Upper Dublin junior Tamia Clark surpassed the 1000-point milestone in her team’s win over Notre Dame. (Photos provided courtesy of Upper Dublin basketball)
Thank goodness for Google.
That’s undoubtedly the sentiment of Upper Dublin coach Morgan Funsten. Or at least it should be. It turns out Tamia Clark – who just surpassed the 1,000-point milestone in last Sunday’s win over Notre Dame – credits a Google search for leading her to try basketball. Yes, a Google search!
“When I was little, I ran track, and I was in the Junior Olympics and everything like that, so I definitely was not thinking about basketball,” Clark said. “I wanted to try something different, and I was literally searching on Google sports to play and stuff like that, and I came across basketball.
“My dad likes to watch sports, so basketball was on TV. I thought basketball would kind of be – I don’t want to say the easiest, but you can work on it by yourself. You buy yourself a pair of basketball shoes, and there’s always a basketball laying around. There are courts everywhere, so it was something I could get good at.”
“I was in fifth grade at the time. I started playing in little travel leagues in my district. I started taking it seriously around seventh grade. I really started working on it and realizing – if I keep practicing, I have potential to go somewhere with this maybe.”
And go somewhere Clark has.
She stepped into the starting lineup as a freshman at Upper Dublin, and just over two years later – before the calendar flipped to 2026, Clark reached the 1,000-point milestone when she turned a Megan Ngo pass in traffic into a nifty layup.
“Megan puts the ball right where you need it,” Clark said. “But also, where the defenders can’t get it.”
“It was kind of like a backdoor lob play that Megan Ngo threw her,” Funsten said. “It was a tough catch and finish, but she can make any finish look easy with her athleticism and her balance and the way she gathers and gets to the basket. It was honestly a finish she’s been doing for three years.”
Clark entered Sunday’s game against defending Inter-Ac champion Notre Dame needing 13 points to reach the milestone, but that was not her priority.
“We have a tough schedule this year, and this was one of the tough games that we’re playing, so I didn’t want to go out there and not play my game and mess up for my team,” Clark said. “I was just trying to stay as calm as possible and play my game – let it come to me and whatever happens, happens.”
Clark has always been an elite scorer, but according to her coach, she’s become much more than that.
“What she has not been doing for three years is defending the way she is now,” Funsten said. “She grows as a player every day, and she’s really turned into a defensive stopper.
“She guarded (Notre Dame’s) Riley Davis and held her to eight after playing a guard from Sidwell Friends, Princeton recruit Ava Yoon. We see it in practice every day. She is becoming an intimidating defender who can really guard anybody at this point.”
From the outset, Funsten had an idea Clark would be something special.
“When we saw her in seventh grade, her ability to put the ball in the basket – it’s not a skill a lot of people have, and she just did it with such ease,” the UD coach said. “I strongly believe the reason she’s so good at finishing is she has great balance, and she’s so quick up.
“Not a lot of people can jump, but she can jump, but also just how quick she can jump, how quickly she rises. She jumps center for us, and she wins a lot of tips even though she’s outsized by seven or eight inches. She’s so quick at everything she does, and she has great balance, and she just has that skill of putting the ball in the basket. She’s always had that. It’s just really fun to watch her expand the way she puts the ball in the basket.”
Clark entered her junior season 129 points shy of 1,000.
“Coming into Upper Dublin, it was definitely on my mind as something I could possibly get,” Clark said of the milestone. “But I wasn’t thinking about it too much because I just want to play good games, and there’s still more growth for me to do.”
Of more importance to Clark is UD’s season, which has the potential to be a memorable one. The Cards were 8-1 in December.
“For the most part, we have everybody back from last year, and we’re really close,” Clark said. “Everybody has the same goals, and we’re all trying to push each other to those goals and holding everyone accountable for their actions.”
While Clark is far more concerned about team goals than personal milestones, there’s no denying her performances on the court are turning heads.
“It’s impressive,’ the UD coach said. “Until the Sidwell game, she was shooting 77 percent from the field this year. In the two games against very high-level competition (Sidwell and Notre Dame), she was beyond impressive on both ends of the floor, and her defense is what I’m most proud of as her coach.
“We need her to score for us to be successful, but she’s not our only option. Sometimes you see a girl who needs to carry the load for her team shoot 30 shots in a game. That’s not Tamia. Tamia’s field goal percentage for her career is over 50 percent. She’s very efficient in what she does. For her to accomplish this goal this early in her career, the sky’s the limit for her.”
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