Grant Hill is not the all-time leading scorer in South Lakes High School history. Joey Beard is. By exactly 110 points.
That fact — buried in the record books of a public high school in Reston, Virginia — tells you everything about the trajectory Joey Beard was on before things went sideways. Born and raised in Reston, a planned community in Fairfax County, Beard was 6-foot-3 by the time he was twelve and playing for Irvin Greene's Reston Select Seahawks in travel ball. "He was a big old bean pole," Greene remembered. By his freshman year at South Lakes, head coach Wendell Byrd pulled him away from the freshman tryouts and steered him toward the varsity gym — the same path Grant Hill had walked a few years earlier. "Wendell grabbed me and said 'no, you are over here,'" Beard recalled. "I had a lot more fear than excitement."
Fear gave way to dominance. Over four years, Beard racked up 2,138 career points, won two district championships and three regional titles, reached the state tournament three times, and was named Regional Player of the Year twice. As a junior, he averaged 22.5 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2.5 blocks. As a senior, he averaged 26 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists, earning Virginia State Player of the Year honors — beating out, among others, a young Allen Iverson and future #1 NBA draft pick Joe Smith. He was a McDonald's All-American and a third-team Parade All-American in the class of 1993, alongside Rasheed Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse, and Jacque Vaughn.
The recruiting battle had been raging since eighth grade. Beard narrowed his choices to Duke, North Carolina, Notre Dame, and Virginia. He visited Duke, and that was it. He gave his verbal commitment and never looked back. The connection was personal: he had followed Grant Hill's path from South Lakes to Durham, and the comparison was irresistible — another long, athletic, versatile forward from Reston, heading to Coach K.