Every once in a while a sports writer is lucky enough to cover a young athlete before the individual hits the big time.

You watch the athlete progress through a local high school, chart progress at the major-college level and wonder if he or she will make it as a pro.

You tell your colleagues, and anybody else who'll listen, "I knew them when ... "

I first started hearing about Jackie Stiles in 1995.

I was a sports reporter at The Garden City Telegram. She was a sophomore phenom from Claflin playing in a local tournament. Claflin wasn't one of the Telegram's area schools, and I wasn't too interested in the Wildcats or their standout guard.

Another reporter was going to be covering the tournament in question and — despite the stories about how she averaged 20 points a game shooting left-handed after breaking her right wrist — I had my own games to cover.

She wasn't my concern.

Fortunately, I got a second chance later that year when I took a job with The Hutchinson News. Claflin, about an hour from Hutch, was a state power in football, not to mention the four sports Jackie played. (Yes, four sports. And yes, it's just Jackie out west; when you're a big star, you only need one name.) Claflin was one of our high priorities at the News, and I quickly became one of the people talking about Jackie.

But when I talked about her with people outside of Central and Western Kansas, nobody was too interested.

It was girls basketball.

High school girls basketball.

The typical conversation went something like this:

Me: "She scored 61 points in one half!"

Disinterested friend: "That's great. Did you watch the Chiefs game?"

Still, word was spreading.

The News received several calls a week from fans wanting to know where Claflin played next. Some callers were parents who wanted to take their young children to see Stiles play. Some were hard-core prep fans. Others were people who would never, under any other circumstance, spend a Friday night watching high school basketball.

We would pass along the date and game time as well as a tip: Get there early. Home or away, lines formed to get into gyms when Jackie was in town. Girls games — not boys — became main events. Gyms were packed. People stood in doorways. Some sat in aisles. Some games were shown on closed-circuit TV in auditoriums to accommodate overflow crowds.

Jackie was scouted by major-college coaches during games and besieged by autograph seekers when the games were over.

When a high school girl is signing dozens of autographs and people are being turned away at the door, you know you have something good.

Jackie collected some autographs of her own. She kept a guest book during recruiting her senior year, and 19 major-college head coaches signed in for home visits.

Jackie had set the Kansas scoring record with that 61 point-effort (in 17 minutes) as a junior. Someone had the gall to break Jackie's record with 63 points the next year. No problem: Jackie simply upped the ante with 71 points.

And Jackie was no one-trick pony. She played tennis — and earned three state medals — to enhance her lateral quickness. In the same fall seasons, she ran cross country, and earned four state medals, to enhance her endurance.

In track, Jackie could keep Claflin in contention for team trophies all by herself. She was the first Kansan to win the 400-, 800-, 1,600- and 3,200-meter races at the same state track meet. After she set the state record with her 14th career state gold medal, some of the competitors she had just smoked lined up to have photos taken with the legend. Some wanted to shake her hand. Some wanted autographs. A pack of reporters waited as well.

Jackie accommodated everyone in the polite, modest manner that has helped make her a mythic figure. (She doesn't like to talk about herself too much, but she'll tell you about her coaches, teammates, family and how they deserve so much credit for her success.)

And then there was basketball.

Before she set records as the all-time leading scorer at Southwest Missouri State, in the Missouri Valley Conference and in NCAA history, Jackie set the Kansas prep career record with 3,603 points. That total ranks 11th in the nation all-time, while her 35.7-point career scoring average ranks fourth. Her 46.3-point scoring average from her senior season ranks third in the country all-time.

People who had not seen her play looked at the scoring statistics and called her selfish. Actually, Jackie led her team in assists the same year she was averaging 46.3 points.

Stiles turned down a chance to play at Connecticut and followed her heart to Southwest Missouri State, which began recruiting her when she was 12. Though SMS fans pack Hammons Student Center for women's games, the decision to go to Springfield cost Stiles national attention. While UConn is a high-profile program, SMS rarely plays on national television.

So it wasn't until the Bears made their remarkable run through the NCAA Tournament that fans across the country realized what people in Kansas and Missouri had known all along — Jackie is the real deal.

Stiles scored 32 points in a victory over Rutgers, hung 41 on top-seeded Duke and added 34 against Washington at Washington in the West Regional Final.

What's next? Several WNBA coaches and general managers have said they expect Jackie to be a top-five pick in the draft on April 20. The big crowds that followed Jackie from Claflin to SMS are likely to show up again for whichever WNBA team is lucky enough — or smart enough — to draft her. And big crowds are one of the things that drive Jackie. She once told me that she wanted to play her best every game because she never knew who might be watching her for the first time, and she never wanted to let a fan down.

The All-American seldom has let anybody down.

Jackie, who led the nation in scoring each of the last two years and set an NCAA single-season record with 1,062 points this year, willed the Bears into the Final Four with 118 points in the first four games of the NCAA Tournament.

Fans that watched Stiles for the first time in Friday night's Final Four loss to Purdue — in which she was held to 22 points — should give Stiles a second chance.

I'm glad I did.