Eastern Brown High School senior Rylee Leonard was recently named to the Ohio High School Athletic Association All-Ohio Division III First Team. Photo by Wade Linville

Eastern Brown High School senior Rylee Leonard was recently named to the Ohio High School Athletic Association All-Ohio Division III First Team. Photo by Wade Linville

Rylee Leonard has been as much a fixture on all-state girls basketball teams as she has her Eastern Brown High School team the last four seasons.

For the third consecutive year, Leonard was named to the Ohio High School Athletic Association All-Ohio Division III First Team, as announced last week by the Ohio Prep Sportswriters Association. Before that, as a freshman, Leonard earned all-Ohio special mention.

“Being chosen all-state my sophomore, junior, and senior years has been an honor,” Leonard said. “I have had several goals I have worked toward starting at a young age and this was definitely one of them. With hard work and commitment to something, these goals happen, but I couldn’t have done it without my coaches and teammates through these four years.”

This year’s all-state honor capped a highlight-filled season for the 5-foot-6 senior guard. Earlier in March, she was named the Southeast District Division III Player of the Year, also by the Ohio Prep Sportswriters Association. She averaged 28.9 points per game and was the leading scorer in the Southern Hills Athletic Conference for the 2022-23 season. She also averaged 3.7 steals and 2.7 assists and rebounds per game during the season.

Also this past season, she set the school scoring record and surpassed 2,000 career points. She broke the school scoring record with a 44-point effort early in the season and also set the all-time scoring mark for the highly regarded Brown County Holiday Tournament in January. Last November, she signed a letter of intent to attend and play basketball at Thomas More University in Crestview Hills, Kentucky.

“Rylee is a once-in-a-coach’s-lifetime kind of player,” Eastern head coach Kevin Pickerill said. “She has the ability to score with the ball at all levels with some deep range and is a true competitor.”

Leonard was the only area Brown County player – girl or boy – to make any of the first three teams in any of the four divisions in the all-state selections. Three area Brown County girls and boys earned either special mention or honorable mention.

Other area Brown County girls selections:

• Division I special mention – Sadie Foster, Western Brown, 5-foot-7 senior guard, 17 points per game.

• Division III honorable mention – Alexis Neal, Georgetown, 5-8 senior forward, 12.2 points.

• Division IV honorable mention – Anne Murphy, Fayetteville-Perry, 5-8 senior guard, 16.3 points.

Area Brown County boys selections:

• Division I honorable mention – Drew Novak, Western Brown, 6-6 senior forward, 17.0.

• Division III special mention – Carson Miles, Georgetown, 5-11 senior guard, 22.0.

• Division IV honorable mention – Austin Snider, Fayetteville-Perry, 6-7 senior center, 12.4.

Also, the Georgetown girls basketball team recently earned the Ohio High School Basketball Coaches Association’s Academic Team Award for 2022-23.

To qualify for the award, teams must submit non-weighted (4.0) grade-point averages for nine varsity players in their programs. Boys and girls teams with the five highest GPAs as a team earned the honor. The Georgetown girls tied for fourth with a 3.98 GPA.

Mason and Chagrin Falls topped the girls division with a 4.0 GPA; New Philadelphia led the boys at 3.95.