LaGrange's Kost to compete for national Hoop Shoot title

Juliana Kost will compete for a national championship.

Kost, a sixth-grader at St. Mary's School in Wappingers Falls, won the girls 10-11-year-old division Northeast regional championship of the Elks Hoop Shoot competition on Saturday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She will be one of 12 regional winners to compete in the finals on April 18 in Springfield, Massachusetts.

After tying for first place by making 21 of 25 shots in the regional, she made 9 of 10 in a tiebreaker to win. Kost, an 11-year-old LaGrange resident, won the Elks Lodge 275 title in January before advancing to win the district and state titles.

The Elks competition, open to kids ages 8 to 13, includes three age divisions for boys and three for girls. All six national champions get their names inscribed in a display at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Queensbury's Joseph Girard III is the last New York resident to win a state title, in the boys 10-11 division in 2012. Poughkeepsie's T.J. Meyerson won the boys 12-13 division in 2003. No girl from New York has won a title since Alyson Johnson, of Malone, won the 10-11 division in 2002.