The obsession began, innocently enough, when a 5-year old tagged along with her dad, the coach, to his high school basketball practice.

Always on the go, she found the vast expanse of the gymnasium floor a ticket to freedom. So she ran, and she ran, in all directions, until her curiosity led her to pick up that round ball and try the dribble thing like everyone else.

“I went nuts,’’ she remembers. “I just went running around like crazy. Then I got the ball ... I couldn’t make a basket, but I was always dribbling.’’

The rest, as they say, is history.

Seventeen years later, the running, shooting and dribbling hasn’t stopped. And if Southwest Missouri State senior star Jackie Stiles has her way, it never will.

Because ... well, because, darn it, it just can’t.

“I don’t know that I can ever leave this game,’’ Stiles says with that trademark, ear-to-ear smile. “It’s just something I can’t live without.

“Coach (Cheryl) Burnett makes me take two weeks off after the season every year, and I think ‘Oh good ... I’ll take two weeks ... I need the break.’ But after about a couple of days, I can’t stand it anymore. I have to be back in the gym. It’s like it’s a part of me that I have to have.

“It’s like an addiction.’’

There is no Hoops Anonymous that we are aware of, no haven for recovering basketball junkies who not only can’t get enough of playing the game, but watching it, dreaming about it, eating and sleeping it.

If there was, Jackie Stiles would have several friends and family members soon directing her toward it.

“I kind of worry about her when the time comes she can’t play anymore,’’ admits her father, Pat Stiles, the man who created the monster.

Obsession begins

When Pat, then the Claflin, Kan., boys’ high school coach, would have practice, there was Jackie, just 6 or 7 years old, shooting on a side goal.

Pat would go upstairs to lift weights; there was Jackie, practicing below in the gym.

Pat would go scout a game; there was Jackie along, studying the game.


“At first it was great,’’ Pat said, “but then it seemed like it became an obsession for her, like she had no other interests. I know the grade school teachers would worry sometimes because all she read were sports books. To me it was OK, because at least she was reading.’’

And not only did Jackie play — she played to win.

“I remember she’d play in recess all the time, and her fourth-grade teacher one time would always have to step in, because Jackie would always pick the teams and put the good players on her teams,’’ Pat Stiles said with a laugh.

“She’d just have to win, and that’s no lie.’’

Yet, while Pat Stiles can take credit for getting Jackie started, the real culprit for creating her obsession likely was SMS assistant coach Lynette Robinson.

While out watching older recruits at an AAU meet, Robinson noticed a 12-year-old Stiles who was already light years ahead of her peers in terms of ball-handling skills.

Robinson happened to be sitting next to Pat Stiles at the tournament, and the connection was made. Robinson began to write Stiles, including one note that said the magic words.

“She said if I kept working, I could someday play Division I basketball,’’ Jackie recalled. “It opened my eyes. Before that, my goal was to walk-on and play at a Division I school. As soon as that hit me, that’s when I started dedicating myself to basketball all year round.’’

Oh, she still played other sports. Stiles is also a legend in Kansas prep annals for her exploits as a track star, in which she won a record 14 gold medals in the high school championships over her career.

But basketball became her life.

Her “breakout game’’ was a 53-point effort in the state semifinals her freshman year, the start of an incredible run that would see her score 3,603 points to rank as the all-time scoring leader in Kansas history, boys and girls.

And that was just the beginning.

Because now, Stiles ranks as the NCAA’s leading scorer in women’s basketball with more than 3,190 points and owns three Missouri Valley Conference Most Valuable Player awards, as well as the conference career and single-season scoring records.

And none of it was possible, Jackie says, without dedicating herself early and often.

“I’m just glad I knew early exactly what I wanted to do, because I could put all my focus into it,’’ Stiles said. “But I never thought, even as many hours as I spent back then, that it would amount to this. It’s just hard for me to imagine. ... I remember when I was still in high school, thinking ‘I was the leading scorer in Kansas?’ It just didn’t seem real.

“Now we’re talking about Missouri Valley Conference things, national records ... it all just happened so fast.’’

‘This isn’t normal’

It didn’t take Carly Deer long to figure out Jackie was different, that basketball was more than a meal ticket for a college education.

To be exact, about three weeks.

“Our freshman year she’d want to go up to the gym in the preseason,’’ said Deer, Stiles’ roommate and Lady Bears teammate of four years.

“Now, we don’t know each other very well, and here she was doing all this extra running, extra everything ... and this on top of our (prescribed) preseason workouts, which are already really tough.

“Here I was trying to keep up with her, and all the time I’m thinking, ‘I’m just so far behind.’ And then, after the third week of this, I finally realized ‘this isn’t normal.’ ”

Of course, neither was the now legendary 1,000-made-shots individual workout Stiles brought with her from Claflin, one that was toned down when she arrived at SMS so Stiles wouldn’t completely wear herself out.

