News Articles – March 30, 2001

By MARTIN FENNELLY

Tampa Tribune

3/30/01

Minneapolis? You’re ice cold. The Final Four? Getting warmer. The men’s Final Four? Cold again. The most exciting player in college basketball is in action tonight when Southwest Missouri State plays Purdue at the women’s Final Four in St. Louis. Some of you just stopped reading. Women’s basketball? Well, that’s fine. Suit yourself. We don’t need you anyway. As for the rest of you, watch your television tonight. It’s on ESPN. Watch the long shot Lady Bears of Southwest Missouri State. Most of all, watch No. 10. She’ll the be the 5-8 guard scooting around like a water bug, scoring from anywhere, totally fearless, totally joyful. She’ll tickle your heart as if it was basket twine. All this from the middle of Kansas. Start with Larry Bird, then add a ponytail. This particular Cinderella shot the pumpkin each day until she made exactly 1,000 shots. A thousand! Your daughter need a hero? Your son need a hero? Her name is Jackie Stiles. Time to meet a legend. YOU HAVE TO KNOW where to look. Larry Bird came from French Lick, Ind. Jackie Stiles is from Claflin, Kan., 60 miles north and 60 miles west of Wichita. Population: 678. Stop lights: 0. Here’s a number: 3,371. That’s how many points Jackie Stiles has scored in four years at Southwest Missouri, more than any other woman in NCAA history. Stiles has scored 1,040 points this season, also a women’s record. But it took the first two weeks of the NCAA Tournament to carry her name beyond the plains. She has been stunning people coast to coast. At Piscataway, N.J., Stiles scored 32 against Rutgers. Last weekend in Spokane, Wash., she hung 41 on top-seeded Duke and added 34 against local favorite Washington, whose fans cheered her. The Lady Bears, incredibly, are in a Final Four in their home state; the Gateway Arch is a four- hour drive from Southwest Missouri’s Springfield campus. They’re in among the tall trees. There’s Purdue, Notre Dame and UConn, true powers. Then there’s Jackie’s team. That’s why Claflin currently is the busiest small town in America. The whispering of the wheat has given way to satellite trucks rumbling down Main Street, looking for stories. Everyone in Claflin wants tickets for St. Louis, but there aren’t many, so word is they’re going to fix the parish hall with a big screen and cable for the Final Four games. At Cates Service and Supply, the town’s gas station, Myra Prosser answered the telephone, said hello to one newspaper, then excused herself. “Hold on, I have to say goodbye to the reporter from Topeka.” Myra is the Claflin sports information director for Jackie and Lady Bears basketball. She tapes audio of Lady Bears broadcasts off the Internet and downloads team statistics. Folks pull in for gas, then check to see how Jackie did the night before. Or they borrow the audio, then lend it to a friend, who lends it to a friend, until everybody has listened to taped radio of Jackie Stiles. That’s not enough for some folks. Myra and her husband often make the six-hour drive from Claflin to Springfield, as does 65-year- old John Herter, owner of Herter Implement and Auto. John has owned Lady Bears season tickets the last two years. Herter will leave around noon on game day and get back just before dawn the next morning. “It’s 377 miles each way,” said Herter, whose odometer doesn’t lie. Herter sometimes makes the trip with Pat Stiles, Jackie’s dad, a teacher and the athletic director at Claflin High School, where Jackie’s jersey hangs in the gym. It never hurt that she was about the nicest kid you’d ever want to meet. Planning continues for April 14, Jackie Stiles Day in Claflin. John Herter is on the committee. There’s going to be a parade down Main Street and a rally, probably at the football field, because the gym isn’t big enough. The governor of Kansas has been invited. Red Meier, a big Jackie fan, called the White House. The White House in Washington. “Red just wanted to see if the president could do something,” John Herter said. “Red said he got through all right, but they wouldn’t let him talk to