Jim Mashek

LADY GATORS’ CAREER SCORING LEADER PLANS TO MAJOR IN PRE-MED AT WKU

Terrance Williams, Greenwood High School’s first-year girls basketball coach, emerged from his team’s locker room about 15 minutes after the Lady Gators’ season came to a resounding halt.

One year removed from a surprising run to the KHSAA’s 4th Region Tournament, the second-seeded Lady Gators squared off with homestanding South Warren High School on Monday night.

The winner of the KHSAA’s 14th District Tournament contest would advance to Thursday’s championship game against longtime girls basketball power Bowling Green High School. The losing team would have to pack its gear and go their separate ways, missing a shot to play at WKU’s E.A. Diddle Arena in regional play next week.

McLaine Hudson and South Warren rolled past the Lady Gators, 66-39, and it took a while for Williams’ players to start trickling onto the court after it was over.

“They’re sharing tears, but basketball’s only a small part of what these girls are about,” Williams said.

And the smallest player on the court — this season, last season, every season since the 2018-19 school year — was one of the Lady Gators’ last to commiserate with her parents, her family and friends, when it was all over.

Leia Trinh became Greenwood High School’s career scoring leader during her junior year. She moved past Rose Mary Jackson’s school record total of 1,912 points while leading her squad to an impressive 61-42 victory over Allen County-Scottsville in the first week of January, 2023. She moved past the 2,000-point mark two or three games later, and the Lady Gators endured their share of highs and lows on their way to this week’s KHSAA 14th District Tournament.

Trinh was fighting tears in the hallway, quick to give South Warren the credit while briefly reflecting on her final season at Greenwood.

“We’ve worked very hard for this … seeing it all end is really sad,” she said. “All the credit goes to (South Warren) … We just fell short at the end.”

Trinh has heard preconceptions about being short, or undersized, throughout her basketball career. She’s been the Lady Gators’ scoring leader in each and every season since her eighth grade year at Drakes Creek Middle School. She started playing varsity basketball in seventh grade, the youngest allowed by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association.

Trinh stands about 5-foot-1 and tips the scales somewhere around 100, 105 pounds.

She’s been about the same size since eighth or ninth grade, but she’s always been a fearless point guard. She’ll challenge the bigger, stronger players near the basket before kicking it out to the perimeter. And she’ll keep the defense honest with a deadly 3-point shooting touch.

Leia Trinh has been working on her game for a long time. And she was able to share her thoughts on that experience in an exchange of text messages on Tuesday.

Former Greenwood coach Zach Simpson told Trinh she was playing varsity basketball in the autumn of 2018, shortly before she turned 13 years old. The Lady Gators’ longtime linchpin remembers that conversation almost like it was yesterday.

“I actually started playing at Drakes Creek in fourth grade, up until my seventh grade year,” Trinh said via text message. “The first (Greenwood player) I met with Olivia Lovell … she’s really made an impact on my career, as she’s been there since the since the beginning. Looking back at it all, it really has been an emotional journey and experience.

“And I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.”

Trinh played with dozens of Greenwood girls basketball players over the years, and in 2021 — her freshman season — the Lady Gators reached the semifinals of the KHSAA 4th Region Tournament at WKU, only to fall to tradition-rich Barren County, 56-45. The Lady Gators returned to the 4th Region tourney last year, only to drop a 58-51 decision to Russellville in the quarterfinals.

Trinh and her Greenwood teammates did everything they could to get back to Diddle Arena, but South Warren was equal to the task. Spartans softball/basketball star McLaine Hudson — a sophomore who also has played varsity basketball since middle school — was effusive in her praise of Leia Trinh after Monday night’s game.

“We’re really excited to get to Diddle,” Hudson said. “Leia’s a tough competitor. She gets to the free-throw line, she has great composure, she works hard for her teammates. She’s very unselfish out there.

“She’s really had a great career at Greenwood.”

Trinh’s four older brothers — in order, Leo, Leon, Lucas and Landon — are all pursuing careers in medicine, in either medical school or the undergraduate level. Leia Trinh probably could have played small college basketball, if she were so inclined, but she decided to focus on academics after her junior year at Greenwood. She plans to enter WKU as a pre-med student, majoring in biology, later this year.

Trinh’s grandparents emigrated from South Vietnam and her parents, Trung and Huong Trinh, work in the pharmacy field. Leia Trinh also has a younger sister, Lianne, who has played volleyball at Drakes Creek and Greenwood.

Leia Trinh said it was her older brothers who encouraged her to pursue a basketball career. She said her senior year with the Lady Gators has flown by, even more so than the rest of her career.

“In seventh grade, I was so excited, even nervous (about playing varsity basketball),” Trinh said. “My parents were so excited, and they couldn’t wait to watch me play. I remember thinking, I was so small compared to some of these girls, but I remember telling myself there was nothing to lose … just help my team any way I could.

“But I was so blessed to have such an amazing group of people, who welcomed me and made me feel a part of the team when I first got there … Then my senior year got here, and it flew by. Quick!”

When Leia Trinh joined the Drakes Creek Middle School squad, as a fourth grader, she estimates she was about four feet, eight inches tall, and maybe 70 pounds soaking wet. She’s especially grateful to her parents and six siblings — “I couldn’t have done any of this, without them,” Trinh said — while working toward her graduation from Greenwood High School later this spring.

“It was a little tough, transitioning to Coach Williams for my senior year, and at times it’s been a bittersweet experience,” Leia Trinh said. “It’s devastating, honestly, to see it all end. I’m so honored to be a part of this program for the past six years … I’ll cherish the friendships, the relationships, forever.

“I know we will all support each other, in our future lives.”