Road to Duke
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.
At Duke
The comparison to Grant Hill was unfair from the start, and Duke's roster made it cruel. Beard arrived in the fall of 1993 as a freshman on the team that would reach the 1994 NCAA championship game — the last hurrah of the first dynasty. The forward spots were locked down by seniors Grant Hill, Antonio Lang, and Marty Clark — three experienced players on a team that went 28-6 and lost to Arkansas in the title game. Beard played 16 games, averaging 1.3 points and 0.5 rebounds in limited minutes behind three upperclassmen who had won back-to-back championships in 1991 and 1992. For a McDonald's All-American who had averaged 26 points per game in high school, it was a humbling introduction to the difference between being the best player in Virginia and being a freshman at Duke.
But the path seemed clear. Hill, Lang, and Clark were all graduating. Cherokee Parks and Erik Meek were centers, not wing forwards. Beard, entering his sophomore year, appeared to be the natural heir to the starting lineup — the McDonald's All-American who had paid his dues and was ready to step into the void left by three departing seniors. On paper, the 1994–95 season was supposed to be his.
Then everything collapsed at once. Beard developed mononucleosis in the preseason and missed Duke's first three games. While he was out, Krzyzewski — who was himself battling the debilitating back pain that would sideline him for most of the season and ultimately require surgery — committed to a twin-towers lineup with Parks and Meek at the forward and center spots. Freshman Ricky Price, a top-ten recruit from the class of 1994, looked good on the wing. There was no obvious path back for a sophomore recovering from mono on a team that was unraveling in real time. Duke would go 13-18 that season — the worst record in forty years, with assistant Pete Gaudet coaching most of the games in Krzyzewski's absence.
"I really lost my confidence and I didn't think I would be able to regain it at Duke," Beard later told the Connection Newspapers. It was an honest and painful admission from a player who had been Virginia's best high schooler two years earlier. In December 1994, he announced his transfer. He would not travel with the team to Chicago for the Illinois game. His departure opened the 13th roster spot that a walk-on named Todd Singleton — a kid from Severn, Maryland who had seen a tryout ad in the student newspaper — would fill.
The Duke Basketball Report would later note the irony: Krzyzewski lost Beard and didn't sign anyone to replace him in the fall of 1994, managing only one recruit, center Taymon Domzalski. But Beard's departure eventually created the roster flexibility that allowed K to land Roshown McLeod as a transfer from St. John's — a move that would pay dividends for years. "No offense to Joey Beard," the DBR wrote, "but Duke clearly got an upgrade with McLeod."
Beard's Duke career: 16 games, one season, one trip to the championship game, and a lesson in how quickly the ground can shift underneath even a McDonald's All-American.
After Duke
Joey Beard transferred to Boston University, sat out a year per NCAA rules, and then did exactly what the people back in Reston always knew he could do. Over three seasons with the Terriers, he scored 958 points and averaged 11.6 points per game, shooting 53.3 percent from the field — a mark that still places him fourth all-time in BU history. He earned two All-America East selections and became the program's best player, the kind of dominant force he was always meant to be.
After going undrafted in 1998, Beard went overseas — and stayed for a decade. His European career reads like a passport stamp collection: Chorale Roanne in France (1998–99), MTV Giessen in Germany (1999–2000), then Italy, where he found a home. He played for Basket Rimini on loan from Benetton Treviso, moved to CSF Sevilla in Spain for a season, then returned to Italy for Virtus Bologna and Viola Reggio Calabria. A detour to BC Oostende in Belgium preceded his return to Benetton Treviso, where he won the 2005 Italian National Cup — a legitimate professional championship on one of Europe's most storied basketball clubs.
He played EuroLeague basketball. He earned Italian dual citizenship. He suited up for Pallacanestro Reggiana, returned to Treviso a third time, then finished with Veroli Basket around 2008. Over roughly a decade in European professional basketball, the McDonald's All-American who couldn't crack Duke's rotation became a well-traveled, well-respected professional who made a living doing what he loved in some of the most beautiful cities on the continent.
Where Is He Now
When Joey Beard and his wife Elizabeth — a professional beach volleyball player and physical therapist — are in the United States, they have been based in Atlanta. Beard holds Italian dual citizenship, a souvenir from the years he spent playing in Serie A and the EuroLeague, living in Treviso and Bologna and Reggio Calabria and Seville.
His post-basketball life has been largely private. But the facts of his basketball life are remarkable enough. He outscored Grant Hill at the same high school. He was a McDonald's All-American in a class with Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse. He beat out Allen Iverson for Virginia State Player of the Year. He went to Duke and sat behind three seniors on a championship game team, then lost his confidence, lost his health to mono, and lost his roster spot in the worst season in modern Duke history. He rebuilt himself at Boston University, went overseas, won a championship in Italy, and played professional basketball for a decade across five countries.
The kid from Reston who had more fear than excitement when Wendell Byrd pointed him toward the varsity gym found his way — just not on the path anyone had drawn for him. His departure from Duke opened a roster spot for a walk-on who would stay four years. His arrival at Boston University turned a mid-major program into a conference contender. His decade in Europe proved that the talent was always real, even if Durham wasn't the right place to show it.
Joey Beard scored 2,138 points at South Lakes High School. Grant Hill scored 2,028. Some records speak for themselves.