Burnett admits there have been times when she, too, has had to tell her star to back off a tad to make sure she’s rested enough to survive the Lady Bears season.

“Her work ethic is incredible in terms of the number of hours and the time that she has put in in her life with basketball,’’ Burnett said.

“I have been concerned, even when she came in as a freshman ... the points I’ve tried to make with her on her career are is she’s got to rest. There’s got to be some point in time where her body is recuperating.

“And she really hasn’t even gotten the kind of rest she probably has needed. She’s always trying to take it to another level.’’

Can’t get enough

What Stiles has done, and done for so long with such enthusiasm and intensity, should be deemed remarkable in an age where young athletes who overdo it for several years often fall victim to burnout, and, as a result, fall by the wayside.

In this case, there was no parent or coach pushing her to do all the little extra things, the personal workouts, the additional weight and conditioning work.

It was, and is, purely self-motivation.

And some, like Burnett, were worried about her overdoing it.

“When she comes home a few days for Christmas, she’s like, ‘I’ve got to get in the gym,’ like you can’t even be around her till she gets her workouts done,” Pat Stiles said. “I’ll say, ‘Jack, golly, why don’t you back off a bit?’ But she’s just always got to be working on something.

“I think it’s the fact that she’s always been the underdog, and has always used that as a motivator. First, it was she was from a small Kansas school, and they said she’d never play Division I basketball.

“Then that she’d never get the national recognition at Southwest Missouri State ... and now the talk that she won’t make it in the WNBA, because she’s so small ... she just tends to flourish in the underdog role.’’

No straying from routine Basketball and school.

School and basketball.

For four years, the same routine for Stiles. Cutting loose for her involves going to watch the SMS men play, or catching a full evening of televised games on ESPN.

Force her to stray from her rituals, and you risk the wrath of Jackie. Her teammates discovered this her freshman year, when they “kidnapped’’ Stiles to go out to dinner one night. What they didn’t tell her was they had other plans afterward.

“I kept telling them I hadn’t done my workout yet,’’ Stiles said.

A furious Stiles, finally getting home around midnight, somehow tracked down a Hammons Student Center security guard and sweet-talked him into letting her in the gym for a late-night shooting binge.

“They tease me all the time with things like, ‘Jackie, your arm is going to rot off from all that shooting,’ ” Stiles said.

Will she ever look back upon her stay at SMS and regret the fact that she didn’t live a normal college life?

You know ... the sororities, social gatherings, late-night pizzas, etc.?

“Not at all,’’ Stiles said. “I’ll admit it’s tough sometimes, because you’re not always in the glory parts, playing in front of 9,000 fans. I can remember a lot of times in the preseason, after about five or six hours in the gym with my shooting, then I’d still have to run my sprints, I remember thinking, ‘God ... is it worth it?’

“But then, when you look back and you remember all the great opportunities ... I mean, traveling overseas, going to the ESPYs, seeing some of the things I have ... I never imagined it. The people I’ve met, the relationships I’ve made through basketball, it’s made everything worth it. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.’’

“There are times when Jackie will see people and say, ‘Oh look ... they’re doing the normal college life,’ ’’ Deer said. “But then, that doesn’t appeal to her, because she’s doing what she likes.’’

Playing for a living

SMS’ final loss of the 2000-01 season was also Stiles’ last one as a Lady Bear. It is tempered only by the realization that it won’t mean the complete end to her playing career.

The WNBA draft will be held in a few weeks, and Stiles will hear her name called. How early remains to be seen, but how long she’ll play is clear.

“Until I can’t anymore,’’ Stiles said with a grin. “I can’t think of a better way to make a living. It just doesn’t seem right to get paid to play basketball.’’

The WNBA will provide the opportunity for her to continue with her first love, to keep playing and stay on top of her game in an effort to try to realize her lifelong dream — representing the United States in the Olympics, preferably in 2004.

But Stiles, who plans to graduate in May of 2002 with a degree in physical education, is a realist. She understands this isn’t golf; there will be a day when the body just won’t be able to handle the rigors of hoops anymore.

And then what?

“There’s coaching, but also ... I’d like to be a personal trainer,’’ Stiles said. “My ideal job would be to train WNBA or professional basketball players in the off-season. The thing about coaching is I don’t know if I can sit there and watch it and have enough patience to keep from wanting to go out there and do it myself.

“That would kill me, because I wouldn’t feel like I could influence the outcome of the game...’’

Which obsessions have been known to do.

“You call it obsession, I call it passion,’’ Burnett said. “And Jackie’s passion to reach goals is such a very special part of her.”