Harding Becomes CHS Girls Basketball's All-Time Leading Scorer

Chillicothe High School senior point guard Jacey Harding became the girls basketball program's all-time leading scorer, last month.

The 5'7" senior, who plans to study biology and hopes to play basketball at the collegiate level, said she started playing basketball in the 6th grade but had doubts at one point.

"I used to play [basketball] at the YMCA with boys and I got hit in my face and my nose started bleeding everywhere, so I wanted to quit after that."

With the encouragement of her parents to get back onto the court, Harding said that basketball became her favorite sport. She went on to start for the Lady Cavs Varsity team as a freshman. In that first year, Harding set a goal of becoming a 1,000-point scorer, which she achieved in a game against Hillsboro on December 7th, 2022. Later that month, she set a school record for most points scored in a game with 44 against Rock Hill.

January was big, too, when Harding became the girls program's all-time leading scorer in a game against Logan Elm, surpassing Gina Turner's 1,231 points scored.

Harding said that she would not have been able to achieve those accomplishments without her "teammates around me and my coaches pushing me every day."

"The all-time scoring record wasn't even a goal in mind for me," said Harding. "Scoring my 1,000th point was just a huge goal for me, so doing both and having them there with me was just amazing."

With a couple games left, Harding still has the ability to raise her school-record point tally, but her priority is helping her team earn wins.

The Lady Cavs will round out league play with a game at Jackson on Saturday. A #23 seed, Chillicothe will play the winner of the Teays Valley v. Hilliard Bradley game on February 18th at 1 p.m. in the D1 Central Sectional Tournament.