WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — To say Jamestown High School girls basketball guard Maddie Leach likes to spend time in the gym is probably an understatement.
“She’s the first kid here and the last kid to leave,” said Coach Shaquanda Williams. “I have to turn the lights off on her. I’m like, ‘You can’t sleep here, Maddie!’”
It’s like saying Devin Booker is “pretty good,” at playing basketball.
“I mean, Devin Booker is just amazing. He’s had like three 40-point games in a row,” Leach told me, describing players she models her game after.
But all joking aside, the impact Leach has had on the Eagles program is no joke.
“The year before she got here, we were 1-18,” recalled Williams.
In Leach's freshman year, that record was 19-6 and now in her sophomore year, the Eagles are 16-0.
“She immediately changed the game for us. We were missing a point guard and here she comes in the ninth grade, and it was a lot coming back from a 1-18 season to now having this freshman point guard playing at the varsity level,” Williams said. “I can’t imagine how much pressure she was under, but she handled it together really well. I knew right when I saw her that it was going to be a different story.”
The record is even more impressive when you consider how small their roster is.
“We only have eight players on varsity,” said Leach. “But we all glue really well together, and everyone plays a really important role. We have really good team chemistry and I just love those girls over there."
Leach has begun to write a new chapter for the Eagles program, but it’s not without taking some notes from her parents.
“My parents really got me into it because my mom played basketball at William & Mary and with the recruiting process, she’s been a big help,” said Leach. “With her experience in college, she knows what it takes in terms of the sacrifices that have to be made.”
But the ties to the Tribe don’t end there. Her dad played football at William & Mary, where her parents met, before playing 16 years in the NFL for the Titans, Broncos, and Cardinals.
Leach has already received an offer from the Tribe as well as a plethora of many other Division 1 programs. Her older brother, Ryan, is a senior at Jamestown and will play golf at West Virginia next year. Safe to say whether the Masters, NBA Finals, or the Super Bowl, sports are always on in the Leach household, and Maddie agrees.
“Even if it's just Ryan and I doing homework or whatever, yeah we pretty much always have sports on the TV at home.”
