Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

It wasn’t long into her prep career before Aubrey Joens had developed a reputation as a shooter.

Connecting on 45 3-pointers as a freshman certainly had something to do with Joens earning her standing as one of the state’s top sharpshooters.

The shooter status Joens achieved early in her career proved to be accurate.

Joens will leave City High with school records for 3-pointers in a career, season and single game.

However, the Iowa State recruit spent the past several seasons working to show she was more than just a shooter.

That work that paid off in a big way the past two seasons.

Joens ranked in the top four in Class 5A in scoring for the second straight season as a senior cementing her status as one of top scorers and best all-around players in the state.  

“I really tried to improve on finishing down low and driving to the basket, just finding more ways to score,” Joens said. “Freshman and sophomore year I settled a lot for 3-pointers so being able to get to the lane more was something that I worked on a lot and really tried to improve on.”

A four-year starter with more than 1,500 points Joens was practically impossible to stop the past two seasons.

The 5-foot-10 Joens scored 20 or more points 29 times over the past two seasons while scoring 1,011 of her 1,569 career points in her final two prep seasons.

Joens ranked fourth in 5A in scoring as a senior leading a balanced City High attack that had four players average in double figures with 20.2 points per game.

For all of her accomplishments Joens has been named the 2020 Your Prep Sports area girls basketball player of the year.

“We had a lot of players that could do a lot of different things this year,” Joens said. “We were all quick so we tried to run and get easy baskets but everyone was very versatile and had a lot of aspects that were brought to the team this year.”

The middle child of five daughters in the Joens family, Aubrey followed older sisters Courtney, who played at Illinois and Ashley, an All-American at Iowa State, into stardom at City High.

Aubrey averaged 12.1 and 12.9 points per game in her first two prep season while playing Ashley her first two seasons.

“They set a really high bar so I have to go out and try to be as good as them every single day,” Aubrey Joens said. “In a way, I’m motivated by what they have done.”

Over the past two seasons Aubrey has carved out her own legacy within the City High program.

She set the single-season school record for 3-pointers with 66 as a junior.

This season Joens broke Courtney’s single-game record with nine 3-pointers in a 31-point effort on senior night against Cedar Rapids Prairie.

In her next game Joens broke the career City High 3-point record of 206 held by Mickey Hansche and finished her career with 224 3-pointers.

“There were so many memorable games,” Joens said. “We had a lot of games that were really fun, the Dowling game or senior night those were big moments for us and games that we came out on top in so those were fun to play in.”

In her first two varsity seasons Joens made a combined 99 3-pointers while attempting just 85 free throws.

As she progressed into one of the best scorers in the state Joens focused on becoming more aggressive going to the basket.

The reward came in back-to-back seasons with more than 100 trips to the foul line where Joens converted better than 80 percent of the time.

Joens credits the work she put in daily in the gym with helping to expand her offensive game.

“I don’t do a whole lot besides work and go to the gym so a lot of the time it’s like ‘now I get to go to the gym’,” Joens said. “It’s something that we all look forward to do and something that was all enjoy.”

Joens benefitted from two years of playing with older sister Ashley.

This season Aubrey took on the older sister role for the first time, helping younger sister Kelsey, a freshman starter, acclimate to the high school game.

“Playing with Ashley she told me what to do and then this year it was more like I could try to help Kelsey out,” Aubrey said. “It was fun getting a chance to play with her because I hadn’t had a chance to play with her before. Being able to play with your siblings is something that not a lot of people get to do so it was fun.”

Joens was part of a three-member senior class that included fellow Division I recruits Rose Nkumu (Marquette) and Paige Rocca (Missouri State) that helped City High to a 23-2 record and fourth consecutive trip to the 5A state tournament.

Over the past four seasons City High posted an 89-8 record with half of those losses coming at the state tournament.

“The friendships obviously are what I’ll remember most,” Joens said. “Those were my best friends. We were all really close this year so getting to play with them was super fun.”

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