Hatley lets actions speak for her
Words were once hard to come by whenever North Little Rock’s Madison Hatley was suited up and out on the basketball floor.
Not anymore.
“Oh man, she’s chatty now,” North Little Rock Coach Daryl Fimple said with a laugh. “I mean, we’ve went from like maybe a three-sentence structure or having to call her mom to see if we could even get a word out of Maddie just so we could hear what she was thinking. Now she’s just so chatty, but we love it. Her teammates love it.
“It’s almost like night and day with how far she’s come.”
Hatley’s vocal cords aren’t the only thing she’s been working on around the clock.
The senior has had a monster season so far for No. 5 North Little Rock, which had beaten every in-state team it had faced until No. 4 Cabot handed it a 48-36 defeat on Friday night.
Hatley wasn’t much of a scoring factor in the game, and a lot of that had to do with the stifling defense the Lady Panthers were playing throughout. She did finish with 9 rebounds, 6 steals and 3 blocks in the loss, but those numbers pale in comparison to what’s she routinely puts up.
The 6-0 forward is averaging 12.6 points, 11.9 rebounds, 3 blocks and 2 assists per game for the Lady Charging Wildcats, who are 19-3 and a half-game behind No. 2 Conway in the 6A-Central Conference standings. What Hatley is doing, though, hasn’t always been commonplace.
“Everybody is like, ‘Hey, what’d you do to get her going like that?’ And I’m like, ‘Man, it’s all Maddie’,” Fimple explained. “She just decided that she could really do this, and the light kind of came on. She’s bided her time, busted her tail and stayed locked in.
“Just to go from where she was averaging two or three points a night as a sophomore to six to eight last year. Now she’s a double-double machine. The work she’s put in to be where she’s at right now, it’s been really great to see.”
Going head-to-head with teammates who are currently playing college basketball didn’t hurt Hatley’s progression either.
She saw some time as a 10th-grader on a stacked North Little Rock team that featured frontcourt NCAA Division I standouts Amauri Williams and Destine Duckworth. That group went on to finish 27-4 and capture the program’s fifth state championship under Fimple.
The following season, Hatley’s minutes increased, but she wasn’t counted on score a great deal, particularly with as much offensive firepower as the Lady Charging Wildcats had with players like April Edwards and Ja’Miya Brown. That team eventually finished as state runner-up to Conway.
However, things, have changed significantly in her final year wearing a blue and gold uniform, and it’s not necessarily centered on a role reversal.
The Lady Charging Wildcats did return just two starters this season — with Hatley being one of them — so it’s fitting that she’d be looked upon to do more. But according to her, Fimple didn’t have to ask her to do anything because she already had an
“Everybody is like, ‘Hey, what’d you do to get her going like that?’ And I’m like, ‘Man, it’s all Maddie.’ ” North Little Rock Coach Daryl Fimple on Madison Hatley
idea of what she needed and wanted to do.
“Honestly going into the season, I thought we were going to have trouble rebounding,” Hatley said. “So I knew I wanted to get at least 10 rebounds a game, and if I did that, that’d help the team out a lot with that part of it. As far as the points aspect, I wanted to average at least 10 a game, too, but I didn’t necessarily start out like that.
“But then I started realizing as the season went on that it’s a lot harder for us to win if I’m not scoring well or getting rebounds. So I knew I had to step up and do my part.”
Fimple, who’s won 477 games in his 19 seasons at North Little Rock, said what Hatley has done is admirable, especially with how the landscape of high school basketball has changed.
“What we’ve seen out of her couldn’t have happened to a better kid,” he said. “A lot of kids now, going through what she’s gone through, they would’ve transferred and went to some other school. But you know, she stuck it out.”
That patience has been rewarding for North Little Rock, which has played a who’s who of teams this season. Hatley has delivered one way or another in all of those games, from her 20-point, 14-rebound effort during a 62-44 victory over reigning Class 5A champion Greenwood to the 20 points and 19 boards she had in a 60-59 overtime win over Conway. Even in the Lady Charging Wildcats’ 53-47 loss at ESPN’s No. 13-ranked Mansfield (Texas) Timberview, she dominated with 23 points and 14 rebounds.
And to think, Hatley didn’t even score in the team’s opener against Jacksonville — a game North Little Rock won 74-14.
“That’s what’s so amazing about it all, especially when you think back on that game now,” Fimple said. “But to be honest, we’d seen what she was capable of in practice in the preseason, and we didn’t have anybody that could guard her. In the past, I think she was kind of holding herself back from trying things in practice. But I think she just got comfortable, and when you get comfortable, that means a lot because you just kind of relax and be you.
“After that Jacksonville game, we went over to Tennessee and played, and she did really well, but she was vocal. We talked to her and told her that this was her and Jocelyn [Tate’s] team. And from that moment on, it’s been like, ‘Hey, this is my senior year, my last go around,’ and she’s taken the bull by the horn.”
Assuming a leadership spot wasn’t initially what Hatley had in mind, at least in the literal sense. Tate, who’s committed to play at Southern University next year, would naturally be thrust into one of those authoritative slots after putting together an all-state season as a junior. But it’s taken her co-star some getting used to.
“I think I’ve kind of embraced it, but I feel like it hasn’t really hit yet,” Hatley said. “I wouldn’t call myself a leader to all my teammates because it’s like we’re all at the same. I’m not just telling them, ‘Hey do this or hey work on that.’ I tell them to not just let me tell them what to do.
“If you want me to come set a screen or if you want me to come give you a back pick, let me know and I’ll do it. We tell each other things to do, and we all learn from each other. It’s not just me telling them to do something just because I’m older.”
Whatever Hatley and her teammates say to one another, it’s apparently worked. Being vocal, she said, has been the biggest obstacle that she’s had to overcome because she’s never been a big talker. She even insists that she was a bit shy both on and off the court during her sophomore and junior campaigns.
But those days are long gone. When she speaks, her team listens. When her teammates speak, she listens. All of that has worked in North Little Rock’s favor as it continues its quest to reel in another state championship.
“I’m excited because I know we have what it takes to win,” Hatley said. “I’m excited for us to grow and get better together, excited to see what happens. But I’m really glad that this is the team I have my senior year.”