Performance Player of the Week: Pine View’s Leiani Tonga | Sponsored by Ken Garff St. George Ford

CONTRIBUTED CONTENT — For Pine View High School girls basketball star Leiani Tonga, resilience and constancy are keys to her success.

They are the qualities she most admires in the athletes she looks up to – athletes like University of Utah football running back Zack Moss.

“He’s a great player. He’s very resilient when it comes to what happens to him, and he just works really hard,” said Tonga, who has been a two-sport athlete for the entirety of her high school years.

Learn more about the “Performance Player of the Week” in the media player at the top of this report.

Those attributes, along with lots of heart, are also the qualities she admires in her teammates, both past and present.

“We build off of each other’s strength and weaknesses,” she said. “It’s really fun to play together.”

Tonga has played both volleyball and basketball throughout high school and said she is most proud of her strong work ethic and ability to stick with her sports throughout her young athletic career.

Tonga is a team captain and a leader among her teammates, a role that she feels means holding the whole team accountable for their behavior both on and off the court.

Off the courts, Tonga is the vice president of Pine View High School’s multicultural club, a school organization dedicated to spreading awareness of other people’s cultures.

“We try and incorporate all kinds of cultures from everywhere,” she said.

Tonga said she also hopes to learn more about her own culture.

To that end, Tonga will take her senior trip to the island nation of Tonga as part of a humanitarian mission.

If she could offer any sort of advice to young basketball players, Tonga said that she would tell them to work hard for their position and remember that it is a team sport.

Performance Player of the Week: Leiani Tonga | Brought to you by Ken Garff St. George Ford

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