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West Chester's Leah Johnson emerging as next Golden Rams' star

11/30/2021, 1:30am EST
By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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When Kiera Wooden was recruiting Leah Johnson to play for her at West Chester, she didn’t tell the Notre Dame (N.J.) standout that she saw her as a cornerstone for her Golden Rams. 

“I never tell anybody that, if we’re being honest,” Wooden said. “I tell them that I see you as a piece, I see you as a piece of a puzzle.

“I didn’t tell her that, but my assistant coach [Allison Hostetter] and I knew what we had — and knew that we were getting a steal.”


Leah Johnson (above) is off to a monster start to her sophomore season for West Chester. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Five games into Johnson’s second season in a West Chester uniform, she’s proving her coach right. On a team with six juniors and seniors, Johnson has clearly become the centerpiece for the West Chester women, a do-everything guard who sets the tone on and off the court.

That was the case on Monday night in East Falls, as Johnson put together another big performance as West Chester came to Jefferson University and rolled out with a 75-61 road victory.

Playing all but one minute of the wire-to-wire win, Johnson finished with 14 points, 12 rebounds, six assists, three steals and two blocks, the last mark perhaps the most impressive from a 5-foot-5 guard. Just don’t tell her that.

“I’m big, don’t even be saying that, I’m big,” she protested, though Wooden chimed in: “You keep telling yourself that.”

Johnson was all over the court during the non-league affair, which saw WCU (2-3) open up a 24-10 first-quarter lead on Jefferson (4-2) and maintain a double-digit advantage the whole way through. That win snapped a three-game losing streak for the Golden Rams, who begin conference play this weekend.

Freshman guard Alexa Abbonizio, from Springfield (Delco.), led West Chester with 15 points. The Golden Rams shot 11-of-16 in the first quarter and finished the game 26-of-63 (41.3%), knocking down eight 3-pointers.

“I think we’ve got people on our team that can go off on any given night, anybody who gets the ball can get a hot hand,” Johnson said. “So we can go really deep on our bench, and we can keep rolling. We come out hot like that, we’re hard to stop.”

Strong with the ball in her hands, Johnson maneuvered her way through the Jefferson defense on numerous occasions for tough layups, showcasing a quick pull-up ability off the bounce and great court vision on the move.

Johnson first caught the attention of the WCU staff when she was playing for Rebels AAU in an event on West Chester’s campus. She was familiar with the school thanks to an older cousin who went there as a normal student, but didn’t know much about the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) or its programs.

A strong 2018 summer got her looks from a number of other PSAC programs as well as some low-major Division I teams, but the bond she formed off the bat with Wooden and Hostetter was the strongest pull. 

“I was just going to a place that wanted me the most,” she said. “I thought that West Chester gave me a really good opportunity to come here.”

Johnson (above) had 14 points and 12 rebounds in a win over Jefferson on Monday night. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

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In Wooden, she’d be playing for a West Chester alum (‘03) and the program’s fifth-leading scorer (1,378 points), who’s already led the Rams to three NCAA Tournament appearances since her elevation to head coach in 2014-15. 

At Notre Dame, Johnson mostly played second fiddle to current Illinois forward Erika Porter, averaging about 13 ppg as a senior while Porter won league player of the year honors. But Wooden didn’t see her in that same role in college.

“We recruited her with the mindset that she was going to be a program-changer here,” she said.

West Chester struggled in Johnson’s freshman season, finishing 9-18 overall, with a 7-15 mark in conference play. Individually, Johnson’s debut season was a strong one: she led the team in minutes played (34/game), starting all 27 contests and finishing second on the team in scoring (11.6 ppg) and assists (3.4/game), earning second team all-PSAC honors as a result. 

But she went from March 2020 until this summer away from the West Chester campus, COVID shutting things down and keeping her home in Columbus (N.J.), continuing her studies and workouts from afar. When she returned to West Chester this offseason, she was already a better version of herself.

“Not everybody used that quarantine year to their benefit — I cannot say that about her,” Wooden said. “She got faster, she got stronger [...] for the 19 months we weren’t there, she barely took days off. In the weight room, on the court, just working on her agility, her speed, her strength, her decision-making, everything.”

“The harder you work, the more luck you have,” Johnson said. “I think I work really hard.”

It’s clearly all paying off. Johnson’s all-around effort against Jefferson was the latest in a series of strong performances to open the season, beginning with two 20-point efforts to open the year; she doesn’t have fewer than four assists, two steals or three rebounds in any outing.

Through five games, she’s averaging 18.6 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 5.0 apg and 3.2 spg, shooting better than 40% from the floor and 9-of-28 (32.1%) from the 3-point line, as well as 12-of-14 from the foul stripe. She’s also taken a leadership role with the Golden Rams, her energy and effort infectious throughout the entire roster.

“I think that if you believe in your teammates, they’ll believe in you right back,” Johnson said. “Just trusting your young guys, trusting your old heads to make the decisions to put us in the position to win.”

A finance major, Johnson said she wants to stay in basketball after college: get into coaching, and stay around the sport for as long as she can. 

Until then, she’s got a lot of time left to make her mark on the court. West Chester’s counting on her to lead the way.

“Her goal is to win and her goal is to work hard and carry some people along the way,” Wooden said. “As she goes, we go.”


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