For Maddie Clark, playing defense has never been a question. She’s seen the results pay dividends.
“Defense won us a state championship last year,” Clark grinned. “I was like ‘we should do it again this year!'”
Once again defense was the calling card for the group dubbed “The Department of Defense.”
Clark spearheaded that effort, averaging 3.9 steals per game, generating much of her offense in transition as Wyoming East limited opponents to just 43.8 points per game.
For her efforts, Clark has been named the inaugural Lootpress Girls Basketball Defensive Player of the Year by the Lootpress sportswriters.
Defense was a part of the game that came naturally for the gifted sophomore.
Her raw athleticism allowed her to crack the rotation as a freshman last season on a state championship team and she continued to build off of that. With all-stater Abby Russell, the team’s best on-ball defender last season, missing time due to an ACL tear, there was an opening for somebody to step in and pick up the slack. Clark willingly did so and centered her offseason work around accepting that challenge.
“Not many girls are able to guard on-ball and I knew that if I could I’d be pretty good if I worked at it,” Clark said. “I definitely worked on speed going sideways and drop stepping all off-season and I think it really helped me in the long run. I knew that if my defense was good – we’re a fast team and we were going to score points off of it.”
Even when she wasn’t guarding the ball, she knew when to jump lanes and utilize her athleticism to bait opponents into making the wrong decisions. It’s why she was so effective in generating steals.
“She anticipates so well where the pass is going to go and she can do that off the ball,” East head coach Angie Boninsegna said. “She’s so good on and off it. Just her anticipation and she reads well. When we go to different defenses she would be our nucleus because she understood what we wanted to do and is so gifted.”
Clark’s dedication to defense made her a better player overall.
Forced into duty as the team’s primary point guard, her understating of the defensive side of the ball made her a more cerebral player and the game started to slow down for her. She took what she learned and applied it to both ends of the court.
“I definitely learned more about keeping the other players in front of me,” Clark said. “I wanted to push them to the side more because if you cut the floor in half, you don’t have to play as hard. Whenever you’re on the backside and they lob it into the post you’ve got to be there so you don’t get that easy layup. That’s something I really worked on.”
“She really took the reins and was one of our key players,” East head coach Angie Boninsegna said. “She’s a verbal leader and she gets out there and gets after it. We really needed her to take over the guard situation after the players we lost last season. She was key in doing that because it’s hard to replace the players we lost not just because of what they did on the court but also because of how they were as leaders. She did a great job of switching plays and getting our players into position.”
That understanding helped her evolve into a leader in a time where East needed one. With Russell on the bench and last year’s leader, Skylar Davidson, suiting up in Glenville, the Lady Warriors needed a more vocal leadership presence to emerge as they attempted to piece together a lineup of talented players who hadn’t played much in the same rotations.
With new moving parts for a team that made defense its identity, Clark stepped up to make sure this year’s squad carried the mantle, and it did. The Lady Warriors made a return run to the Class AA title game while holding Charleston Catholic and St. Marys – the first two teams they played in the state tournament – to under 38 points each.
“Defense is all about communication because they screen and you’ve got to switch,” Clark said. “If you don’t communicate that they’ve got a wide-open layup. So you’ve got to make sure you talk. Everybody’s got to talk and I knew that if I started it or I was like ‘Oh I’m on the help line’ then everybody else would join in with me.”
Clark will be honored at the Spring Lootpress Awards Banquet – along with the other winter and spring sports award winners – on Saturday, May 28 at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center. She will also receive a $500 scholarship from the Lootpress Foundation.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94