Basketball, Volleyball
Favorite athlete: Candace Parker or Kyrie Irving
Favorite team: Golden State Warriors
Favorite memory competing in sports: Sophomore year, in a jayvee game, I scored 20 points. I had no clue I was scoring so much because I usually scored no more than 10 - rebounds were my specialty. I was taken out of the game for a break, but within a minute of my sitting down coach, Tinsley walked up to me and said, “You have 13 points, if I put you back in, you think you can get seven more?” I was so shocked and in my head said no but my mouth said yes and I was put back in the game. That was the first time I was truly proud of myself on the floor.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: When i first started playing, during freshman year, I could not remember which color uniform to wear to which game. So for one game I got ready and met up with my team just to realize I'm the odd one out. I had to run back in the locker room and change uniforms. It was a good thing I brought both
Music on your iPod: My iPod consists of a variety of music including: Korean Pop, Spanish, rap, hip-hop, old school and rock
Future plans: Go to college and study pre-med to one day become a doctor.
Favorite motto or words to live by: “Don't let the fear of striking out, keep you from playing the game.” meaning to me that you should not be scared of rejection and try your hardest until you reach your goal.
One goal before you turn 30: Finish my four years at medical school, get my first paying job and start planning for a family.
One thing people don’t know about you: People don’t know that I can be very shy at times. I have grown out of my timid phase, but in certain situations, I can fold and not voice my opinion.
By Mary Jane Souder
Brendan Nolan recently had a brief hospital stay for knee surgery, and while there, the Cheltenham girls’ basketball coach couldn’t help but think about Mia Leonard.
“She’s the kind of kid I can see 10 years from now, 12 years from now – she’ll be in the hospital as a doctor,” Nolan said of his senior captain. “I could see her being in sports medicine.”
While it’s not a stretch for Nolan to imagine the Cheltenham senior becoming a doctor, the Lady Panthers’ coach admits it might have been a bit more difficult to picture Leonard – as a newcomer to the sport of basketball when she was a freshman – turning into one of his program’s proudest success stories.
“Mia is one of those kids you might get once in your program,” Nolan said. “She’s sweet, but yet she has that strong side to her.
“She’s very, very intelligent and is an unbelievably hard worker. It’s a great combination of qualities. As a coach, you need that example to give to every kid of someone that wasn’t quite ready to play basketball but who really made themselves into a player and took ownership of it, made themselves accountable and worked hard and turned themselves into a player.”
Nolan had heard of Leonard before she stepped onto the court for the first time at an open gym prior to her freshman season.
“The girls kept talking about ‘this big kid from Brooklyn, we have this big kid from Brooklyn,’” the Panthers’ coach recalled.
Leonard, who was actually from Yonkers, was close to six feet tall as a ninth grader.
“A girl came up to me and asked me if I would join the basketball team,” Leonard recalled. “I told her that I couldn’t because I didn’t know anything about basketball.
“When I was younger, I didn’t play sports at all. I didn’t even know how to make a layup. She said, ‘It’s okay, they’ll teach you,’ so I went. I hated it, but I decided to stay.”
That’s where the story takes a remarkable turn. It would have been easy for Leonard to walk away. Basketball, it turns out, had never interested her even a little bit.
“My cousins and friends used to say, ‘Oh, come on, let’s play basketball. You’re so tall,’” Leonard said. “I was like, ‘No, that’s too much for me. I can’t do that.’”
Basketball was a major challenge for Leonard, who had never played any competitive sports.
“She couldn’t even run up and down the floor in ninth grade,” Nolan said. “You could tell she was a kid that was not at all used to the body she’d grown into.
“She couldn’t catch the ball, she really couldn’t run up and down the floor well. We’d put her in jayvee games and say, ‘Just stick your hands up in the air.’”
While her teammates vied for playing time, Leonard was happy to watch from the bench.
“I didn’t know how to play,” she said. “My mom used to say, ‘When you run, it’s like you’re running through a meadow of flowers. You’re not running.’
“I was like, ‘Well, I’m trying to run. I thought I was running. I’m doing the best I can.’ When I first got there, there were so many girls on the team that were so good, and, of course, me being on the sidelines having to practice footwork and layups and not knowing how to run – it was definitely intimidating, but all I had was encouragement from the coaches and the team. Even though I was embarrassed most of the time, I decided to keep doing it.”
And it was the encouragement of Nolan that kept Leonard coming back.
“When I went to the first practice, we did a preseason exercise type of thing along with some drills,” she recalled. “I was out of shape, and that’s when I said, ‘I can’t do this.’
“At the end of the practice, Nolan gave a little speech saying it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be challenging, but as long as we keep coming to practice, we’re going to get better, and me, I was a sucker. I was like, ‘Oh, now I have to come back.’ He guilted me into it, and that’s why I stayed initially.”
