News Articles – February 26, 2001

By WRIGHT THOMPSON
The New York Times
February 26, 2001

Jackie Stiles is now 20 points shy of being the leading scorer in the history of N.C.A.A. women’s basketball, and she is still the last one to leave practice. When her Southwest Missouri State teammates hit the showers, she stays. This is the way it has been for her, always. Jumper after jumper. Free throw after free throw. Ignoring the constant chaos around her, the senior guard will not leave until a hundred or more shots fall in. On the outside, she is driven and compulsive in everything she does. On the inside, she is pushed by the memory of an infant sister. Along with a competitive streak that turns friendly board games into contact sports and slights into fighting words, the memory of Carlie Stiles has helped keep Jackie Stiles at the gym in Springfield, Mo., long into the night. “I knew she didn’t get the opportunities that I got to have,” the 22-year-old Stiles said before a recent practice. “I know I’m blessed with many God-given talents and abilities, and I just feel like I have to get the most out of those and not let those go to waste.” In February 1992, Stiles’s junior high school team had won the Central Prairie League district title in St. John, Kan. Stiles, then a seventh grader, had scored her customary gazillion points. Making the victory even more special was having most of her family in attendance. Even her sister Carlie, less than a year old, made the trip. Carlie was born with encephalopathy, a condition that weakened her muscles, and doctors didn’t give her much of a chance. But, thanks to physical therapy, she was improving and was well enough to travel. While Stiles celebrated over fast food with her teammates in Great Bend, Kan., her family drove on toward their hometown of Claflin, Kan. En route, Carlie stopped breathing. CPR couldn’t restart the infant’s lungs, and she was taken to the emergency room. Stiles’s father, Pat, remembers Jackie combing Carlie’s hair in the hospital. A week later, after spending some of the time on life-support systems, Carlie died. The news devastated Stiles. For days, she would not eat or leave her room. At the funeral, relatives placed something important to them in Carlie’s coffin. Also a track phenom, Stiles left her national Amateur Athletic Union Junior Olympics gold medal. She has never returned to her sister’s grave. For years, Stiles carried a photo of Carlie in her gym bag. The memory of her sister, coupled with a fear of wasting her talent, has driven Stiles to work harder and longer than everyone around her. That drive has placed the 5-foot-8-inch Stiles in position to pass Patricia Hoskins of Mississippi Valley State (3,122) and Lorri Bauman of Drake (3,115) on the scoring list and has helped lead Southwest Missouri State into the top 25. The team improved its record yesterday to 20-5 with an 89-85 overtime victory on the road against Wichita State. Stiles scored 24 points to lead Southwest Missouri State. “I am so competitive,” Stiles said in an interview this past week. “I am driven; I hate to lose. I want to get the most out of my talents and abilities. I never wanted to look back and say: `If I would have done this. What if I would have done that?’ ” Not that Stiles doesn’t have a fun side. It’s just that even when playing the board game Life — as her roommate Carly Deer and her fiancé, Matt Barrett, will attest — her competitiveness takes over. “We were playing Life — me, Carly and Matt,” she said. “You can take these Life things you get from others when they are all used up. People starting taking my Life things, and I got furious because I thought I was going to lose. I went crazy.” Even though Drake University Coach Lisa Stone called Stiles one of the best perimeter players she has ever seen, and even though she is averaging 30.9 points a game, Stiles is still spending her time making her already deadly jump shot better. In elementary school, she dribbled basketballs to class. Her practice obsession was cemented during her sophomore year in high school. Driving baseline at a tournament in Ellsworth, Kan., she was undercut and landed with a thud on her right wrist. An X-ray revealed a break. Three days later, said Gregg Webb, her high school coach, Stiles was in the gym, shooting left-handed. Then, having ripped off the cast weeks early, to her doctor’s chagrin, Stiles invented her 1,000-shot routine. Several times a week, she would shoot sets of 200 shots from different spots on the floor. She would stay, no matter how long it took, until 1,000 went in. “If I don’t do my workout, it’s like I feel guilty,” she said. “It’s better for me to get my workout done and then go do something fun.” During the summer, she would schedule daily pickup games with two friends, Kyle and Kevin Haxton, in the afternoon after they got off work. On the way to his job, around 7 a.m., Kyle remembers driving by the gym every day, and there she was, about 11 hours early — shooting, lifting weights, running on the track. “It drives people crazy that are close to me,” she said of her never-ending quest for perfection. “I am never satisfied. I can remember I had 49 points against Northern Iowa this year, and I was like, `Gosh, I missed those free throws.’ I am never satisfied with my performance; I’ve never played a perfect game.” To some, her habits seem to paint her as obsessive compulsive. She wears the same ratty kneepads (“No matter how much I wash them, they still look grungy,” she wrote in an Internet diary), and requires her fiancé call her exactly two and a half hours before games. Her entire high school team had to have Subway sandwiches the day of the game — even though the closest franchise to her hometown was 18 miles away. Stiles is the career leading scorer in Kansas high school basketball history — a crowning achievement in the basketball- crazy state. She is the two-time Missouri Valley Conference most valuable player and the leading scorer in Southwest Missouri and conference history. She is second in the country in scoring this season, and was first last season as a junior. She has two regular-season games in which to score the 20 points she needs to pass Hoskins, and she’ll get the chance at home against Creighton and Drake, on Thursday and Saturday. Then it’s on to her next goal: the N.C.A.A. tournament. Some might take time to enjoy the ride. But not Jackie Stiles. She’ll be shooting jumpers. Three-pointers come next, and she won’t leave until 18 of 21 find the hoop. Jackie Stiles is playing for herself, her family and Carlie; and she will not let up. This is the way it’s been for her, always.