VALLEY SPRINGS -- If the sport consists of a ball and Valley Springs has a team for it, chances are good Maura Moore's name will be on that roster.
The 5-foot-7 senior point guard has already been a part of Lady Tiger teams that have reached the Class 3A state tournament in golf and volleyball this fall. Now Moore turns her attention to basketball, where she hopes to help Valley Springs make a return trip to the Class 3A state tournament before she prepares to play softball in the spring.
How does Moore find the time to do all these sports?
"Well, you just have to put your priorities first, and sports is my life," she said. "Right now, I just finished volleyball, so now I'm on basketball. I'm practicing softball on my own, like pitching and stuff.
"Through the summer, I just find the time. My parents are great at helping me prioritize everything."
Moore was a good reason why Valley Springs reached the Class 3A state championship last season. The Lady Tigers (36-7, 7-5 3A-1 East) suffered back-to-back league losses to Mountain View and Rose Bud in January, but they won their next 11 games and took the 3A-1 East Conference and Class 3A Region 1 tournament titles.
That streak included wins over Rose Bud and Mountain View in both postseason tournaments. Moore, who Valley Springs coach Ryan Johnson refers to as the "person who keeps everybody happy," averaged 8.8 points, 4 assists and 5 rebounds per game in the regular season, but averaged 15 points, 4.6 assists and 6.7 rebounds in the Lady Tigers' eight postseason games.
"She turned it on late, and I think some of that has to do with her doing everything," Johnson said. "You're going all over the place, spreading yourself thin, then you come to do just one sport and really sell out. It takes time to get back into the flow of things.
"Teams were really focusing on stopping some of our other players who had been playing really well. I don't know if she took it personally, but she stepped up and scored."
Moore said she heard stories from her older sister about what it is like playing in Bank OZK Arena, the site of the state basketball championships, and she couldn't wait to get her experience there. Valley Springs would get to settle the score with Mountain View, which beat the Lady Tigers twice in the regular season before Valley Springs won the two postseason battles.
However, that game was never played as the coronavirus pandemic began to sweep the country. Valley Springs would eventually be considered the Class 3A state co-champion with Mountain View.
"We were about 10-15 minutes away from our motel room, something like that," Moore said. "We had just finished eating at a Mexican restaurant, and we were on a bus heading for our motel. We had to stop at a gas station, turn around and go home. Nobody spoke a word on the way back home. It was so sad.
"But everything happens for a reason. I wish we could have got that experience to play there. We were on fire, and everything just connected. Right after the NAC tournament, something happened and we connected from there on. Everybody was communicating on the floor, and it was just amazing."
The cancellation last March, if anything, has given Moore and her teammates more incentive to earn the return to trip to Hot Springs. Even when the pandemic wouldn't allow anybody to practice, Johnson said he made sure he sent his players workouts and had them running in order to be ready for when practice starts.
Johnson said people could see a different type of person when Moore steps on the floor this year, especially since this is her last season.
"I don't think there will be that period where she's spread so thin," Johnson said. "She's really come out. We've already played three or four games this season, and she's looked good in all of them. I'm hoping we see the Maura that we saw last year all year long."
"She's everything you can ask for in a point guard. She's a tremendous leader. She sees the floor well, and we have a lot of scorers and a lot of options. She finds people and spreads the ball around. Then when she needs to, she can score with the best of them."
Henry Apple can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAHenry.