LORETTO, Pa. – Saint Francis head women's basketball coach Joe Haigh announced Thursday the addition of two players for the 2015-16 season. Brielle Ward is a fifth-year graduate student transfer from Hampton, and Kayla Meador is an incoming freshman from Paul VI High School in Fairfax, Va., one of the top high school programs in the nation.
 
"We're extremely excited to be able to add two new members to the Saint Francis family for this upcoming year," Haigh said. "Brielle is someone that we recruited coming out of high school, and is a huge addition to our frontcourt. Kayla is a competitive winner who will add depth to our point guard position that has been sorely missed the past couple of seasons."
 
In four years at Hampton, Ward helped the Pirates to three MEAC titles. She started 47 games and averaged more than 20 minutes per game over the last two seasons. Ward was a force on the boards in those two years for Hampton. After averaging 3.5 rebounds per game as a redshirt freshman in 2012-13, she pulled down a career-high 8.3 rebounds per game in 2013-14. She followed that effort with a team-leading 6.9 rebounds per game last year.
 
"She is a very strong, aggressive rebounder and defender who plays extremely hard and really runs the floor well," Haigh said. "She should be able to step in immediately and have a big impact, helping to fill some of the rotation minutes left with the graduation of three of last year's posts."
 
Prior to her collegiate career, Ward helped Western High School in Baltimore to a championship in each of her four years.
 
Meador won two Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) championships at Paul VI. Last season, her team finished as the No. 1 team in the Washington, D.C., area and seventh in the nation. It also won its ninth consecutive Virginia Independent Schools State Championship under 2015 United States Marine Corps/WBCA National Coach of the Year Scott Allen, giving Meador state titles in each of her four years at the school.
 
Last season, Meador was a team captain and was named Third Team All-Conference. As a junior, she was an Honorable Mention.