'Lets go girls!': Shining Stars Sports Academy fosters national girls basketball talent

“Again, go!” 

L.C. Bird alumna Taja Cole, the 2017 All-Metro girls basketball player of the year, blows her whistle at her "shining stars." Tucked away at 1201 Commerce St. in Petersburg, Shining Stars Sports Academy hosts an array of talent, drawing not only from the Richmond area but statewide. 

Cole, the girls basketball coach and daughter of president/athletic director Star Wills, doesn't bat an eye as she sends five players around the gym as the next group circles around her. 

In this drill, her team runs a tight circle around Cole. Then, she throws a basketball against the backboard, calls out a play, and her now-dizzy group must execute that play quickly and score. If not, it’s laps.

At Shining Stars, or S3, it doesn’t matter how many laps Cole will tell her girls run. In the long run, no pun intended, the team knows she and S3 know how to produce NCAA-ready talent. So, if they’re told to run, they run.

“Lets go girls!," Cole yells. 

Founding S3

Cole said it was like any other morning, waking up and coming downstairs.  

Instead though, she looked at her mom, Star, and dad, Avery Wills. The two have always had basketball in their veins and played growing up, made names for themselves in the Richmond community. Star is the CEO of Cap City Ballerz, an AAU team. At Shining Stars, Avery, or "Coach E," coaches the boys team, and Star handles the administrative side of things. 

When it comes to basketball, Cole’s the same way. After graduating from L.C. Bird, she played at Louisville, Georgia and Virginia Tech, then Athletes Unlimited and the WNBA. 

Cole has seven siblings: Travis, Theo, Laquon, Theonya, AJ, Javonn and Jacobie. AJ Wills, a former Skyhawks standout, plays at Wyoming now. 

All right, back to the breakfast table. 

“So my mom, my dad, woke up one day and said, ‘We want to start our academy. We want to start a school.’” Cole said with a laugh. “And I was like, 'Okay, okay. I'll help with the girls. You know, being that I've been there and done that as a collegiate athlete, I'll help them get to the next level.'"

For Star Wills, it wasn’t that simple but more gradual. As owners of Cap City, they have rented out different spaces, gyms and facilities for about 18 years, primarily for AAU use. 

“We always wanted our own home,” Wills said. “Eventually, our realtor found this place, and it was outside of the area that we're familiar with, but it made sense, because it had the space and everything that we needed.”

Originally, it was supposed to just be for AAU practices, games and tournaments.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Wills' athletes, just like that, lost access to schools, gyms and everything else. So, she opened her gym to both athletics and academics, providing her athletes a safe space to do schoolwork along with basketball. 

“After COVID, we saw an increase in the student's academics, as well as their development,” Wills said. “We had a lot of parents saying, 'Hey, I'd like my kid to actually continue this.' That was kind of how the school side of things (started), and that's when we became independent.”

Since 2020, S3 has grown every year. While basketball is a major focus, Wills made sure that the academics are just as important — she said S3 is NCAA accredited, meaning the classes the students take will transfer right over to college. 

“The kids know that if they're not academically on track and not doing what they're supposed to do, they can't touch the court,” Wills said. “So we are very strict about that. We pride ourselves (that) all of the students that have graduated from here have been able to enroll in college.”

How has the school grown though? Currently, S3 has 25 kids, almost all with Division I-caliber basketball talent. Cole said most are housed in the Chesterfield area but come from all different parts of the state.

“We have some kids that we house because they live too far away,” Cole said. “Most of the girls here are from Richmond, it’s kind of mixed. We got kids from Portsmouth, Dinwiddie and the Chester area.”

Wills said right now, the school's notoriety has mostly grown via word of mouth and social media. In the future, the school hopes to have a bigger marketing budget, but that’s not a priority at the moment. 

Cole likes the size S3 is at. Since it's such a small number of student-athletes, the school can focus on everyone individually. 

“We don’t want to grow extremely quick,” Wills said. “We want to take our time, because we're investing in doing this the right way. So if you grow extremely quick, and you have 100 kids in here, it's hard to manage it.”

Who is Taja Cole? 

Cole didn’t just appear at S3. Yes, her parents run the school but for her, it’s a chance not only to coach but to have an impact on kids' lives. 

S3 has students ranging from middle school to a year postgrad of high school. Still, Cole is only 27 so she knows from recent experience what it takes to play at the college level. 

She connects with the kids. That’s something S3 doesn’t take for granted.

“I think they respect it because they know I’ve played at the highest level,” Cole said. “That’s where they want to go. So they listen.”

