The phone camera rolls. Kelsey Mitchell and Jillian Dunston are in the imagined setting of a mall. They’re complaining about being there for too long, waiting for Siera Thompson, who is shopping.
On the court, Mitchell and Dunston are the Michigan women’s basketball team’s top forwards and scrappy rebounders. But this is Instagram, and this is a different side of the two athletes.
Thompson returns through a door in a sweatsuit outfit, asking the other two if they like it. The video is supposed to include the Webster Dictionary word of the day. Today’s word is fitness.
Mitchell brings in the punchline, “Now she know she don’t FITNESS jacket.”
For Michigan women’s basketball fans, it seems like the senior forward Mitchell has just started to come out of her shell. After a career mired with injuries and a slow start to her senior campaign, Mitchell has come alive in the past two games.
When the team needed strength and finesse in the paint down by 17 against Iowa on Jan. 7, Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico turned to Mitchell. In her fourth career start, Mitchell led an improbable comeback win with 15 points and 11 rebounds. She rode the momentum to another stellar performance against Minnesota three days later, nearly earning her second straight double-double with 13 points and nine rebounds.
Mitchell is soft-spoken both on and off the court. But it depends who she is talking to and the occasion. To her teammates, she’s always been out of her shell. She is described by Barnes Arico as a monster on the court but overall even-keeled. Her emotion was in full force when she let out a yell after blocking a shot late in the game against Iowa. But for the most part, Mitchell stays quiet and takes care of business.
Scouting reports will say to watch her signature slick spin move toward the baseline, but most people outside Mitchell’s team, friends and family would know that she has a knack for cracking jokes.
“She is hysterical,” Barnes Arico said. “She is the funniest person I may have met in my entire life, and you wouldn’t know that probably talking to the media. But if you got her outside of media, if you ever check out Webster’s Word of the Day on Instagram, you’ll die (laughing).”
Mitchell, the sophomore forward Dunston and the junior guard Thompson have made multiple 15-second comedy sketches, using whatever the word of the day is in a witty way during the skit. The puns are inventive and reveal the comedic affinity all three possess.
In one skit, Mitchell and Thompson are sitting down, acting like it’s getting late and it’s time for one of them to go home. Mitchell asks to spend the night. Thompson says, “Now you know my granny be trippin’. She don’t like last-minute stuff.”
Mitchell responds: “Man, ALASKA. Granny Pearl!”
Dunston appears from behind a door frame, glasses half way down her nose, yelling with a drawl, “Yes?!”
In this twisting of words, Alaska is said instead of “I’ll ask her.”
There’s more to Kelsey Mitchell than just a focused basketball player. It may have taken a while for Michigan fans to discover, but with her videos as proof, the wait was worth it. Now, if she can stay in the spotlight, fans will continue to uncover the multiple features that make up her personality.