MENDOTA – Amellia Bromenschenkel is moving on with the next stage of her basketball career. With Mendota High School suspending its basketball season due to the ongoing pandemic and the uncertainty of whether the 2020-21 season will ever be played, Bromenschenkel has made the difficult decision to graduate early and enter college at the end of the semester in December.

The lucky recipient of Bromenschenkel’s talents is Purdue University-Fort Wayne in Indiana. Bromenschenkel will enroll at PFW in December and be eligible to play for the Mastodons sometime during the upcoming season. PFW is a Division I school and a member of the Horizon League. Other schools in the Horizon include Cleveland State, Detroit Mercy, Green Bay, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Northern Kentucky, Oakland, Robert Morris, Illinois-Chicago, Wright State and Youngstown State.

“The PFW coaches asked me to enroll and join the team immediately after this semester ends, so I will be eligible to play starting around Christmas,” Bromenschenkel said. “The really good news is I have an extra year of eligibility because of COVID-19 NCAA rules, so now I get to play 4 ½ years.

“I hate having to forego my senior season at Mendota, but there is a possibility we would not have a season anyway.”

PFW has had Bromenschenkel on its radar for several years. The three-year starter at MHS was playing AAU summer basketball when she caught the eye of the Mastodon coaches. They invited her to one of their basketball camps and started to create a bond with Bromenschenkel.

“When I toured the campus, I could see myself fitting in there,” said Bromenschenkel. “I really liked the atmosphere and the coaches.

“Along with that, the school has a great engineering program, which is what I was looking for in a school. I ended up choosing PFW over other schools because I can get a great Purdue engineering degree, play Division I basketball, and be close enough so that my friends and family can come watch me play.”

PFW, which is coming off a difficult season in which it was 5-24 overall and 1-15 in the Horizon, is a young team with only two seniors and two juniors on the 12-player roster. The Mastodons have six incoming freshmen not including Bromenschenkel, so there should be plenty of opportunity for playing time.

“The coaches are looking for me to be a scorer,” stated Bromenschenkel. “They also want me to break down a defense, get to the hoop and dish to the posts.”

Bromenschenkel considered several other schools before making her choice to attend PFW. Among them were the University of Pennsylvania in the Ivy League, the Colorado School of Mines, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and a few other top engineering schools. Her sisters, Abby and Ally, had stellar basketball careers at Rose-Hulman.

Bromenschenkel leaves MHS in second place on the all-time scoring list with 1,752 points, behind only Jaci Bice (Class of 1999) with 2,111 points.