Upper Moreland junior Mikel Lancit teaming up with her dad for one last season of AAU

Rashim Lancit started holding local workouts for his daughter and other girls in the Upper Moreland and Cheltenham school districts back when they were in third grade.

Kids have come and gone, but the core group, which includes his youngest child Mikel, is playing travel ball for him one final time this summer ahead of their senior year of high school.

“Last one for us all,” Lancit said.

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Lancit is the head girls’ basketball coach at Academy of the New Church. He played high school basketball at Central and then Olney in the Public League before attending Temple. That’s when his path to coaching started.

During former Owls coach John Chaney’s early morning basketball practices, Lancit got a chance to observe and participate.

“My time at playing had passed, and the man was just so fascinating, like the ideas and how he thought,” Lancit said.

He’s now been coaching for 23 years, first jumping in with the Police Athletic League in Philadelphia immediately after college and eventually moving up to the eighth grade and JV teams at Germantown Academy before landing his current job in 2020-21.

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He also coached his son, Rashim, who graduated from Upper Moreland in 2022, and has coached Mikel, with the exception of two summers, since fourth grade.

“Even when I’m in the winters when I’m playing high school, he’s still always there for me,” Mikel said. “In the summers, it’s just even more. It’s really cool because he can kind of tell what I’m thinking.”

Mikel’s Golden Bears teammates, Marie Meyers and Lillian Hansen, play for Rashim’s iamBASKETBALL AAU team, which he started again last offseason.

The name stands for Intelligence+Aptitude & Mechanics and stems from those original workout groups that continue to meet around the area.

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“They kind of have stayed together as a workout group, and then everybody splintered off onto different teams,” Rashim said. “Those three always wanted to stay together.”

Mikel is a 5-foot-7 point guard and three-year varsity player at Upper Moreland. She took over as the lead guard for the Golden Bears this past season, earning All-Suburban One League Freedom Division second-team honors as a junior.

“I really like to facilitate, pass the ball, get other people shots, but I also like to attack the basket too,” Mikel said. “One of the things I really bring is defense. Defense is probably one of my favorite parts of the game. I think all the time it’s overlooked. I like being able to work on that, cover their best players, try to slow them down.”

With his Friends Schools League games typically in the early afternoon and Mikel’s Suburban One League games usually tipping off around 7 p.m., Rashim estimates he has only missed about two or three games in three years. He’s made up for those couple of games with plenty more in the offseason.

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His challenges to Mikel this spring and summer have been to shoot from mid range and try to use her body more when finishing in the lane.

Even though he’s known the core group of players for a long time, Rashim said he’s naturally a little harder coaching his daughter so he won’t be accused of playing favorites.

“I would definitely say he’s tougher on me,” Mikel said. “Even today, my shot was off, and I could always hear him, but it does push me to try and be better.”

Though neither Rashim nor his son, who currently is attending Seton Hall, continued their basketball careers at the next level, Mikel has plans of playing college hoops. She’s talked to coaches from Columbia and Iona so far.

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“Anywhere I can play basketball is perfect,” Mikel said.

There’s still a whole high school season left and one more AAU season playing for her dad. iamBASKETBALL played its first two tournaments over the last two weekends and will continue on and off throughout the spring and summer until the end of July.

“It’s been really fun,” Mikel said. “The last season hasn’t really hit me.”

This story was produced as part of a partnership between The Inquirer and City of Basketball Love, a nonprofit news organization that covers high school and college basketball in the Philadelphia area while also helping mentor the next generation of sportswriters. This collaboration will help boost coverage of the city’s vibrant amateur basketball scene, from the high school ranks up through the Big 5 and beyond.