As freshman Kaleigh Veltus gamely tried to fit in with upperclassmen teammates Lindsey Mizak, Katie Hansen, Rachel Dunnum and Sally Winiarski that night in Union Grove Nov. 21, 2003, her coach somehow just knew she belonged on that floor.

"I was pretty confident," Union Grove High School girls' basketball coach Rob Domagalski said. "From seeing her play in the offseason, I knew right away she would be a part of the team and contribute.

"She scored 170 points her freshman year and maybe that was more than I expected, but from that point on, I knew she was going to be one of our leading scorers, if not our leading scorer, for the rest of her high school career."

With the 5-foot-10 Veltus serving as the common denominator these last four seasons, Union Grove progressed from records of 10-11 to 13-10 to 17-6 to 18-3. She saved her best for her senior season, leading the Broncos to the Lakeshore Conference championship, surpassing Aimee Wagner to become Union Grove's all-time scoring leader with 1,134 points, earning first-team All-Lakeshore Conference honors for the third straight season and becoming the first player from her program to be named the All-Racine County Player of the Year.

Veltus edged Case's Jineen Williams, a second-team Associated Press All-State guard, for the honor by a 6-4 vote of the 10 county coaches who attended the All-County meeting.

"I was actually very surprised, but I'm very excited (about the honor)," said Veltus, who will play for UW-Whitewater next season. "I've been playing for 12 years and there's been a lot of hard work and dedication and it's really paid off.

"I was really happy to know that my talent was appreciated throughout Racine County, to know that they picked me out of all the girls who could have been picked."

Maybe Veltus wasn't the flashiest player in the county. Maybe she wasn't the most talented. But it sure was difficult to overlook the player and person she is.

Veltus was a gentle, loving friend off the court, as evidenced by when she changed her uniform number from 34 to 24 as a senior to honor cancer-stricken teammate Tasha Helbling. And she was a fierce competitor on the court, consistently making life miserable for opposing coaches futilely trying to design gameplans to contain her.

"She's just got a wonderful all-around game," Waterford coach Mark Peperkorn said. "Whatever Rob needed her to do, whether it was posting up somebody smaller, taking somebody a little bit bigger out on the outside to use her quickness and outside shot, or occasionally bringing the ball up, she just had a real well-rounded, all-around game.

"She was terrible for matchups. If you guarded her with someone smaller, she posted them up. If you guarded her with someone bigger than her, she took them out the outside. Her all-around game created some very difficult matchups."

Truth be told, Veltus' statistics actually regressed as a senior. After averaging 15.8 points and 6.5 rebounds as a junior, those numbers diminished to 14.0 and 5.5.

"I know people always tend to look at numbers, but she was willing to let other people on her team take a bigger role, which was probably better for her," Peperkorn said. "I know in games we played her last year (when Veltus was a junior) where she was really asked to do a lot and by the fourth quarter, she was just whupped.

Kaylee Kempken, a senior at Catholic Central who played against Veltus while with Waterford prior to this season, also noticed that one of her closest friends took her game to another level.

"I think she was a better team leader," Kempken said. "Kaleigh was definitely the leader of that team and, without her, they wouldn't have been as successful. She was a better player because of her leadership and how strong she was on the floor."

And now comes the next step for Veltus. After UW-Whitewater coach Keri Carollo and her assistant, 1999 Park graduate Amy Zelinger, scouted Veltus at least a half dozen times last season, they saw the same player who was able to win over Domagalski four years ago.

"I think she's a great passer and she sees the floor real well and she can score," Carollo said. "She figures out a way to score, whether it's shooting out on the perimeter or taking it to the basket.

In a 55-49 Lakeshore Conference victory over Waterford Dec. 14, Veltus scored 10 of her 22 points in the fourth quarter and added 15 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, a steal and a block. In a 60-50 victory over Lake Geneva Badger Feb. 16, Veltus had 24 points, went 6-for-6 from the free-throw line and added four rebounds, four steals and three assists.

Veltus started every game for Union Grove during her high school career except for the first game of her freshman season. With Veltus as the mainstay, Union Grove progressed from 10-11 to 13-10 to 17-6 to 18-3.

"I thought she improved in the areas of definitely seeing the court and passing," Union Grove coach Rob Domaglaski said. "I thought those were the major areas she got better at from her junior to her senior year. There were a couple games this year where she had five or six assists and it was just one more facet of her game that she improved on over the course of her high school career."

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