At Virginia Tech, Cole is the single-season assists leader and led the SEC in assists two years in a row while playing at Georgia. In high school, she was a McDonald's All-American and was both the Virginia and Gatorade player of the year her senior season.

Cole isn’t done playing yet. Right now, she’s in Athletes Unlimited (AU), a professional basketball league that is player-centric. On Feb. 5, she became the 11th player in the organization's history to hit 10,000 career points. She said from there, she's hopeful a new WNBA deal comes after.  

She coaches S3 for the majority of the season, then, when an opportunity such as AU presents itself, plays herself. Keeping active with basketball and staying in the game is another reason Wills thinks the team listens to her — they see her apply what she's teaching to herself. 

"She's not that far removed from their shoes," Wills said. "She can tell them that they're going to have to be organized, that they're going to have to manage their schedule and their time. 

"She's picked up a lot from playing on the highest level, and I think it's great having her because it's someone they can relate too."

Because she's recently removed from the college schedule too, she knows what an NCAA routine looks like and how practices are run — Cole runs her practices just like an NCAA practice, meaning no slacking and as much discipline on the court as you can imagine. 

"She's preparing (them) for where they're going to work," Wills said. "The coaches are not going to allow them to continue to do the wrong thing. You got to pay attention, if not, you learn from the sideline."

S3 day-to-day

One of S3’s goals is to operate like an NCAA program, that way when its graduates go on to college, the experience and expectations are similar. 

A current example of that is Sira Thienou, a freshman at Ole Miss. Thienou is averaging about 12 points and 25 minutes. Wills said Thienou entered college prepared, one of S3's primary goals.

This year, junior Syvannah Dawson, a second-team All-Metro selection from Thomas Dale, came into S3 during the season. She said she wanted a place to take her game to the next level. 

"The coaches are great," Dawson said. "I can build my own pace ... development, academics are good."

Dawson was a critical piece in Dale's playoff run last season. She earned first-team all-state honors and shot 40% from 3-point range (34 for 85) during the regular season for the Knights.

Dawson said she wanted to get to the next step in her career, and S3 was the place to do that. She holds an offer from VCU, among other D-I programs.  

Also on the team is senior Harissoum Coulibaly, a University of Georgia recruit. Senior Jadah White, who plays for Boo Williams AAU, also has been a key contributor this season. Both her and Coulibaly were selected for the 804 all-star game. 

"I needed to be in an environment where I'm getting better and I'm developing," Dawson said. "Getting stronger, getting help. (Cole's) helped me develop." 

S3’s campus looks a bit like a warehouse from the outside. Inside though, the first level consists of two massive basketball courts, stands and even a section on the baseline reserved just for college scouts. Then, if you go to the upstairs level, there are classrooms. 

There are normal core academic classes such as math, English, science, history. Also, Cole teaches a leadership class, using her degree from Virginia Tech. 

“We teach leadership, teach them really to be a good person, good character,” Cole said. “We do life skills, we teach them how to (use) money … We teach things like that. 

In between classes, the basketball-playing students work out, hit the court and do player development, very similar to how a college program is run. Two more classes later, they are in weightlifting and individual training. 

Cole said there are only a few students who don’t play basketball, and they are there learning the business side of sports. They learn administration aspects, such as booking hotels and merchandise sales. They make the team’s practice jerseys, among other things. 

“We want to keep it about sports,” Wills said, “but at the same time, if you don’t play a sport and you’re interested in the academy, then we’re definitely open.”

This season, S3 practiced and went to school during the week and on weekends, traveled out of state to compete in national tournaments as an independent team.

They’ve traveled to New York, Florida and North Carolina, among other states. They’ve also played top programs such as IMG Academy, where former Thomas Dale standout and Auburn recruit Nylah Wilson is playing. 

S3 is independent and does not compete in the VISAA or VHSL. Cole said it wants to stay that way because it allows them to keep their schedule. Basketball is S3's only sport right now, but Cole is hopeful in the coming years that it can expand. 

“We have the freedom to play against any private school, public school that will play us,” Cole said. “I think that’s best for our kids. It’s best for the experience."

So yes, this small school in Petersburg is still growing. There are no junior varsity teams, just varsity, but Wills hopes that could expand in the coming years. Between the leadership of Wills and Cole, and their guidance and cultivation, S3 has emerged as a hot spot for girls basketball talent.

It might just be worth running those laps. 

"When I say, 'Hey, these kids are good, believe me,' (recruiters) come out," Cole said. "That just comes from how good they are as far as development."