Three players – Central Bucks East’s Jess Lockwood & Haley Moran and North Penn’s Lily Brown - surpassed 1,000-point mark in the season’s final weeks. (CB East action shots provided courtesy of Diane Barry & NP action shot courtesy of Greg Powell)
The 2025-26 basketball season included several milestone moments that occurred in the season's final weeks. A pair of Central Bucks East players – senior Jess Lockwood and junior Haley Moran – and North Penn junior Lily Brown ensured themselves a spot in their program record books when they reached the 1,000-point plateau.
Lockwood and Moran: A Dangerous Duo
In the world of high school basketball, thousand-point scorers are few and far between. To have a pair of players accomplish that feat in the same year is especially rare. Central Bucks East had a pair in the school year just completed in Jess Lockwood and Haley Moran.
“I am always amazed by any thousand-point accomplishment because you’re talking about a lot of success over the years – it’s not just having one good year,” former CB East coach Liz Potash said. “We hadn’t had any at East for a while, and all of a sudden it was Emily Chmiel, Anna Barry Jess
and then Haley. It’s pretty incredible. It’s cool for the program, and it’s a great individual accomplishment.”
Lockwood was a four-year varsity player who pretty much scored her thousand points in three years.
“Jess is really pretty incredible because freshman year she came in, and she was on the varsity team but really didn’t get varsity minutes,” Potash said. “You could kind of watch her developing and her game growing and seeing where she could potentially be, and credit to her, she put in a ton of work over the summer and sophomore year came in and was really dominant.
“You don’t normally see that kind of turnaround from one year to the next. She went from barely getting minutes to first team all-league as a sophomore. And then obviously that just continued. You’re talking about a kid that’s been first team all-league three years in a row, and she just grew her game to a point where it really made it difficult for other teams to play her. She kept extending her three-point range, which made it really challenging for people.”
Connecting from beyond the arc was just a piece of Lockwood’s game.
“She can finish around the basket, and she can change possessions on the defensive end, so it’s the all-around complete game she was able to develop over four years. It really is incredible,” Potash said. “I can’t really think of another kid that I’ve had that was first team all-league three years.
“All the credit to her, she put in a lot of work, and I’m just really proud that she was able to accomplish the thousand-point mark.”
For Lockwood, scoring a thousand points was not necessarily the end goal.
“People go into high school, and it’s a goal for everyone,” she said. “If it was going to happen, I would let it happen, but as a freshman, I wasn’t sure if it could happen or not. I knew I had a lot of improving to do, and I had to put in a lot of work to get it.”
And work she did, improving to the point where - as a sophomore - Lockwood was named to the All-SOL Colonial Division first team
“I knew all the hard work I was putting in was paying off,” she said. “By the end of my junior year, I knew I was getting really close - I was only a couple hundred away, so that’s when it started becoming a reality. I wasn’t pressuring myself to get it. I knew if I just did what I had to do, I could get it.”
Lockwood reached the milestone on Feb. 10 in the SOL title game against Upper Dublin.
“I think towards the end when the season was winding down, it was obviously in the back of a lot of people’s minds,” she said. “When I was getting really close, I was definitely in my head.
“I was missing easy shots that I would normally make. I think every year I tend to get into a slump or get in my head, and I just had a rough couple of weeks. During that period this year, I got sick for a week, so there were games I wasn’t playing. Then there were games where I just was not doing very good. Then I kind of turned things around, and I was inching closer and closer, so once I got it, I was relieved.”
Also playing a starring role on a Patriot squad that won back-to-back SOL Colonial Division titles 
and advanced to the state tournament was Moran, the Patriots’ crafty floor general.
“Haley obviously got minutes her freshman year, and you could see the potential,” Potash said. “We played Dallastown in the first round of states her freshman year. We lost a close game, and she was actually our leading scorer that game.
“You want to talk about someone that put the work in – she sat down in her end-of-year meeting after freshman year and talked about all the things she wanted to accomplish the next year. She came back sophomore year, and she was a different player. It was unbelievable.
“And just when you thought – how can she improve her game more? Then, she puts in even more work going into her junior year, and she played on a high level the previous year. Then she went and made the Comets National team the next year. Every year you just watched her grow.”
Moran earned first team All-SOL Colonial Division honors as both a sophomore and junior. She was a unanimous choice for Colonial Division MVP this year.
“Haley is the ultimate point guard,” Potash said. “As much as she has the capability to score, I 
actually think she is way more pass-first. She sees the floor so well, she communicates on the floor, and she’s very much a team-first player.
“She literally will do anything and everything to help the team. You need her to rebound, she’s going to get in and rebound. You need her to set a screen, she’s going to set a screen. She’s a special player.”
The all-league point guard gained valuable experience as a freshman.
