UPPER LAKE — Any number of words come to mind when the subject is five-sport athlete Maddy Young, the graduated Upper Lake High School senior who dominated like few others have in a single sports season, one that brought a wealth of success to her and her Cougars teammates in 2022-23.
However, if you had to choose one word to describe Young, it most certainly would be “driven,” because the 18-year-old is every bit of that. Headed to UC Davis where she will major in veterinary medicine, the daughter of Rob Young and Angelina Arroyo of Upper Lake said she hopes to walk onto either the Aggies’ women’s soccer or basketball teams, a tall order given that UC Davis is a NCAA Division I school.
Don’t bet against her.
Young, coming off one of the greatest individual seasons in the county’s history, is the Lake County Record-Bee’s Athlete of the Year for girls sports. And it was no contest. Young, the youngest of four children and the only girl, is the second sibling in her family to win Athlete of the Year honors, joining big brother Dustin Thaxton (Kelseyville High, 2011-12).
The better athlete between the two?
“Me,” a smiling Young said without a second’s hesitation.
It would be hard to argue with her given the season she had. Young earned co-most valuable honors in soccer while leading the Cougars to an undefeated league championship and a berth in the North Coast Section Division 3 finals for a second year in a row. A tenacious defender in the midfield, Young was a key component of an Upper Lake team that went undefeated until its final game, a 3-1 upset loss to St. Bernard’s of Eureka.
While Young’s senior year was off to a great start, it was just the appetizer before the main course. During the winter sports season that would follow she not only won the North Coast Section 131-pound championship in wrestling, which qualified her for the state tournament, but she helped lead the Upper Lake varsity girls basketball team win a third straight NCL II title, reach the section finals and advance to the NorCal quarterfinals. The Cougars finished 29-3, which tied school and Lake County marks for most wins in a single season. Along the way she collected two more section medals to go along with the one she received in soccer — a championship one for wrestling and a runner-up medal in basketball. She also picked up her second NCL II co-most valuable player award, this one in basketball.
Young could have done nothing in the spring and still have finished with more accolades than any of her Athlete of the Year competitors, but there is no such thing as “free time” in Young’s vocabulary, and it’s entirely by design.
“I try not to have free time,” Young said. “I’ve seen too many others use their free time in a bad way. Sports is my way of clearing my mind. Too many high schoolers have mental health issues eating away at them and they use their free time in a way that doesn’t help them.”
Social media is something Young tries to limit her exposure to.
“It’s the main cause of problems,” she said. “No one is willing to go face to face with anybody now.”
To keep her mind clear following an ultra-busy winter sports season where she never missed a single wrestling practice and just one basketball (against Ferndale, one of the team’s three losses, in the Stokes Tournament in December), Young decided to play not one but two sports in the spring, starting at third base for a softball team that won an undefeated league title (to go along with league titles in soccer and basketball) and running hurdles in track.
“We didn’t have a hurdler,” Young said. “So I decided to try that.”
Young earned an All-League honorable mention for the softball team and reached the North Coast Section Class A Championships in track. She had no experience running hurdles but simply picked up tips from athletes and coaches along the way.
As in all things sports or otherwise, Young wasn’t playing simply to be there or to have a good time. She wanted to win.
“I’m a 13,” Young responded when asked to rate herself 1-10 on a competitive scale.
Despite all of her individual and team success coming into the spring sports season, Young said earning a starting job (at third base) in softball ranks high among her chief accomplishments during her senior year.
“Coming back to softball, playing third base even though I hadn’t played since middle school, that’s one of my biggest accomplishments,” Young said.
While there were players on the team who might have resented Young’s quick rise to a starting job because they had been with the program longer, Young said she earned her spot.
“One of my teammates said (to other players on the team), ‘You might have been here longer, but she’s going to work harder than the rest of you.’”
“I’m here to win,” said Young, who never experienced a league loss in soccer, basketball or softball her senior year.
Softball might have been the most enjoyable sport for Young simply because of expectations.
“There weren’t any because I hadn’t played in a long time,” she said. “The expectations were pretty high in my others sports, so there wasn’t the same amount of pressure. I really enjoyed it.”
Not that Young doesn’t perform well under pressure, because she does.
Basketball
An excellent ballhandler and distributor as the Cougars’ point guard in basketball and one of the best defenders in the high school ranks, big or small school, Young could also find the hoop when needed — her 13 points led the team in its final game, a loss to eventual state champion Bret Harte of Angels Camp in the NorCal quarterfinals. She went 4-for-4 from the line in that game and had the team’s only 3-pointer while also playing airtight defense and taking an elbow in the left eye that briefly benched her in the first half and limited her vision the rest of the night.
