College ball on horizon for East Laurens athlete as historic career, marked by unique 3-sport triple play, comes to close 

Editor’s note: As the Sports Desk catches up on college commitments by athletes in the class of 2024, we circle back in today’s edition to an East Laurens standout who signed way back in the fall, but has made history for the Falcons this year in more sports than just the one she’ll be playing at the next level. See upcoming editions for more on recent schools’ signees. 

Graduation time, for high school seniors, brings a complicated mix of emotions that come with closing out one chapter of life, and starting a brand new one. 

Recounting the experiences and memories of high school, particularly those tied for an athlete to countless hours of gruel, grit and glory on sports fields, evokes a bittersweet nostalgia, while looking ahead to the knowns and unknowns of future educational and career opportunities is an added source of excitement and apprehension. 

The same is true for East Laurens High School’s Madison Cheek, who’s had some extra moments for reflection in the time between a final day of classes this past week and the official ending to her senior year with graduation festivities next Friday, giving way to her next phase playing softball at South Carolina’s Columbia College. 

“I’ve been here since I was in kindergarten,” Cheek said. “It’s just crazy to look at how much I’ve grown and how much East Laurens has grown. Having to leave that chapter and move onto the next, it’s hard.” 

In the reminiscing, there’s an awful lot about her four accomplished years in Falcon sports to look back on. 

Cheek will go down in Eastside history as not only one of the school’s most successful athletes all-around, but perhaps its most multitalented, after lettering in three different sports and pulling off the rare feat of juggling a couple of them at the same time. 

In addition to four decorated years playing softball and soccer, she made history by becoming the first-ever female Falcon to both participate in football, and also play in a varsity game, as a placekicker the past two years. 

In the East Laurens record books, her top numbers in two main activities and trailblazing endeavors in the third, make up an impressive body of work. And it’s one that has come as no surprise for any of her coaches, to whom Cheek’s outstanding intangible qualities, going along with some elite ability, stood out from the beginning. 

“She’s a great athlete. That’s one thing. And she has a great work ethic. That’s another thing. And she’s very selfless,” said East Laurens head girls soccer coach Chris Robinson. “She’s one of the top 10 leading goal scorers in East Laurens history, and she was willing to play goalie this year, and give up her personal wants and desires for the team, to have the team be successful. And she’s really done that all four years.” 

As you’d infer from Cheek’s college plans, the sport of softball is her best. 

The achievements, individually in four years as a starter and for the program as a whole in historic seasons the past two, are about as distinguished as it gets on the East Laurens diamond. 

She wrapped up her career with a .285 batting average and 50 RBIs at the plate, along with a 2.80 career ERA and 239 strikeouts over more than 230 innings in the circle. 

As a senior, on a Lady Falcon team that won 21 games and secured the program’s first-ever region championship, she compiled a perfect 9-0 record with a 1.53 ERA to earn region 2-High A pitcher of the year honors. 

“A born leader,” in the words of her assistant coach Dwayne Lowther, Cheek brought as much softball talent to the table as any East Laurens player in recent memory. 

But some various struggles she encountered along the way, her coaches believe, were what helped unlock the mental and competitive edge that made her the player she turned out to be.

“She had a little bit of a rough time fighting some adversity, but she came out on top,” East Laurens head softball coach Danielle Lowther said during Cheek’s signing ceremony in the fall. “She’s tougher, mentality-wise, she’s tougher physicality-wise. She’s just grown into a very good softball player.” 

Cheek will play third base and also do some pitching at Columbia – an NAIA school based in the state capital of South Carolina – which she found to be a unique college destination, and not just for its one-of-a-kind mascot, the Koalas. 

“Really, what I was looking for was something like East Laurens, something kind of small,” Cheek said. “Their campus is almost like East Laurens. The team is almost like East Laurens, as well. Everybody’s like a family, everybody’s together. The coaches are very involved, and I love that. And the administrators absolutely love all the athletes, they work with the athletes like the East Laurens teachers do with us… I really like how they were able to accommodate everything with all the sports.” 

The art of balancing many responsibilities in a busy schedule is something she’s already plenty familiar with from the double-duty of playing softball alongside football the past two years. 

Striking the balance, with workouts and practices for the two sports usually going at the same time during summer and fall, took some individual initiative as well as the understanding and willing cooperation of both sets of coaches. 

“Right after softball got done, I was getting in my vehicle and driving right over to football and getting however much work I would get in,” Cheek said of the typical transition. “Sometimes I would even stay over practice just to make sure I got a little bit extra in.” 

Her dedication was visible – on days when softball games weren’t a conflict – in just how frantically she’d move from one activity to the other in hopes of being there for as much of the football portion of the day as possible. 

“Even on picture day, we saw her run to softball pictures, and she was actually changing at her car to get back for football pictures,” her head football coach Bin Turner said. “It was always hectic. She’d run from one sport to the other to get her practice in. But she was always very good at letting you know where she was, and she always worked her hardest to get better whenever she was there.” 

That commitment was rewarded this past fall, when Cheek was called upon to kick late in the fourth quarter of the Falcons’ regular-season finale against Jefferson County. 

