Daily Journal Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year: Mitty’s McKenna Woliczko

And, like the vast majority of us, Woliczko’s March Madness bracket, heading into the Final Four, is an absolute train wreck.

“I’m definitely way busted, but it’s fine,” Woliczko said. “It’s definitely hard to make a bracket for who I want to win, compared to who I think is going to win.”

When it comes to hooping, however, there is no one quite like Woliczko. The best high school basketball player to come out of San Mateo County in the last quarter century, boy or girl, the longtime San Bruno resident has only five players in the nation from the class of 2026 that can stand toe-to-toe with her, according to ESPN. Woliczko is ranked No. 6 on the 2026 SportsCenter Next 100 and, yes, is committed to play at University of Iowa next season.

Woliczko was a slam dunk as our Daily Journal Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year selection. The 6-2 senior forward averaged a double-double this season of 20.2 points per game and 11 rebounds per game, culminating in her third West Catholic Athletic League Player of the Year award.

On the California Interscholastic Federation stage, Woliczko was both the performative and emotional leader of a Monarchs team that won their fifth straight CIF Open Division Northern California championship. And while Mitty fell short of its ultimate goal of taking home the first Open Division state championship in program history, the team’s 56-49 loss March 14, to Ontario Christian at Golden 1 Center, was doubly sad for Woliczko, as she knew it would be the last time she’d don a Mitty uniform.

“I knew going in that was going to be my last ever Mitty game,” Woliczko said. “As much as it is sad, it’s just bittersweet. I’ve done so much at Mitty. I’m happy for the opportunities it’s given me. Obviously, I’m sad to be leaving Archbishop Mitty, but I’m also looking forward to this next chapter at Iowa.”

Heading into the season, there was a chance Woliczko might have never suited up for Mitty again. She played just 10 games her junior year before suffering a catastrophic season-ending knee injury, a torn ACL that would require surgery.

As a blue chip NCAA Division I recruit, it seemed the prudent move might be for Woliczko not to rush her return to the court. The injury was, at the very least, sure to take a bite out of her senior season. Why rush to get back on the floor at all with such a bright future on the horizon?

Call it unfinished business. Call it being true to your school. The truth is, Woliczko simply loves to play the game. So far as she was concerned, the sooner she could return, the better. This was clear by the end of her junior season when she was hobbling around the sideline in a knee brace to offer emotional support during Mitty’s 2024-25 state championship appearance. It became crystal clear when she was cleared to return to the court, but not yet cleared for full basketball activities, “so I could be a passer in practice or a rebounder without getting in the way,” she said.

As emotional as was the end of her Mitty career, Woliczko’s getting accepted to Mitty in 2022 was an absolute tearjerker.

Having attended public school in San Bruno since transferring to El Crystal Elementary School in first grade, Woliczko narrowed her choices to Capuchino, Riordan and Mitty. Cap offered plenty of contentment, seeing as her mother Erica graduated from the San Bruno public school in 1997 as a prolific three-sport athlete.

“My mom was a great athlete as well,” Woliczko said. “She played all the sports and, if I went to Cap, I would have played about the same sports as she did.”

However, as an eighth-grader at Parkside Intermediate School, meeting Mitty head coach Sue Phillips was a game-changer for Woliczko. She later attended the Monarchs’ 2021-22 CIF state championship game at Golden 1 Arena, where she took a photograph with Mitty graduate and then-Stanford star Haley Jones, now set to enter her third WNBA season.

So, when she was accepted to Mitty, but initially was told she couldn’t attend because of an issue with financial aid, Woliczko didn’t take it well.

“When that came back to us, when I realized I couldn’t go because I’m getting no financial aid, I was in tears,” Woliczko said.

When financial aid was later secured, Woliczko’s tears subsided, and soon she was making the 70-mile-a-day roundtrip commute to and from Mitty. While she narrowed her focus to two sports, including two years of varsity softball — she was a career .403 hitter and an All-WCAL first-team selection her freshman season on the diamond — she focused solely on basketball after returning from the knee injury.

By that time, Woliczko had gone global in the hoops world. In two years with USA Basketball’s Junior National Team, she debuted on the gold-medal team at the 2023 FIBA U16 Americas Championship. She returned to win 2024 FIBA U17 World Cup gold. Most recently, she played in the McDonald’s All-American game Saturday at Desert Diamond Area in Arizona. This coming week, she travels to Oregon to play in the Nike Hoop Summit at the Moda Center.

“The McDonald’s All-American games, they’re definitely competitive but they’re also a lot of fun,” Woliczko said. “But just being part of this legacy ... it’s just so cool to be a part of.”

So, yeah, Woliczko is literally just your (a)typically (above) average All-American girl. And while her March Madness bracket is just as doomed as anyone else’s, she also found a unique way to circumvent that conventional norm. While on her college recruiting journey, Woliczko made a 64-team bracket of her own. That bracket became the map for charting her recruiting favorites, until it was narrowed to a “national champion” decision between South Carolina and Iowa.

“Oh gosh, I would say a lot of those schools recruited me,” Woliczko said. “And some of them didn’t, so I had them losing first round if I could ... but I actually had Iowa win in my recruiting bracket.”

So, while Mitty came up short in its quest for a CIF Open Division state championship in each of Woliczko’s four varsity seasons, she now sets out on a new quest — to turn that dream of Iowa running the table in a March Madness bracket to a reality. The Hawkeyes have yet to win a national championship.

Of course, in tuning in to this year’s NCAA tournaments — where the Iowa women’s team was upset in the second round by Virginia, and the Gentleman Hawkeyes made a surprise run to the Elite Eight before being ousted by Illinois — Woliczko would have been over the moon to see either Iowa team make history this season.

“Yes, I watched all the Iowa women’s basketball games, if I could,” Woliczko said. “Obviously that was very upsetting. ... And then the men’s team, oh my gosh, I don’t think anybody expected that. So, that was really fun to see.”

Stay tuned, Iowa fans. The best may be yet to come.