High school presents challenges as well as opportunities. Maddy Evans has risen to them and then some. Evans earned plenty of accolades in both field hockey and basketball while carrying a 4.0 grade-point average.
But spearheading a Christmas gift drive as editor of the Key Club, a national service organization, touched Evans’ heart the most. For the two past holiday seasons, the 18-year-old Evans and her fellow classmates along with the help of the Salvation Army packed a car full of gifts to give to families who couldn’t afford them for their children. “It was emotional,” she explains. “It was an incredible feeling seeing their smiles and knowing you made a difference in someone’s life.”
She also brings smiles to her family and friends’ faces playing the guitar. It seems that she’s always playing it around the house. Evans first took up the guitar in the fifth grade, and performing in two talent shows in middle school only got her more interested. “I just love music, and I have always liked singing,” Evans says. “It’s really relaxing to go into my own room, just escape and be in my own world. I play a whole range of music—a lot of country and pop songs.”
In addition to her charitable work and achievements in athletics, she is always sharply focused on academics. She has a list of seven schools, with Penn State, Lehigh, and William & Mary topping it. The 5-foot-8 Evans considered playing basketball in college; however, her priority in finding a school came down to one “that I liked academically.”
She’s taken seven advanced placement classes over the past two years, including Spanish, calculus, environmental science, and U.S. government and politics. “If I liked the school, I would look into their basketball program if they were Division III, I would look into it,” adds Evans, who is interested in majoring in business management. “It didn’t seem to present itself.”
The highlight of Evans’ basketball career came January 4th when she surpassed the 1,000-point mark durring a blowout win in Crownsville over Chapelgate of Howard County. “It was a really awesome feeling,” Evans says. “I set a goal as a freshman of doing that, but it was really far away. I thought it was a stretch.”
The forward started for four years on the varsity and helped Indian Creek to an Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland C Conference championship by averaging a team-high 17 points per game.
Evans also scored 17 points a game as a junior, but new Coach Ciaran Lesikar wanted her to develop into a more well-rounded player.
She answered the challenge, averaging 14.3 points, seven steals, five rebounds, and three assists.
So many of her steals lead to easy points. “She is a phenomenal defender,” Lesikar says. “She knows where players are going with the ball and she gets her hands on so many balls. She really helps us on offense and defense.”
Evans, a midfielder, didn’t take up field hockey until high school, but she quickly became one of Indian Creek’s best players. She was named the team’s Most Improved Player as a freshman and its Most Outstanding the following season.
The four-year varsity starter capped her career by earning Second-Team All-County honors as a senior and leading Indian Creek with six goals. She also scored two goals in the Maryland State Senior game at Archbishop Spalding in mid-November. “I have been coaching for 20 years, and she is one of the most gifted athletes I have ever coached,” Indian Creek Field Hockey Coach Jesse Larson says. “She definitely could have played Division III college field hockey. She only played for three months a year. She scores amazing goals and makes passes people don’t expect. If she had played year-round, she could have played Division I.”