“Her overall competitiveness and her willingness to do whatever it takes to win the game, that’s what separates her from others,” said co-head coach Annie Pivniska Petrie, an extremely talented point guard during her Upper Lake playing days in the early 1990s. “She’s a tenacious defender who will never back down.”
Young was often called upon to guard the opposing team’s top scorer, whether that was a guard or post player, and she met the challenge even if it meant giving up several inches in height to an opposing player. Her quick hands and feet, lightning reflexes and savvy court sense more than compensated.
“We had one playoff game where Taylar (Minnis, Upper Lake’s center) was struggling with their big girl, so we switched. I played her man and I shut that girl down. I like the challenge and I would rather defend against the taller girls. Other teams think they can feed the ball inside over the top of me, but that’s not happening.”
“She has the quickest feet and hands, she’s just a natural,” Upper Lake co-head coach Raelene Cromwell said of Young. “We could play her down low, anywhere. She loved the challenge.”
Young didn’t always embrace being a point guard during her younger days in basketball.
“I think I’ve worked with her since the third grade,” Cromwell said. “At the time we needed her because we didn’t have anyone else who could do it. Maddy wasn’t sure she could, but since then she’s tried really hard to perfect that position. It took her time to figure it out, but she did. And working with Annie, another point guard, really helped her come into her own in high school.”
Wrestling
Though she wrestled in middle school, Young didn’t wrestle her freshman or sophomore years in high school. She took up the sport again her junior year, which created some friction between the basketball and wrestling programs, who didn’t want to share such a talented athlete While the powers that be gradually worked out an accommodation, it wasn’t the best situation, according to Young.
“I even considered not playing basketball this season because I was going to wrestle,” Young said.
Cooler heads prevailed all the way around, so much so that Young excelled at both sports while bouncing back and forth between practices and wrestling and basketball tournaments. It definitely was a delicate dance, but one that she mastered.
“I think all of us supported Maddy in her quest to do two (winter) sports and do them well,” Pivniska Petrie said. “We all kind of embraced it. It was kind of a unique situation. Instead of fighting it we wanted to make it work for the student-athlete. People rallied behind her.”
After winning a sectional championship that included victories in the quarterfinals and semifinals against wrestlers who had beaten her earlier in the season, Young upset No. 1 seed Hanna Ripper 4-3 in the 131-pound finals. At the state tournament that followed, Young went 2-2 and admits that she didn’t have her A game going that weekend.
“I wasn’t ready for state mentally,” she said. “I’d never done anything like that before and something was just off. When (teammate) Lexy (Peregrina, freshman 160-pounder) broke her arm (eliminating her from the tournament) I still had one match left and it kind of put fear in me.”
The fear didn’t last long. She was on the road the next day to San Francisco for the North Coast Section championship basketball game against top-seeded University High School of San Francisco. The Cougars lost but came back a few days later to beat Portola 52-47 in the opening round of the NorCal playoffs.
Influences
Young said she appreciated the efforts of all of her coaches — Daniella Santana in soccer, Pivniska Petrie and Cromwell in basketball, Heather Wurm in softball and Thomas Santana in track.
They certainly appreciated her.
“Maddy was an amazing teammate,” said Wurm. “She was one if the hardest working athletes I have ever had the pleasure of coaching. She didn’t have the spitfire confidence like she did with basketball or wrestling, but she gave me 110 percent. She was positive, sincere and joyful.”
Added Wurm, “She was such fun to watch, she set the tempo every single inning. I’m really gonna miss her. She’s a one-of-a-kind human.”
A competitor who often had her own thoughts as to how things should happen, Young did clash with her coaches occasionally, but it was nothing they couldn’t work out.
“More of a lack of communication between ideas,” Young said. “I’m someone who has to have something explained to me when I don’t think what we’re doing is the right thing. Annie and I had a few moments like that, but she played point guard so she knew where I was coming from.”
Moving forward
As Young, who carried a 3.98 grade point average, prepares for the next stage in her life, her freshman year at UC Davis, her goal is to finish the veterinary program in fewer than the average eight years. She plans to take more units, if possible, to complete the program in as few as six years. Of course, that will depend on whether or not she is playing a sport at UC Davis.
“Even if I could just practice with them (Division 1 athletes at Davis) that would be like a dream come true,” Young said. “I like to learn new things and I’m sure I could learn a lot from them.”
Young also would like to coach one day. She’s already helping out with open field (soccer) and gym (basketball) summer workouts at Upper Lake.
Will she ever get any free time? Maybe next decade.
