Chealsey Brock chuckled and offered some self-deprecating humor earlier this week when asked about the way Chelsea Cluesman, Makenzie Cluesman and Jalan McPherson have carried the scoring load for the Lee High girls basketball team.
“If it was up to me, it wouldn’t happen,” Brock said.
While Brock might not put up impressive offensive numbers, she did hit perhaps the biggest shot of the Generals’ season.
In last Friday’s VHSL Group A, Division 2 state quarterfinals at the Salem Civic Center, Brock converted a difficult shot in the paint in the fourth quarter. The basket put Lee ahead for good and helped the
Generals earn a 61-50 victory over Radford that clinched a spot in Friday’s state semifinals in Richmond.
Brock has been a big reason why the Generals (21-6) are the only girls basketball team from Southwest Virginia still playing. Her defensive intensity and blue-collar effort has been a constant all season for Lee.
“I try hard in everything I do,” Brock said. “I just get lucky on defense.”
A 5-foot-5 junior, Brock might not have the athletic ability of the Cluesman sisters or the outside shot of McPherson. However, she plays tenacious defense and doesn’t make many mistakes.
“We’ve got a lot of kids on this team that don’t have stats you’ll see in the newspaper,” Lee coach Stephanie Ward said. “But players like Chealsey Brock and Sareena Music are kids that play a lot of minutes and from what they do defensively, they create so many things.
“We are a defensive team first and we usually put them on the best kids to defend. Chealsey has just done an outstanding job and she knows how to play within herself.”
McPherson concurred.
“Chealsey Brock is an amazing player,” McPherson said. “She is doing really well at defense and she helps on offense, handling the ball and getting rebounds. She’s just a really good player.”
Brock does it all with a quiet humility and her expression rarely changes during a game. She plays her role and defers all the attention to her teammates.
“She’s the kind of a kid that I can depend on,” Ward said. “She’ll do anything you ask.”
That attitude helps to explain why Lee is in the state semifinals for the first time.
“It’s wonderful,” Brock said. “I was so excited when we won [last Friday]. It’s just good and I’m thankful.”
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