When Maddy Siegrist was in seventh grade, she received a phone call. 

Today’s top scorer in women’s college basketball had tried out for the St. Martin De Porres basketball team earlier in the day and was waiting for the coach to tell her she had made the A-team.

The call came. She was on the B-team  She took the news hard, writes Kris Rhim for The New York Times.

That’s when Siegrist hunkered down, practicing every chance she could.  The next year, she made the A-team and it’s been onward and upward ever since.

“That was a turning point in her early career,” said her father George Siegrist, who played college basketball at Marist. “She decided that she didn’t like having that feeling.”

“I’m a super competitive person,” Maddy Siegrist said, “and I never wanted to be on a second team again.”

The 6-foot-2 Villanova forward has become one of the best players in Division I, breaking records at every turn.

It’s helped propel Villanova’s team n this year’s NCAA women’s tournament.

“When you put out a good product, and you have a star people want to see, people come out,” Villanova coach Denise Dillon said.

Read more about Maddy Siegrist’s rise to basketball fame in The New York Times.

Find out more about Maddy Siegrist in this Philadelphia Inquirer video.