Mar 31, 2018 4 min read

HOUSTON – Only 10 games into her first season as the Chartiers-Houston High School girls basketball coach, Laura Montecalvo already needed to have a serious conversation.

She pulled Alexa Williamson, then a 14-year-old freshman competing in both basketball and cheerleading, aside in the Chartiers-Houston gymnasium.

“All I told her was, ‘You are not like everyone else,'” Montecalvo recalled. “But to be honest, I don’t think I even knew what that meant, yet.”

Eighteen games later during that 2014-15 season, and with the Bucs facing a 17-point deficit against Carlynton as the third-quarter clock ticked away in a PIAA Class AA state playoff game, Montecalvo would realize exactly what she meant.

With the Bucs’ chances to advance to the state quarterfinals looking bleak, Montecalvo made a last-ditch gamble and decided to move Williamson, who served as the last defender in the back in the Bucs’ full-court press, to an on-the-ball defender against Carlynton’s versatile guard Conor Richardson.

Having a height advantage wasn’t enough to convince Williamson she could cover the ultra-talented Richardson, now a junior at Duquesne.

That was until, playing in a role she was completely unfamiliar with, Williamson changed the game.

Scoring 10 fourth-quarter points off the steals she generated, Montecalvo witnessed Williamson mature in the matter of nine minutes as Chartiers-Houston completed an unthinkable comeback.

“We felt like we needed to use our most athletic people in the backcourt,” Montecalvo said. “It was sort of an easy choice to try it. We wanted to let her use her size and athleticism to cause chaos. She brought enthusiasm and energy, which was the only thing that got us back into that game.”

Williamson finished that game against the Cougars with 24 points, 15 rebounds and six blocked shots.

“That was probably my career high back then,” Williamson joked.

If she only knew what was ahead of her.

In eight state playoff games, Williamson had at least 20 points and 12 rebounds in seven.

In a PIAA second-round tournament game last year, when Jala Walker, the Bucs’ second-leading scorer got into foul trouble, Williamson muscled up a 35-point, 12-rebound performance. Against Cambridge Springs in the opening round of the state tournament this year, she scored 51 points and grabbed 13 rebounds.

“I just think I do better under pressure,” Williamson said. “I play better in the bigger moments. I like when there is a challenge.”

Teams couldn’t provide much of a challenge to the dominant post presence much of her career, especially this season when she led the WPIAL in scoring at 30.7 points per game. She also averaged 14 rebounds.

Williamson finished with 2,213 career points, second in Washington County history to McGuffey graduate Sammie Weiss (2,390), despite playing only three-and-a-half seasons because a knee injury cut short her sophomore year by 17 games.

Williamson capped her high school career, which was marked by a comeback from injury and dominating performances in the biggest games for Chartiers-Houston, by being named the Observer-Reporter Girls Basketball Player of the Year.

“She never asked us about (her point totals),” Montecalvo said.

“We had to tell her. That’s the beauty about Alexa. She just plays and never knows how many points she ends up with. You want a kid to stay that way because that’s a pure love of the game. That’s part of the reason why she’s been so successful. She didn’t even want me to stop the game when she reached 2,000. That is hard to find.”

Williamson, a Temple recruit, averaged 21 points and 12 rebounds in her freshman season, then had 23 points and 12.5 rebounds in her junior year.

In her four years at Chartiers-Houston, the Bucs had an 82-29 record and advanced to the state quarterfinals twice. They also were only the second girls team in Washington County to appear in consecutive WPIAL championship games, winning the Class AA title in 2017.

“The best way I can describe her is like a quiet fighter,” Montecalvo said.

“She will never yell and scream. She will never get into the middle of the huddle and make a scene. She is there when you need her the most. She has stared adversity right in the face. That’s the story of Alexa Williamson.”