By Austin Siegel

It starts with the eyes.

Kat Righeimer is sitting in her Northwestern dorm room on a frigid January evening, the beginning of the Southern California native’s first snowstorm as a college student swirling outside her window, explaining everything Kobe Bryant taught her about pump fakes.

“When a lot of coaches teach pump fakes to kids, they teach you to push the ball up,” Righeimer explains, raising an imaginary basketball in an exaggerated shooting motion. “But everyone knows that’s not how you shoot a shot, so you don’t need to move the ball. I remember Coach Bryant would teach us to lower the ball and just look up. Use your eyes.”

He’s never Kobe to Righeimer. Always Coach Bryant.

And it’s lessons like these that make you realize how much Righeimer, a first-year guard at Northwestern, learned about basketball from one of the greatest players in NBA history.

She can break down everything from Bryant’s philosophy on one-on-one situations – “all fast motion is easy to guard, so go slow, fast, slow, fast” – to the fundamentals.

“Coach Bryant would always tell us, I know you guys are only in 7th and 8th grade, but there are people in college that can’t do this stuff,” Righeimer said. “Every time I step on the court, I think of the little things he would teach us.”

Righeimer was one of eleven teenage girls who played on Bryant’s Los Angeles-based AAU basketball team, alongside his daughter Gianna, at the Mamba Sports Academy.

On January 26, 2020, a helicopter crash killed Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant, two of her teammates on the Mambas (Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester), three parents (John and Keri Altobelli and Sarah Chester) assistant coach Christina Mauser and pilot Ara Zobayan.

The story made headlines around the world and more than 20,000 mourners attended a memorial service at Staples Center, where Bryant spent his entire career with the Lakers. It’s always going to be part of Righeimer’s story too

But when she tells this story, Righeimer isn’t focused on the ending.

She’s still working on the plan.

“Coach Bryant called it the six-year-plan, because he would have us until we left for college,” Righeimer explains. “We were going to play seventh and eighth grade together and then all go to the same high school for four years. But it was about much more than that.”

If they worked hard, Bryant reasoned, there was no reason to stop after six years. He talked about college basketball. Maybe even the WNBA.

“I have a year-by-year plan for them,” Bryant told SLAM Magazine in a 2019 cover story about the Mamba Sports Academy. “You should have seen us six months ago. The girls are making incredible progress. Just wait until you see us in six years.”

For Righeimer, just wait until you see us in six years would arrive on January 23, as Northwestern welcomed Illinois to Welsh-Ryan Arena in the middle of Big Ten play.

Before the game, Righeimer’s freshman season had amounted to four minutes of action. Her high school coach, Kerwin Walters, was following her progress from back home in Los Angeles.

He coached Righeimer at Sage Hill School in Newport Beach, the high school where Bryant had always planned to send his players, the perfect place to write the next chapter of the plan. Three other Mambas made the leap from Sage Hill to college basketball this year.

“It’s been hard watching them from afar without having a voice in what happens to them,” Walters said. “But I’m so proud of them. They’re grinders. They’re not going to quit.”

Righeimer began her freshman year at Sage Hill in 2020, just a few months after the accident. On top of the challenges facing every teenager, Righeimer and her teammates had to chart their return to playing basketball again in the aftermath of a shared tragedy.

“She was still Kat,” Walters said. “Still feisty. She actually broke her arm at one point and still came to practice every single day to make sure she didn’t miss anything. She’s one of the most insistent human beings and basketball players that you’ll ever find.”

Righeimer was starting at Sage Hill by her sophomore year. Alongside five other former Mambas on the roster, she helped Sage Hill bring home the first state title in school history.

Plenty of media attention would follow. Bryant’s former players winning a championship together? It was a story made for Hollywood, right up the road in Orange County.

The Washington Post profiled Righeimer and her Sage Hill teammates in 2023, while an ESPN short film, The Six-Year Plan, would follow in 2024. Talking about the Mambas isn’t always easy. But neither was returning to her favorite sport.

“It didn’t feel real to me at first. I was kind of in denial,” Righeimer said. “But l loved basketball so much that it became a way to honor Gigi, Alyssa, Payton, Coach Christina and Coach Bryant, and to continue their legacy through this sport we all played together.”

Northwestern’s game against Illinois in January came just three days before the fifth anniversary of the accident. And it began with Righeimer on the bench.

She had always spent that day with her former teammates. They would gather at the beach and cast flowers into the Pacific Ocean, one for each Mamba they lost on January 26, 2020. It was therapeutic, a way to find comfort in the only other people who could relate to their loss.

“I remember wondering where we were all going to be this time next year,” Righeimer said, as their college basketball careers scattered the former Mambas across the country.

With three minutes left in the third quarter and the Illinois game out of reach, Northwestern head coach Joe McKeown called Righeimer’s number. That number, of course, was 8.

“I wore 11 my whole life and then 21 my last year of [club] basketball because Gigi, Alyssa and Payton’s numbers were 5, 2 and 14, which equals 21,” she said. “When I got to college and those numbers weren’t available, I knew there were a couple different directions I could go…But No. 8 would be a way to have a piece of Coach Bryant with me on the court.”

McKeown would explain later that he put Righeimer into the game against Illinois that night for her defense. But early in the fourth quarter, she calmly finished a 3-on-2 fast break for the first basket of her college career. And Righeimer was just getting started.

A few possessions later, she stole the ball off a missed free throw and – while falling to the ground – dished a pass to Kyla Jones for a wide-open layup.

Analyst Shimmy Miller, calling the game that night for Big Ten Network, described that play and – whether she realized it or not – so much more about Kat Righeimer.

“Regardless of the score,” Miller said on BTN. “She’s never going to give up.”

As the final minutes of the game ticked away, Righeimer had one more moment of magic up her sleeve.

She fought for a rebound off a missed shot, passed the ball out to Xamiya Walton, called for it back and confidently splashed the first three-pointer of her college career. Righeimer finished with 7 points on 3-3 shooting, 4 rebounds and 2 assists in 13 minutes of action off the bench.

Hundreds of miles away in Los Angeles, her high school coach saw it coming.

“Kat’s confidence is always my favorite part of watching her play. She lives for the big moments,” Walters said. “I know once she gets on the floor, it’s going to be hard for anyone to get her off.”

A few days later, McKeown asked Righeimer to hang back a minute after practice, as the rest of the team filed into the locker room.

There was some laughter among her teammates and a few members of the coaching staff had their phone cameras out. Everyone but Righeimer knew what was coming.

“I don’t know what’s so dang funny,” McKeown quipped to his team that day. “But we need to get this right. Because I’m going to give Kat her scholarship.”

The Wildcats went crazy as they mobbed Righeimer. Caileigh Walsh and Grace Sullivan reached for bottles to spray her with water. Every few seconds, you could make out Righeimer’s face as her teammates crowded around her. She was smiling from ear to ear.

And the plan, Coach Bryant’s plan, was right on schedule.

“This is what I want to do. This is what I’m passionate about,” Righeimer said. “And to have somebody like Kobe Bryant teach me all the finest, smallest details about basketball, I still think about that opportunity every single day.”