Notre Dame women's basketball officially signs 2025 five-star forward Leah Macy
Niele Ivey has done it again. For the fifth time in the last three recruiting cycles, Notre Dame’s head coach has signed a five-star talent. Class of 2025 five-star forward Leah Macy signed with the Fighting Irish on Wednesday.
Macy joins Hannah Hidalgo, Cassandre Prosper, Emma Risch and Kate Koval as five-star signees for the Irish in the last three seasons. She’s been committed to Notre Dame since May when she chose the Irish over UConn, Louisville and Kentucky. She is the only player who will sign with the Irish in the early signing period, per a Blue & Gold source.
The 6-2 forward from Bardstown (Ky.) Bethlehem High School is the No. 19 player in the class of 2025 according to ESPN’s recruiting rankings. Signing top-20 players is nothing new for Ivey. All four of the aforementioned players were in the top 20 in their respective classes; in 2023, Hidalgo was No. 5, Prosper was No. 16 and Risch was No. 20. In 2024, Koval was No. 5.
According to MaxPreps, Macy scored 24.9 points and 13.9 rebounds per game as a junior at Bethlehem last season. She made 67.3 percent of her shots from the floor. Her Banshees recorded a record of 27-9 and feel in the quarterfinals of the Kentucky state tournament. The team Macy and Co. lost to won the state championship. That’s the goal for Macy this year.
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Macy, who won a gold medal with Team USA at the 2024 FIBA U18 Women’s AmeriCup in Colombia with Ivey serving as a bench coach, is joining a solid core of players who will be around for the 2025-26 season, but she’s also arriving at a time when Notre Dame will be bidding farewell to forwards Maddy Westbeld, Liatu King and Liza Karlen.
A front-court presence like Macy is just what Notre Dame needed in this class.
The future of the Irish front court is in the hands of Koval, a 6-5 center who’s averaging 13.0 points and 8.5 rebounds per game through the first two games of her college career, and Macy. Size and being able to hang with top teams in the post has been a concern for the Irish in recent seasons, but Ivey has rectified that through recruiting and transfer portal wins.
Being that Macy is Notre Dame’s only signee in the class, Ivey is going to need a few of the latter once again in the coming offseason. She has proven capable of pulling it off, though, and will likely have strong success in doing so again.
