Abigail Shipley, basketball
Abigail Shipley has recently been selected as the female representative from Mapletown High School in the “Centennial Chevrolet Scholar/Athlete Spotlight” series during the winter sports’ season.
Shipley is a junior guard on the Lady Maples basketball team and also plays volleyball and softball during the school year.
Out of the three sports, Shipley says it’s tough to pick her favorite.
“It’s really tough to pick between the three,” Shipley said. “It all depends on the time of year, but if I had to pick one I would pick volleyball. This season we had a good year and we improved as a team so much.”
For her biggest improvement on the basketball court from her freshman year, Shipley states that her leadership has really gotten better.
“I think I’m a better leader than a couple of years ago,” Shipley said. “Being a leader is so much more than just scoring points. You have to lead by example and be there for your teammates all the time. I think being a leader you really understand how important teamwork is.”
For her most memorable moment, Shipley claims that Mapletown’s win over Western Beaver on Dec. 17 tops her list.
“It was an unbelievable feeling to win that game,” Shipley said. “We worked so hard and it finally felt good to be on the winning side of things. We had a 13-point halftime lead and we were feeling really good, but Western Beaver got back into the game. With less than 10 seconds left, one of our freshmen hit a big shot and won the game for us.”
Despite picking up only one win in 2013-14, Shipley likes the direction this young team is going.
“We have been really young the last couple of seasons and we are just learning how to play together,” she said. “We had no seniors this year and we showed signs of improvement. We got better production on offense and our defense really got better late in the year.”
Shipley, who averaged around seven to nine points a game in her junior campaign, is also excelling in the classroom with a 4.0 grade-point average. She is still undecided on what college to attend, but does want to major in the biology or animal sciences.
The “Centennial Chevrolet Scholar/Athlete Spotlight” is designed to recognize the top male and female student-athlete per high school sports’ season (fall, winter, spring) for the five Greene County schools.
The student-athletes are selected by the respective schools and submitted to the Greene County Messenger.