Previously, her only game action was unofficial in scrimmages prior to both the seasons she played football in 2022 and 2023. The long-awaited opportunity arose with East Laurens pulling away toward a final victory to clinch a state playoff berth. She came on to attempt the point-after a next-to-last touchdown of the night, which unfortunately drifted off-target.  

But redemption came in a hurry, as Cheek made her way back out as part of the kickoff unit, with orders to roll the ball onside in a moment, with a couple thousand eyeballs looking on, doubly as intimidating as the PAT moments before. 

“That was a lot of pressure, because so many people were on the field, and I knew if the boys didn’t recover, then I had to get that last person, whoever had the ball,” she said. “It was pretty nerve-wracking.”

The onside kick went just as they drew it up: Jamichael Carswell covered the ball up to put it back in East Laurens possession for a quick drive that would turn into another touchdown. This time, she nailed the extra point to get the Falcons to 51 points. 

Cheek described the chance to take part in the sequence of plays as an “incredible” feeling, and still feels that the experience of kicking as the focal point of an entire stadium on Friday night is a weight one doesn’t experience in any other high school sports setting. 

“I thought softball pitching had really bad pressure,” Cheek said. “Kicking for football is rough… Everybody’s watching you. They’re just watching you. They’re not watching the line or anything, they’re seeing if you make it.” 

Finding the focus she needed to handle the moment, though, was as simple as reactivating a mental switch she flipped each time stepping into the circle to pitch a softball game, and engaging the laser focus that seems to be a mode common to all the world’s best athletes. 

“I’ll absolutely zone everything out,” Cheek said. “I can’t hear anything. I just focus on what I need to do, and that’s just how I have to deal with it.” 

Her motivation to go out for football came, in part, from a goal of becoming a first female at East Laurens to do it, with some inspiration drawn from similar pioneers at other high schools in Georgia over recent years. But turning over the fresh leaf also originated from a lifelong love of the game. 

“I always wanted to play football,” she said. “I loved watching it. Me and my dad would just sit and watch football. And I was like, you know, I wonder what it would be like on the field.” 

Her interest was well-received by everyone in the school and program, from classmates to players and coaches who were each nothing but encouraging. 

“I had a huge support system behind me with my family and my friends,” Cheek said. “Most of the people on the football team, all the boys, were really close to me. I had really good friendships with a lot of those boys. And they pushed me to do it and said, ‘Just do it. I’ve got your back.'” 

She said that Turner, in particular, helped her feel as much a member of the team as any other player. 

The former East Laurens head coach, now an assistant at Dublin High School, remains impressed by how firmly Cheek held to the same commitments as the rest of her teammates, and never slacked on the work. 

“It was kind of amazing the way she balanced it, because that was one busy young lady,” Turner said. “She was part of the family. When you’re part of the family, you go through the same stuff everybody else is going through and you’re going to be accepted… She did everything that we asked of her.” 

Rounding things out for Cheek as a senior this spring was soccer, and a chance to take on a much different role from the one upfield in the Lady Falcons’ attack where she had played from her freshman year on up. 

A need at goalkeeper, where the team was replacing a top player in Hanna Meacham from the past season, prompted her to volunteer her services in a capacity well outside of the comfort zone. 

It was over Christmas break when the team was first getting together to begin its preseason conditioning, unsure of how to address the awkward question of how the vacancy would be filled. 

“I went up to Robo asking, hey, who’s gonna be in goal?” Cheek said. “And he was like, I have no idea. And I said, you know what, I’ll take one for the team, let’s just do it and get started on it.” 

Robinson was calculated in his approach to finding someone to step in, and stopped short of tapping anyone on the shoulder for the job, though Cheek was someone he had in the back of his mind as a potentially good option. 

“I kind of wanted somebody to want to do it, not where I had to put somebody back there,” he said. “I knew her, being a softball player, that she could catch the ball, so I didn’t worry about that. She could kick the ball off the ground and punt. She was tough and hard-nosed. So she was a perfect candidate. She did a great job.” 

The project, “a whole different process with learning things,” proved a challenge in developing the new instincts, whole-body fitness and quicker-twitch reflexes required of the position, but proved a success as Cheek combined with the Lady Falcon back line for shutouts in all but three of their 21 games. And every opponent to get a goal past her also advanced to the round of 8 in the postseason. 

The quality, on top of her humility and leadership, that stood out most to Robinson was perseverance in fighting through injuries, a nasty set of shoulder issues that held her back playing both sports as a sophomore. After being unable to pitch for most of the fall, Cheek had to play soccer in a shoulder brace, and was robbed of the strength and range of motion needed to be the prolific thrower she had been as a freshman. 

“She fought through it,” Robo said. 

Her three-sport career as a player is fully in the books, but there’s probably still more of Cheek’s East Laurens legacy to be written. At Columbia, she plans on pursuing a degree in exercise and sport science plus a minor in athletic coaching, with hopes of eventually coming back home to teach and coach for the Falcons in the future. 

But for the time being, there’s still a lot more she looks forward to the chance to learn, both on the academic side and when it comes to the ins and outs of college softball. Whatever challenges the next level has in store, she’s eager to take on. 

“Being able to meet even more new girls, and performing at a totally different level than travel or high school ball, it’s gonna be something completely different,” Cheek said.