Early in Madison Hayes' time as a high school student-athlete, Adrian and Greta Hayes were at a crossroads regarding whether they should send their oldest daughter to a private school.
Because of two conversations, she stayed at East Hamilton.
The first was with Jesse Miles, Greta's father and a former coach, who once told Greta regarding his granddaughter that "sometimes you have to let her bloom where she's planted," Greta recalled recently.
"That really stuck with me," she said.
Jesse died in March 2019.
The second conversation was with Madison, who really didn't want to leave the school where she had planted her roots and was building a reputation as one of the top girls' basketball players in the country.
It would have been easy to move, with no shortage of local options where private schools are concerned, including Baylor and GPS. One of Hayes' AAU teammates with the Finest Basketball Club, Treasure Hunt, was already playing for national power Hamilton Heights Christian Academy in Chattanooga.
She also could have transferred to another public school. East Hamilton played in the same district, 5-AAA, where Bradley Central was building a championship contender that eventually won the Class AAA state title in 2019. Hayes' coach at East Hamilton when she was in eighth grade, Tony Williams, had moved on to lead Cleveland's girls.
Yet Hayes stayed put.
"For me, I didn't want to move because I fell in love with the school," Hayes, who was a senior this past season and has signed with Mississippi State, told the Times Free Press recently. "I did have a lot of opportunities to (transfer), but I think that being loyal is the best thing."
EAST HAMILTON'S BEST
What was the price of such loyalty?
Playing elsewhere might have increased Hayes' chances of competing for championships, though the Lady Hurricanes were successful in their own right, averaging 21.2 wins per season in her five years — she also started as an eighth grader — with the program.
This past season, they lost a Region 3-AAA quarterfinal by two points to Stone Memorial, which went on to advance to the state semifinals before concerns about the coronavirus pandemic first suspended and ultimately canceled the remainder of the tournament. It was the second straight year the Lady Panthers ended East Hamilton's season.
The last two losses of Hayes' 2017-18 sophomore season came at the hands of eventual Class AAA state semifinalist Bradley Central — which featured Rhyne Howard, who played as an eighth grader at East Hamilton before transferring to play for the Bearettes and is now a University of Kentucky standout — and Riverdale, which won the Class AAA title that year.
Staying also meant the Hayes family had to put their faith in a new coach, with Hunter Gremore — who had won at least 25 games in each of his final five seasons at Arlington — hired to replace Williams.
"The loyalty that she showed, that speaks about her character," Gremore said. "She's got such high character, and that's just an example of it. She could have packed up and gone to any school around here, but she always told me, 'As long as you're staying, I'm staying,' and once we've built that relationship, she's the type of kid that would run through a wall for you.
"She was one of the easier ones to coach because she always did what was expected of her. I never had to question her effort."
Hayes is by far the most decorated player to come out of a program that has included Howard and Tiffany Lewis, who transferred to Riverdale for her senior year and spent a season at Chipola Junior College before playing at Clemson and Auburn.
Hayes totaled 3,055 points and 1,584 rebounds, with her senior awards including a second straight TSSAA Class AAA Miss Basketball honor, McDonald's All American recognition and the state's Gatorade player of the year for girls' basketball. And that was just basketball — off the court she had a 3.21 GPA and was East Hamilton's homecoming queen last fall.
HER OWN CROSSROADS
Basketball, though, has always been in her blood.
Her father played only one year of high school basketball — to win a bet that he couldn't make the team at Kirkman — but Adrian parlayed that into a collegiate career at Chattanooga State and Cumberland College in Kentucky (now University of the Cumberlands), where he averaged 16.6 points, seven rebounds and 2.6 assists in two seasons and was inducted into the school's athletic hall of fame in 2006.
Her mother played college basketball at High Point in North Carolina. Greta averaged 12.3 points and 6.2 rebounds and shot 36% from 3-point range while making 97 shots behind the arc in 64 career games.
Hayes' teammates at East Hamilton included her sister McKenna, who was a sophomore this past season.
Still, Adrian and Greta chose not to push Madison into basketball — or any particular sport — and it wasn't until she was in eighth grade that she stood at the foot of her bed and announced that she wanted to focus solely on basketball. That meant giving up softball, a sport she grew up playing at Brainerd Rec and in which she had demonstrated considerable skill as a back-to-back national champion in the Pitch, Hit & Run competition overseen by Major League Baseball.
Her Twitter handle remains @girl4allsports, and although she did play volleyball in high school — and was an all-state selection as a senior — Hayes was clear about her focus and her future.
"She said, 'I want to play basketball. I want to be the best in the state," Greta recalled. "And then she said, 'I want to be the best in the country.' And we told her that she had to understand that there's going to be discipline. There's going to be sacrifices: When your friends are going out to parties and movies and having sleepovers, you've got to be in the gym. We've been there; we've done that.
"And so if you genuinely want to be the best, our job as parents is to give you the knowledge and share the wisdom that we've got as parents to put you in the right spots and get you the right opportunities. You have to be the one that produces, and you're going to fail, and knowing that you're going to fail, you've just got to get back up and keep pushing. But that's what separates great players from good players."
So she worked on her craft, developed her talent and — equally important — ascended as a leader. By the time she was an upperclassman, she had three seasons of varsity experience, meaning what she had to say was worth hearing.
"Those early years were good for me because they helped me become the woman I can be throughout my whole career," Hayes said. "We went through a lot of coaching changes throughout my five years of high school and playing basketball, and Coach Gremore helped me become better as a person, not just being great at basketball. He taught me a different side of who I am and just having that responsibility and that leadership and caring for others."
Now, as she prepares to enter a new level of basketball, there are similarities to the early portion of her high school days.
Hayes committed to and signed with Mississippi State when the coach was still Vic Schaefer, who left Starkville in early April to take over at Texas. He was replaced by former Tennessee Lady Volunteers standout Nikki McCray-Penson, who came from Old Dominion after going 24-6 this past season and 53-40 in three years.
Once again, Hayes isn't sure of the road ahead — but she's loyal and willing to give it a shot. That method has worked at least once before.
"Something that is very important to both her dad and I is that we don't believe in quitting. You start something, you finish it," Greta said. "You try, you give it 100%, and then you know at the end of the day, if it's not for you, then we're OK with it.
"My dad told me that if she's good enough, they'll find her. You don't have to move anywhere; you don't have to jump from team to team. You stick where you're at and work hard to perfect your craft, and they will find her. And I think, looking back at what she's done in putting East Hamilton on the map in her five short years of playing high school, it's incredible when you think about it."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.
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Loyalty was hallmark of Madison Hayes' time at East Hamilton; shapes her future, too - Chattanooga Times Free Press
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