This family is not to be missed.
Carle Place Frogs basketball player Ryan Leary recently achieved the impressive milestone of 1,000 career points.
Making the moment even more magical for the little one, he joined his three older sisters and mum as the latest family member to achieve the crushing feat.
“When I saw that shot go in, it was a pretty crazy experience,” Leary, a 16-year-old shooting guard who aspires to play in college, told The Post. “It only happened because of all the work that me, my sisters and my parents put in over the offseason,” he added of his Dec. 30 feat, which came against Malvern.
All three of Leary's sisters are college basketball players. Erin, his eldest child, is a senior at Iona College; Amanda, his middle sister, is a student at Springfield College; Caitlin, the youngest, is a freshman at Mercy University.
“Everything I learned was from watching them and working with them. They were all giving me advice about my jump shot,” he said, recalling that they always practice together when they come home from school.
Leary, who was first called up as an eighth-grader, gladly accepted the tutelage. He now holds the family record as the fastest in the 1,000 metres.
“I don't bother them much, but if they say something to me first, I'll remind them,” he joked.
Jokes aside, Karen Leary, the family matriarch, told The Post that her children are inseparable and use their accomplishments to motivate each other. She earned a thousand points as a senior at Baldwin High School in 1989, and she wasn't surprised to see her youngest succeed similarly.
“We were all ready for this to happen [with Ryan]. “It's unbelievable that the four of them did this,” she said.
Karen also mentioned that she gave her son advice from the stands about shooting.
Like Erin, Karen later played for Iona and now works as a physical education teacher at East Rockaway High School. Fittingly, she coached three players to score 1,000 points during her last stint with the high school girls basketball team.
It was only when Ms. 1000 recently explained all the accomplishments that I realized the strangeness of working with seven other four-figure registrants.
“I think this whole thing is very unique and very cool,” she laughed.
Ryan, who is also a state champion football player at Carl Place, accurately predicted the game in which he would reach Alf about a week before it happened. However, before that, there were some tensions mid-season that his older sister helped him overcome.
I told him: It will happen when it happens; Just keep playing your game,” Erin, who watched her brother score the feat in the stands, told The Post. “I was so excited for him when he got it. It was such a proud big sister moment that I almost cried.
As a unit, the Learys' passion for basketball is evident.
The family often invited the younger kids in their town to free clinics in their backyard, and Karen recalls Ryan once shoveling their outdoor court during a snowstorm to practice free throws. When Leary becomes a senior, he also wants to use his upcoming 12th-grade research project as an opportunity to coach more kids in basketball, he said.
“We have to pull Ryan out at night so he doesn't disturb the neighborhood bouncing the ball,” his father, Patrick Leary, told The Post.
Even though their father was a former college football player at Fairfield University and one of Ryan State's champion football coaches, he was still bullied as the only member of the family without a record.
As Ryan and the Frogs prepare for the postseason, he has two goals for the rest of his high school playing days. First, he wants to surpass 1,466 points and become the school's all-time leader. If that fails, Leary wants to break Caitlin's record of 1,357.
“Maybe I'll punish her about it for a day, but nothing crazy,” he said. “They have all been so supportive of my journey.”
