Shondalyn Rogers and the Warren Central Lady Vikes basketball team will board a bus Wednesday afternoon for the hour drive to the Mississippi Coliseum for their state semifinal matchup with Harrison Central.

The trip will be the latest journey for a player who has bounced around the world her entire life.

Born in Florida into a military family, Rogers moved with frequency. Her travels included two years in Reykjavik, Iceland, where road trips were much more than an hour.

“We’d travel from Iceland to Germany, Belgium, England,” said Rogers, nicknamed Smooch by her mother after she was born premature. “It’s a great way to see the world. It’s an experience.”

After two years in Iceland, where she was part of a European championship team, Rogers returned stateside and landed in North Carolina for one season.

In August, with her father retired from the military, Rogers and her mother, who has family in Rolling Fork, moved to Vicksburg.

“I made her try out three days before I told her she made the team,” WC coach Donny Fuller said. “The first day she was there, I thought, ‘she’s got a nice shot, but it’s not going in.’

“After she relaxed, dad-gum, she could knock it down.”

Fuller had a little advanced warning from senior Cookie Johnson, who knew Rogers from her first stint in Vicksburg in junior high. The two signed with the University of New Orleans and plan to be roommates.

“Cookie told me at the beginning of school and that’s the first I had heard of her,” Fuller said. “Cookie said she could play.”

And play she has.

Rogers may be the only Division I signee in Mississippi that comes off the bench, usually the first reserve in the game.

“Coming off the bench is not as bad as it seems,” Rogers said. “It matures you to sit on the bench and cheer for your team is almost as exciting as playing. If coming off the bench gets the job done, that’s what I have to do.”

Fuller said the fact that the team had five senior starters returning from last year and wanting someone to provide a spark off the bench were the main reasons for Rogers’ not starting.

“We had good chemistry with those seniors that have been with us a long time and gone through our system. We didn’t want to mess with that,” Fuller said. “Plus, I always have liked to have a player that can come off the bench and give us a lift. She’s instant offense.”

Since scoring 20 points in the Division 6-5A opener against Vicksburg, Rogers has scored in double figures in every playoff win so far. Her long-range shooting and silky-smooth moves to the basket have drawn raves.

“She’s got a jump shot that looks like a boy’s, and you can’t defend it. She’s awesome,” Vicksburg coach Mike Coleman said after that loss.

Rogers said she prefers to shoot from outside. She credits a coach in Florida for teaching her to shoot from the outside.

“Before that, it was ugly,” she said with a chuckle.

Nothing has been ugly about her game this year. She is two wins from winning her first state championship with an American team.

Waiting is a Harrison Central team that split a two-game series with the Lady Vikes this season.

“We’ll have to bring our “A” game,” Rogers said.

Saturday is also the day her mother leaves for Orlando, Fla., in yet another move.

Rogers, though, will stay in Vicksburg to finish out high school.

“I feel at home here,” Rogers said. “It’s nice to be somewhere where you can make friends and have people to come back and see.”