Jillian Halfhill

Canfield's Jillian Halfhill

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If Canfield junior Jillian Halfhill sometimes seem good enough to play on a boys team, maybe it’s because she did.

“I didn’t like playing with girls,” said Halfhill, who played on boys basketball teams until seventh grade. “I loved playing with boys. They’re so much more aggressive.

“At the beginning, they’d say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to guard the girl.’ But at the end, they always had to guard me.’

Those games — combined with competing against her older sister’s friends — helped her become tough enough to start varsity as a freshman after two years of being on teams that “terrorized” opponents in middle school.

“When I got to high school, I was like, ‘Wow, everyone’s a lot older than me; this is gonna be tough,’ ” Halfhill said. “But I got used to it.”

After helping the Cardinals advance to the regional finals in 2008 as a pass-first point guard, Halfhill was forced to take more of a leadership role this season. She also needed to score more.

“I used to pass everything,” she said. “That was my thing.”

It was a rocky transition at times — Halfhill’s superior court sense worked well when she was passing to her sister Bryanne or Pitt recruit Kate Popovec but it sometimes resulted in turnovers early in this season — but Halfhill eventually embraced the role.

She helped the Cardinals win their second straight district crown and put on a dazzling 25-point display in a regional semifinal loss to Canton South.

“Stepping up into the role was huge,” she said. “When I finally did it, it helped the whole team out.”

Halfhill quit soccer and softball after her freshman year to focus on basketball — she still regrets not being part of Canfield’s state softball title last spring — and verbally committed to Bowling Green this winter. She’s considering either accounting (she loves math) or physical therapy as a major.

In the meantime, she’s looking forward to reaching 1,000 career points — she’s 14 shy — and, hopefully, leading the Cardinals to the state tournament next year.

“Jill’s a special player and she absolutely loves the game,” Canfield coach Pat Pavlansky said. “She works very hard at it and she’ll be the first to tell you she still has flaws in her game.”