Virginia's Kymora Johnson was once DQ'd from a national championship because she was on a boys team

Kymora Johnson has been shining on the biggest basketball stages for a long time.

Long before she led 10-seed Virginia to a historic upset of 2-seed Iowa on Monday in the NCAA Tournament, she was already making noise at a national level.

When Johnson was 10, she played for the Charlottesville Cavaliers, an AAU program that had reached a national championship tournament.

The team was disqualified from the national tourney because Johnson was on the team.

The reason? Johnson was a girl playing on a boys team.

Yahoo wrote a story about this more than a decade ago, because the elimination of the team went viral. Johnson's team wore all-pink uniforms in protest despite not actually being allowed to play.

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The Yahoo story also writes that Johnson offered to sit out the tournament so the rest of her team to play, but they stood in solidarity with her.

I was just googling Kymora Johnson and found this article from 2015 about her team being disqualified from the national championship final game because someone complained that there was a girl playing on a boys team?? 😭 The pics are killing me what a BALLER pic.twitter.com/A6LxZMs9BT

It's quite the basketball origin story for Johnson, who is a walking bucket who finished second in the ACC in scoring in the 2025-26 season.

She's got the awesome factor that she stayed home, a kid from Charlottesville now in her third season starring for her hometown school.

Johnson put in 15.3 points per game as a freshman, then 17.9 as a sophomore, and she's up to 19.5 points per game this season.

She's also averaging 4.5 rebounds, 5.8 assists and 2.1 steals per game while shooting 36% from 3-point range.

Against Iowa, Johnson had 28 points while playing all 50 minutes of an epic double-overtime win to advance to the Sweet 16.

She's built for this moment, and Kymora Johnson isn't letting it pass her by.

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