NE10 40th Anniversary Home Page
Mark Swasey -- then in his first stint as the head women’s basketball coach at Franklin Pierce University -- went to the Stoneleigh-Burnham School in Greenfield, Mass., on a tip. A connection of his said there was a point guard he needed to take a look at.
Swasey knew as early as the pregame warm-up the point guard he had come to see was not a fit for his team. However, Stoneleigh-Burnham’s opponent was Cheshire (Conn.) Academy, and their fiery, redheaded point guard caught his attention.
Jennifer Leedham would go on to score 1386 points at Franklin Pierce. She was a two-time All-Northeast-10 Conference selection and was the NE10 Defensive Player of the Year as a senior in 2008-09.
Somehow, Jen is only the second-most decorated Leedham to play at Franklin Pierce. Her younger sister, Johannah Leedham, rewrote the record books.
“Divine intervention,” he says with a laugh. Swasey is not shy about the unlikely run of events which led one of the finest players in Division II history to Rindge, N.H., of all places.
Jo had not had her A-game on the day he saw the English sisters play at Stoneleigh-Burnham, but Swasey still recognized her talent level. He was interested in both of the Leedhams, but was rebuffed. He was told Jen had verbally committed to the University of Vermont, and Jo was easily a mid-major Division I level talent who his program would never stand a chance of attracting. So, Swasey told the Cheshire Academy coach to let him know if anything changed and went back to his search for a point guard.
Things changed.
Jen’s offer from Vermont fell through. Swasey got her to Rindge for a visit. In a stroke of blind luck, a traveling team from Britain happened to be working out in the Fieldhouse at Franklin Pierce on the day she visited.
“Jen shows up for her official visit and it was like old home days,” Swasey recalls. “She’s hugging everybody. I mean, you couldn’t draw this up. I’d be lying if I said I orchestrated this whole thing.”
The visit was a smashing success. Jen came to Franklin Pierce. Then, the Division I offers never materialized for Jo. Jen helped recruit her younger sister to Rindge a year later.
The rest, as they say, is history. Jo would go on to pour in 3050 points, the most in Division II history. She was a two-time National Player of the Year, a four-time All-American, a four-time All-Region selection, a three-time NE10 Player of the Year and a four-time All-NE10 selection.
While Swasey knew he had a special player after recruiting Jo, he certainly had no idea the heights she would reach. “If I knew four years down the road, right? Recruiting would be a heck of a lot different,” he said. “I never thought for a second she’d score 3000 points, right? I wasn’t thinking that way. What I was thinking was what just happened to our team. All of a sudden, the level of competition in this gym just rose.”
What it meant for the team was the best run of success in program history. After a 17-11 campaign and a first round exit from the NE10 Championship in Jo’s freshman season, the team took off. A 27-6 mark, an East Region title and a trip to the national quarterfinal in 2007-08. A 29-6 campaign, NE10 regular season and postseason crowns, a second East Region title and a trip to the national title game in 2008-09. After Swasey departed, Steve Hancock took over for the 2009-10 season, Jo’s senior year, and the Ravens rattled off a program-record 32 wins (32-2), defended the NE10 Title, won the East Region for a third straight year and went on to the national semifinal.
So, what took Leedham from “special player” to “one of the best players in Division II history”? To Swasey, it came down to a couple of key things, one of which was her ability to mentally size up her opponents and then use her talents to pick apart their weaknesses. “She was always, it seems, a step ahead of whoever was guarding her, and she would get in their heads. You know, it’s kind of like a pitcher,” he says, offering up a baseball analogy. “You’re thinking fastball, they throw the curveball. You’re thinking curveball, they throw the fastball. That is how she played every possession.”
The other piece was her unselfishness, which allowed her to take advantage of court vision and knowledge of the game which were simply on another level. “The one thing about Jo was, she could have scored 5000 points if she wanted to,” said Swasey. “She was so unselfish with the ball. She was an unbelievable passer. She knew where everybody was going to be.”
Swasey is in a unique position to reflect on Jo Leedham’s career a decade down the road. He moved on from Franklin Pierce in 2009, before Leedham graduated. He returned a year ago to take the helm of the team again. As he moves forward with this edition of the Ravens, one of his goals is to try to cultivate student-athletes who can provide the same level of leadership he saw in both Leedham sisters.
“Who knew that Joe and Jen were going to be the type of leaders that they were? I didn’t know that recruiting. That just kind of happened, right?” Swasey said, while again pointing out how fortunate he was to have things sort out the way they did. “It could have been unhealthy leadership. It could have been something that completely worked against the team fabric. They could have been very selfish. There were so many things they could have been, and we were really fortunate.”
“I think the records speak for themselves,” he added. “We got the whole package. They brought it. They brought all of it.”
For Franklin Pierce, the Leedhams meant a whole cabinet full of trophies. For Swasey, the lesson was to never turn down a chance to go scout a player. You never know what you might find.
Jo Leedham Links of Note:
ABOUT THE NE10
Beginning its 40th anniversary season, the NE10 is an association of 14 diverse institutions serving student-athletes across 24 NCAA Division II sports. Together we build brilliant futures by embracing the journey of every student-athlete.
Each year, 4,500 of those student-athletes compete in conference championships in 24 sports, making the NE10 the largest DII conference in the country in terms of sport sponsorship. Leading the way in the classroom, on the field and within the community, the NE10 is proud of its comprehensive program and the experience it provides student-athletes.
