for getting in there. She’s put in a lot of time. She’s earned it.”
College coaches are taking a long look at Lee, who plans to pursue a nursing degree but also would like to continue playing ball after high school. She’s made no decision on a college yet.
Lee’s final prep season is speeding by, so she hasn’t had much time to reflect on her career. But she’s made good on her legacy goal: the Blackjacks are 71-20 in her four years as a starter.
Lee’s focus is on closing out the regular season strong and gearing up for tough tests in the Section 3A playoffs, including top opponents like Minneota, Southwest Minnesota Christian, Central Minnesota Christian School and Lac qui Parle Valley.
It’s all about team.
“I don’t really have any personal goals,” Lee said. “It’s more about how far our team can go and how much we can improve.”