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Player to Watch: Lexi Martins, Irvington
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By this time next year, Lexi Martins may have graduated Irvington as the most accomplished girls basketball player in the history of Westchester County.
The 6-foot-1 rising senior may actually already be. Martins has been at the center of three straight Class B state championships at Irvington, and guided the program to a pair of Federation titles.
Martins, who has signed to play at Lehigh, is the two-time reigning Class B state player of the year and two-time first team all-state and MSG Varsity Hudson Valley all-star.
“She’s way up there,” Irvington coach Gina Maher said of Martins being among the best she’s coached in her legendary 36 seasons. “We’ve had a few kids come up as eighth-graders. But no other kid has been the state player two times. As far as accomplishments go, she’s way up there.”
In the post, nobody in the Hudson Valley is better than Martins.
The versatile forward is a double-double machine, averaging 17.8 points and 15.8 rebounds per game last season for an Irvington squad that went 27-1. She’s already topped 1,000 career points and rebounds.
“She really knows the game,” Maher said. “She analyzes it while she plays. She’s a fierce competitor. Every year she’s played she’s gained so much confidence. Under the boards, she’s refuses to give up a rebound. She knows the game as well as any kid I’ve ever coached.”
The record certainly shows that. In Martins’ four varsity seasons, Irvington is a combined 100-8 with only two of those losses coming against Class B competition.
“I expect her to keep growing,” Maher said. “She loves the game and has a passion for it. She wants to succeed at the next level and she knows she will if she continues to work. We’ll need her to take a greater leadership role and help the younger girls come along this year.
“I think she’s going to do that. She’d make a great coach one day. She understands the game and she’s a great communicator.”
Visit MSGVarsity.com each weekday this summer as we unveil the next athlete on our Players to Watch list. Click here for the complete list.
Email Kevin Devaney Jr. at kdevaney@cablevision.com
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