ALL-AREA GIRLS HOOPS: LSA's Maddox tabbed Player of the Year

It took a little while for Melissa Maddox to realize her high school basketball career was over after Lee-Scott’s 49-46, overtime loss to rival Glenwood in the AISA Class AAA Final Four on Feb. 19.

But when the realization hit, it hit hard.

“I was definitely frustrated, that’s probably an understatement,” Maddox said. “I didn’t really cry at first. But when I realized I was never gonna be with these girls again, I completely lost it in the locker room.

“I was giving away hugs like crazy.”

Maddox’s coach, Chad Prewett, might be experiencing a similar feeling of loss once the AISA and Opelika-Auburn News girls Player of the Year moves on to the University of Mobile next year.

The 5-foot-4 guard averaged 19.4 points, 4.6 rebounds and 5.9 steals per game for the 24-6 Warriors this season, earning the school their second straight girls Player of the Year honor after Jessie Washington won it last year.

Maddox, who was first-team All-State after averaging 15.9 points as a junior, picked up right where Washington left off.

“Our whole team went through her, really offensively and defensively,” Prewett said. “She’s just a winner. She’s not gonna do anything to hurt the team. She’s gonna give extra effort, go the extra mile each and every day.”

Prewett said he would come to the gym Sunday evening and Maddox would be there. She would show up early for practice and stay after, sometimes two and a half hours, working on shooting, dribbling, anything.

It sounds like a cliche. But it’s the only way Maddox knows.

And she’s just following the Maddox pedigree, established by her sister, Anna, at Auburn High, and upheld by another sister, Olivia, who graduated from Lee-Scott last year.

“Olivia had just an unbelievable amount of energy bottled up,” Prewett said. “It just seemed like she was the Energizer bunny. And Melissa is more controlled.

“When you look at the two Maddox girls we’ve had, the hardest thing to replace is the unbelievable intensity.”

Melissa translated that intensity into constant motion on the court.

Bringing the ball up, setting and peeling off screens, crashing into the lane and driving to the hole on offense. Setting up traps, harassing ballhandlers, diving hard after any loose ball in a 10-foot radius.

The “Energizer bunny” analogy seems apt for Olivia’s younger sister as well.

“There were times I was dying,” Maddox said. “Coach would be like, ‘What’s wrong with you,’ and I’d be like, ‘I don’t know!’

“There’s a verse I would keep in my mind every time I played, and it says, ‘Whatever you do, work at it with all your might as if working for the Lord.’ The fact that I’m on the court for Him, and He wants everything I have. So every game I went out trying to play as hard as I could.”

Maddox, like Washington, will not be playing basketball at the next level, opting instead to follow Anna and Olivia to Mobile’s soccer program.

And Maddox, like Washington, said she’ll have to satisfy the urge to keep playing through any pickup games she can find.

“I miss it so much right now,” said Maddox, a mere two weeks after wearing her Warriors uniform for the last time.

Prewett, meanwhile, will have to make do with only one Maddox next year: rising junior Abigail.

This past year was Abigail’s first playing organized basketball, and Prewett said she has miles to go to live up to her sisters.

But she’s already come a long way.

And she’s got at least one resource that knows how to thrive in Prewett’s system.

“I’ve seen so much potential in her,” Melissa said. “She thinks so much, she gets so focused on what she has to do that she can’t play.

“She never gave up. She has that grit to her.”

Spoken like someone who knows a little something about “grit.”

dmorrison@oanow.com | 737-2568