Over a season in a women's basketball league jackson scored 41 more points than the second highest scorer leslie. together they scored 1,189 points how many points did each player score

First, you know that Jackson (let call her J) scored 41 more points than L (Leslie).  What we don't know is how many points L scored so we can use a variable that will be 'x'.
So the equation will be J=41+x.
We also know that the total points is 1,189.
To find out what x is we first subtract 1,189-41.  We then get 1,148.
We are now left with 2x and 1,148 so we divide 1,148 by 2 and get 574.
574=x so now we can plug that in.
J= 574+41
Jackson scored 615 points and Leslie scored 574 points

(You can use bar modeling to do solve this problem.  An example of bar modeling is shown below.