The jump from junior varsity basketball to varsity basketball is significant, as this week’s Duke Automotive-Suffolk News-Herald Player of the Week will attest.

King’s Fork High School freshman shooting guard Neecole Brown has just made that jump, and she noted some key things she has needed to adjust to at the varsity level.

“The pace is much faster,” she said, adding that the girls are bigger and more skilled. “It’s kind of a culture shock, but at the same time, I think I was ready for it.”

She demonstrated that readiness profoundly in the first two games of the season, which helped her earn her Player of the Week status.

On a team with established stars, she led the Lady Bulldogs with 17 points in her varsity debut, aiding them in a 70-41 road win over Hickory High School. Three days later on Dec. 4, she again led King’s Fork with 17 points as it defeated host Indian River High School 68-35.

“That’s huge for a freshman to come in and put up numbers of that magnitude,” Lady Bulldogs coach Maurice Fofana said. “I wouldn’t say I expected it this quick, but I expected it (eventually). She can really shoot.”

Brown was certainly surprised by how her first two varsity games went.

“It wasn’t at all as I expected,” she said. “Actually, I thought I was going to be really nervous.”

But she added that as soon as she got into the game, her confidence grew, and “I just knew that I could do it.”

Brown pointed to some reasons that account for why she did so well.

“It started off before the season actually started, being in the gym,” she said, noting that her teammates pushed her and encouraged her during practice. “They just motivated me to just go out there and perform my best.”

She said Fofana “improved my confidence and helped me believe in myself.”

Rodney and Angela Brown were impressed with what their daughter did, as her father noted she has not been known in the past as a scorer.

“First of all, I think we were very proud of her, as well as her teammates,” he said. With the Lady Bulldogs being a well-established team, “they had a lot of chemistry, and so they just welcomed her.”

“I think Coach Fofana has done an amazing job with the entire team,” he added.

Neecole Brown also traces her reasons for having such a good start further back in history.

She got her initiation to basketball when she was about 3 years old, “just picking up a basketball, basically, and then my parents decided I had so much energy running around the house, they decided that that was the sport for me right there,” she said.

Since then, she has played for different teams including the Suffolk Lady Storm, and she has also played Amateur Athletic Union basketball.

“For most of my life, I’ve been playing with girls that are older than me,” she said, adding this was frequently true playing AAU ball.

Rather than be daunted by a one or two year age difference, she said, “I just had to suck it up and start playing.”