anybody. … We just want to make it special for Jackie. I wouldn’t put it past Red to try again.” Then there’s the sign on Highway 4. John Herter wants one on the east side leading into town and one on the west. Claflin, Home of Jackie Stiles, NCAA All-Time Leading Scorer. That’s what the signs will say. The only catch is that there’s already a sign like that leading into Claflin. Claflin, Home of Walter Hickel. That would be Walter Joseph Hickel, now the second most famous Claflin native, who left Kansas and later became governor of Alaska and Secretary of the Interior in the Nixon administration. In Claflin, they don’t tell Walter Hickel stories like they tell Jackie Stiles stories. Pat and Pam Stiles’ oldest child dribbled a basketball to and from grade school. The line stretched out the gym doors two hours before Jackie played for the Class 1A Claflin High Wildcats. She averaged 46.3 points per game her senior season. Nobody in the state of Kansas, boy or girl, has scored more points. Jackie set a state record with 71 against Macksville. Once, she scored 61 against Bison, despite playing just half the game. “Afterward, the Bison kids came up and got her autograph,” John Herter said. Claflin smiles when national media marvel at Jackie’s quickness. Guess they don’t know Jackie won 14 track and field gold medals in high school. Claflin brightens when you ask about the 1,000 baskets a day. “It took her two hours with a rebounder,” Pat Stiles said. “Jackie didn’t miss much.” Claflin grows quiet when you mention Jackie’s baby sister, Carlie, who died nine years ago from a congenital brain condition. She wasn’t even 1. Jackie put a track medal in Carlie’s coffin and told herself she’d never waste a second of her life. The folks in Claflin will tell you she hasn’t. “I’m prejudiced,” John Herter said. “In fact, I’m prejudiced as hell. But there just isn’t anything like this girl.” NOR DOES IT SURPRISE anyone in Claflin that Jackie turned down the likes of UConn to attend Southwest Missouri. Southwest had scouted her first, when she was 12. “Jackie’s loyal,” said Gregg Webb, who coached Jackie her senior season at Claflin. “She didn’t forget that Southwest was the first school. But she talked to everybody. Jackie couldn’t say no. She’s that humble. She’s that nice.” Nineteen coaches were allowed to home visit, so many that there was a guest book at the Stiles home. There was so much excitement in town that pretty soon lots of folks had their own sign-in books for the coaches. The signature of UConn’s Geno Auriemma possessed a Mantle-like aura. “Frankly, we were worried Jackie would get lost at Southwest Missouri, that nobody would hear from her again,” Pat Stiles said. That’s nothing against Southwest, a fine program which made the Final Four in 1992. But UConn was, well, UConn. Jackie even called a psychic hotline to try and figure out what to do. One night, she signed a letter-of-intent to go to UConn. By the next morning, she’d changed her mind. Her father worried. Could Jackie get where she wanted to get from Southwest Missouri? “But Jackie showed us,” Pat said. Jackie showed everyone. Lady Bears tickets, already a hot commodity in Springfield, became points of contention in divorce cases. When Jackie’s boyfriend, Matt Barrett, grabbed the microphone and proposed to her at a preseason banquet, it was on the front page of the Springfield newspaper. Cates Service and Supply buzzed. And now this. IN THE MOOD FOR a movie tonight? Don’t rent “Hoosiers.” Watch Jackie Stiles instead. Watch her as Claflin watches from the parish hall. Watch and picture a kid shooting nonstop until she makes a thousand baskets, a child bouncing a ball down a street toward a dream, way out there beyond Highway 4. Speaking of which, there’s some good news about the proposed Jackie Stiles highway signs. John Herter said Doug Hickel, who runs Heartland Chemical and Appliance, phoned his uncle in Alaska. Walter J. Hickel, now 81, didn’t hesitate. “Doug said Walter said just go ahead and take his sign down,” John Herter said with a laugh. “It’s for Jackie.” Red, try the White House again.