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Although basketball was a struggle, it did give Leonard an immediate social circle as a new student at Cheltenham.
“It helped so much,” she said. “Knowing girls on the basketball team, you start talking to them, and when you hang out with them, you meet their friends.
“Moving (from Yonkers) was definitely a big transition, but so many people out here are very warm and inviting, and I really like that.”
After a challenging freshman season, Leonard wasn’t interested in continuing.
“But I felt like my dad and my parents really liked me playing basketball, and once again, being such a pushover, I decided to try out again sophomore year,” she said. The coaches – they really helped me out when I did go out.
“Nolan made a comment, ‘Mia, you can run.’”
As a sophomore, Leonard was no longer a bench warmer but a starter for the junior varsity and by the end of the year was a swing player for the varsity.
“I was like, ‘Okay, I can do this. This isn’t as bad as I thought,” she said.
The following summer Leonard – who began playing AAU with Cal Sports Academy - worked tirelessly to prepare for her junior season.
“I practiced a lot of skills, I went out for runs and I lifted weights,” she said. “My dad and I would go to different parks, Myers Elementary, Cheltenham Elementary.
“I would meet up with coach (Dave) Tinsley. Of course, my parents were there supporting me and taking me to the appointments, but he was the one who said, ‘You’ve got to run twice a week.’ He was the one really pushing me and helping me get stronger.”
As a junior, Leonard was a fixture in the varsity starting lineup and earned third team all-league honors.
“I did really love it,” she said, “Once you’re good at something, you start to like it.”
Leonard’s improvement amazed her coaches.
“She was one of those kids you’d watch and think, ‘Well, if she puts a lot of work in, maybe she can help us one day,’” Nolan said. “She’s one of the rare kids who delivered on that.
“She really, really applied herself. Every offseason, she took it on her own to make herself better. She would come back every year, and it was like, ‘Oh my god, look at Mia, look how much better she is. Look at the way she runs.’ It was so nice to see. Mia leads by example. She makes it her responsibility to make herself better in the offseason, and it’s just been a wonder.”
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Double-doubles are not uncommon for the senior captain, but it is her leadership that has been especially significant on a squad that scored just 10 points in a humbling loss to Unionville earlier this season.
“Mia really took it personally,” Nolan said. “She took a lot of blame on herself that she didn’t set the tone offensively and defensively, and it’s great to have a kid who will do that – a leader who is really stepping up as our best player and is willing to take responsibility for things and encourage her teammates and hold herself accountable as much, if not more, than everyone else.
“We need some of that at Cheltenham, and it’s great that she’s providing that for us.”
Leonard – no longer the shy player who wanted to hide on the bench – had a heart-to-heart talk with her teammates after the Unionville loss.
“I said, ‘You guys have to want to be better for yourself and if not for yourself, you have to do it for the other people on the team. We are a family, everyone wants to do better, I know they do, but you have to put in work, you have to put in heart,’” she said. I think my teammates understood that.”
In the Lady Panthers’ very next game, Leonard score a career-high 21 points in a 54-48 conference win over Springfield Township.
“Mia is like a rock out there,” Nolan said. “She is a force on defense. Not just the fact that she’s big and long, but she knows how to defend, she knows where to be, she knows how to defend the post and play help defense. The work she’s put in on her end is really starting to show.”
Ask Leonard what basketball has added to her high school experience and she laughs.
“Personally, it has made me more outspoken and loud as a person, and it’s a lot better than being quiet and to myself,” she said. “After playing basketball, I thought to myself, ‘If I can do something I never thought I could do before, I can do so many other things.’
“For school, it helped me meet so many people, and it made school much more enjoyable. Being more athletic and losing a lot of weight – just altogether, it was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself.”
Off the court, Leonard – who takes AP Chemistry along with several honors classes – is an excellent student. She is considering Mansfield University and Ursinus College with plans to major in biology and the goal of becoming a doctor.
“I’ve always been fascinated and done very well in science and math,” she said. “My dad has a lot of health issues, and it just all seems that it would be the perfect profession.”
Leonard – who has not decided whether or not she will continue her basketball career at the collegiate level - also played for Cheltenham’s volleyball team the past three years.
“When I joined volleyball, my coach was very open, and he told me, ‘I’ll be honest with you. You made the team because you’re tall,’” Leonard recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, snap, okay.’
“My sophomore year I was a starter. I don’t play back row – I just block and hit, but I still loved played.”
Coach Ryan Genova appreciated having Leonard as part of the team.
“Mia is a dear,” the Lady Panthers’ coach said. “She brings with her a healthy vibe, a sense of humor, she pushes her teammates, and she’s consistent in everything that she does.
“And she does each of these things with a big smile. I wish her the best that life has to offer.”
