Staff Report
Three years ago, the Eastern Regional High girls basketball team suffered through a 6-20 season that featured a six-game losing streak and a pair of five-game skids. The Vikings were young, with just a trio of seniors on a roster full of sophomores who took their lumps against a very challenging Olympic Conference schedule.
One of those sophomores was Madison Stuart, who averaged nearly five points per game while leading the team in rebounding and blocked shots. The young center would eventually become the centerpiece of an Eastern team that went 18-10 this season and saw winning streaks of six games and seven games. The Vikings advanced all the way to the South Jersey Group 4 semifinals — not a bad turnaround by a team that didn’t even make the state playoffs two years ago.
Stuart bumped her scoring up to more than 12 points per game as a senior and was a huge piece of Eastern’s rebuilding effort that turned the Vikings into a sectional title contender. The 6-foot-2 senior increased her scoring and rebounding in each of her three varsity seasons, finishing with nearly 800 points and almost 500 rebounds. She added 52 blocks in her career and made more than 300 shots in her 82 career games.
This season, Stuart had three double-doubles and scored in double figures in 21 of 28 games, including the final three of her career.
— Dave O’Sullivan, Staff Writer
