Milestone basketball for North hoops star

If you’ve attended a Valley Stream North High School girls’ basketball game in the past five years, chances are you’ve noticed Madeline Nelson. She’s the one in the green-trimmed uniform most often putting the ball in the hoop.

The senior guard is the team’s leading scorer. She was named to the All-County team as a junior, and on Jan. 21, in a game against Clarke High School, Nelson scored her 1,000th career point.

Four years after Nelson joined the varsity basketball team as an eighth-grader, she prides herself, she says, in setting a good example for the younger girls on the team — much like the older players did for her. “As an eighth-grader, it was really intimidating,” Nelson recalled. “I was the smallest on the court, I was the youngest, but I had a lot of good teammates who were good role models to me, and they definitely influenced me to be the leader that I try to be today.”

She added, “I definitely wanted to be a leader on the team, on and off the court.”

Geoff O’Connell, the coach of the Lady Spartans, has noticed Nelson’s willingness to take her younger teammates under her wing. “Stats-wise, yes, she is the leading scorer,” O’Connell said, “but even off the court, she makes sure the equipment is out, she’s on top of the younger girls and she’s a great role model for the younger girls. So, really, it doesn’t just happen in the game, but also in practice and in school.”

Nelson entered her senior year within striking distance of 1,000 points. According to O’Connell, only two girls in North’s history had ever achieved that milestone. Nelson said she was unaware of her career point total as the season began, but she found out a few days before the Jan. 21 game that she was just 13 points shy of 1,000. She said she was glad she didn’t know up until then, because there was less pressure on her.

In the first half of the game against Clarke, Nelson netted 11 points. In the third quarter, she hit a history-making layup, and the game was interrupted so her accomplishment could be recognized. “I was really honored that they would do that for me, and I was happy they really took it seriously,” she said. “They gave me a card, a basketball, so it was just as big a deal to them as it was to me.”

Nelson said that her mother and sister and a few of her friends made the trip to Clarke for the game. Her father, whom Madeline credits with sparking her interest in basketball, could not make it to the game, but it didn’t take long for him to find out: He talked to his daughter right after the game. “He’s definitely really proud of me,” Nelson said. “He called me right when he heard. It’s a big deal for my family.”

North is currently 8-6 on the season and in the middle of the Nassau Conference A-IV pack with a conference record of 5-4. Nelson has led the Lady Spartans in scoring in seven of their eight wins. She is unsure where she will attend college in the fall, what she will study or whether she will continue playing basketball once she graduates from North. “I don’t want to choose a school based on that,” she said. “It’s not my priority, but I’m still interested to see if I can play.”

In the meantime, she hopes to lead Valley Stream North back to the playoffs. “Now that I’ve got the 1,000th,” she said, “I just want to keep going and not focus on that, and really just try to win out the rest of the season — not lose another game.”

Nelson and the Lady Spartans will continue to make their playoff push when Seaford travels to North on Friday for a 7:45 p.m. Conference A-IV contest.