“I was probably the sixth man freshman year, so I learned a lot from being in that type of role coming off the bench,” Moran said. “Our point guard graduated, so I knew I was going to be the primary ball handler.
“That summer is when I really amped up my game. I wanted to really focus on basketball because my goal was to play in college at the highest level. I made a big jump because I honed in on my weaknesses – like my shot and finishing – and just worked to improve a lot of the areas of my game that weren’t there before.”
Moran’s hard work paid dividends. She scored 500 points as a sophomore and then surpassed the 1,000-point mark on Feb. 25 in the Patriots’ District 1 6A playback game against Spring-Ford.
“I felt like a big weight dropped off my shoulders,” Moran said. “It’s always been a huge goal of mine. Obviously, I wasn’t focusing on scoring a lot of points but trying to be the best teammate possible. After scoring however many I scored last year, I realized it was actually possible.”
Moran crossed another goal off her list when she recently committed to continue her basketball career at Bucknell University, and with that decision behind her, the standout point guard will focus on her final high school season.
“We lost a lot of people, and I feel like it will be a rebuilding year, but you never know what can happen,” she said.
“It’s unbelievable to be able to score a thousand points in your junior year,” Potash said. “When you look at what these kids are doing to put themselves in the best position for the team to have success, it really is amazing. The same thing with Jess.
“Both of them have put themselves in really good positions. They’ve had great teammates around them who have helped them be successful. We are just so proud of them.”
Lockwood – who will be attending Duquesne where she will major in nursing – will not be continuing her basketball career, but she walks away from the sport with no regrets.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be at any other school,” she said. “I am so thankful for all my teammates. To this day, I miss playing with them and just miss basketball.
“The coach we had, the bond we all had – it was very special, and it just led us to a lot of our success because we’re all so close with each other and that makes it so easy to play with each other. We’re able to pick each other up. I’m just very thankful for the experience I had at East.”
Brown Making her Mark
Bri Cullen knew she’d inherited a special talent before Lily Brown stepped onto the court as a freshman.
“I knew about her obviously in eighth grade – I had seen her play a couple of times,” the Knights’ coach said. “We invited her to play in our summer league as a rising freshman, and I knew right 
away she would contribute.”
Brown gave early glimpses of things to come on a squad that - led by Thomas Jefferson University-bound senior Caleigh Sperling - captured the SOL Colonial Division title and advanced to the PIAA 6A state quarterfinals.
“I was the first one off the bench,” she said. “I knew I was going to be able to grow my ability as a person and player. North Penn is very competitive, and I could see myself starting and producing here. I knew that I was going to have to step up my game when those seniors left.”
“I think (coming off the bench) really helped to take some pressure off her,” Cullen said. “It let her grow and develop and gave her a whole year to really just learn, especially under Caleigh. Her sophomore year she came right in and filled Caleigh’s shoes, and there was no hesitation.”
As a sophomore Brown was a fixture in the starting lineup and never left, earning second team all-league honors.
“Sophomore year I started playing a lot more and scoring a lot more and just kind of getting in my groove with my teammates and the coaching staff and making a strong connection with them,” she said.
Brown entered her junior season knowing the 1,000-point milestone was within reach but didn’t know exactly how many points she needed until she was 80 away. She entered her team’s game against Central Bucks East on Feb. 3 needing just nine points. She reached that before halftime and led the Knights with 20 points.
“Going into the game, I knew how many I needed, and I knew I could accomplish that,” Brown
said. “I just needed to keep playing my game my way, and that’s what I did.”
Brown was quick to credit her teammates.
“I appreciate all of them,” she said. “I have very supportive teammates, and I love all of them. I couldn’t have done it without them.”
Brown is the 14th player on the girls’ side at North Penn to reach the milestone.
“She’s a great leader on the floor,” Cullen said. “That’s always been her role, and we’ve worked hard to develop that. Being a leader doesn’t always have to be vocal. You can go out and work the hardest on the floor every single game.
“We had games at the end of the season we needed to win to keep us in a playoff position, and she really brought us to where we needed to be. She had multiple games with 15 or 16 rebounds and more than 20 points.”
Her numbers for the season were impressive. The 5-11 forward – who also sees action at guard - dominated at both ends of the court, averaging 17.1 points, 9.7 rebounds, 2.1 steals.
“She has developed an outside shot, and she’s a very hard player to defend,” Cullen said. “Something I really admire about her is – obviously, what kid doesn’t want to score a thousand points, but Lily is more concerned with how many rebounds she had.
“She knows she can score, but she knows when she’s not scoring, there are other ways to contribute, and that’s something she really focuses on, which I really appreciate because there is more to basketball than just scoring.
“Obviously, having a thousand-point scorer in general is nice because you have that offensive production, but Lily’s just a great kid that everybody loves.”
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