nancgo
Bench
http://www.newstribune.com/articles/2005/01/25/sports/0125050045p.txt
Former SMS star faces another operation
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) -- You want to ask Jackie Stiles about anything else. How's the weather here ... who's her Super Bowl pick ... seen any good movies?[/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]But it's no use. Stiles knows what the main questions will be: How are you feeling, and are you coming back to play?
"It's what everybody asks," Stiles said, smiling ruefully while sitting in the stands after a National Women's Basketball League game here Friday night.
Stiles, a former Southwest Missouri State star, wanted to play for the Lubbock Hawks of the NWBL. Instead, she's serving now as an assistant to head coach Sheryl Estes.
The NWBL has been around in some form since 1998 and currently has teams in six cities. Like any "fringe" pro league, the NWBL has franchises that come and go -- one was the Legacy, which was briefly in Kansas City. The NWBL helps some WNBA players keep in shape and gives WNBA hopefuls a chance to hone their skills and perhaps make it to the "big" league.
Stiles, 26, was the 2001 WNBA rookie of the year and dreams of making it back to play on that stage. But that's the distant dream. The more immediate one is to just play basketball at all.
Today in San Diego, she's to undergo what will be her 13th surgical procedure since she left Southwest Missouri as the all-time leading scorer in women's basketball during the NCAA era. In 2001, it was magical for Stiles: setting the scoring record in Springfield, leading Southwest Missouri to the Final Four in St. Louis and then moving on to the WNBA.
"It's been four years?" Stiles said, wistfully. "I can't believe it."
She knows her body believes it, though. As she puts it, "I need a whole new right side."
Stiles has had problems with her right shoulder, wrist, ankle and Achilles' tendon. This next surgery is to deal with the searing pain she feels in her Achilles' whenever she tries to push off on it for a jump shot.
And if this procedure doesn't work, Stiles thinks her basketball-playing days really are over.
"I thought I always had control of my career, that I could be just as good as I wanted to be if I worked hard enough," she said. "But the injuries are something I don't have control of."
She never missed a game at Southwest Missouri, and her response to pain was always to keep playing through it. No matter how much then-coach Cheryl Burnett told her to slow down, Stiles couldn't do it.
"Every day I got up thinking: I have to work harder to get better," Stiles said. "I really destroyed my body, but at the same time, I got rewarded for my work ethic. I don't regret it, because who's to know what kind of player I'd have been without that?"
Of course, the hard work didn't start in college for the Kansas native Stiles; she was doing the same thing from the time she was a child, then though junior high and at Claflin High in track and basketball.
Her injuries, her doctors have told her, are mostly the result of overuse. She said the Achilles' has been the most frustrating, but her shoulder and wrist are feeling good.
"And I'm probably in the best cardio shape in my life," she said. "I just do a lot on the bike and different exercises. That's how I've always dealt with stress: I go work out."
Stiles has stayed in a kind of hopeful limbo since her last WNBA season in 2002. She signed to play in Australia this last year but wasn't healthy enough to do that. She's supported herself in part by doing speaking engagements and conducting basketball camps. And she's been kept busy rehabbing her injuries, which has almost been like a job itself. Now she's coaching, which may be her long-term occupation.
"That's been a little strange, coaching players that are my age," Stiles said. "But it's a learning opportunity, a chance to see if I like coaching. Really, the last couple of years, I had to stay away from basketball. It hurt too much to watch it."
She doesn't have a real "home" base, other than Claflin. She credits her boyfriend, Brian Hargrove, for being with her through all the surgeries and understanding her itinerant lifestyle. His mother, Linda Hargrove, is the former women's basketball coach at Wichita State and now is an assistant with the WNBA's Washington Mystics. [/font]
------------------------------------------
I'm sorry to hear about all her issues. She's worked so hard to be the best, and she just worked herself out of competition. I'd like to see her come back, but it doesn't look too promising.....
Former SMS star faces another operation
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) -- You want to ask Jackie Stiles about anything else. How's the weather here ... who's her Super Bowl pick ... seen any good movies?[/font]
[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]But it's no use. Stiles knows what the main questions will be: How are you feeling, and are you coming back to play?
"It's what everybody asks," Stiles said, smiling ruefully while sitting in the stands after a National Women's Basketball League game here Friday night.
Stiles, a former Southwest Missouri State star, wanted to play for the Lubbock Hawks of the NWBL. Instead, she's serving now as an assistant to head coach Sheryl Estes.
The NWBL has been around in some form since 1998 and currently has teams in six cities. Like any "fringe" pro league, the NWBL has franchises that come and go -- one was the Legacy, which was briefly in Kansas City. The NWBL helps some WNBA players keep in shape and gives WNBA hopefuls a chance to hone their skills and perhaps make it to the "big" league.
Stiles, 26, was the 2001 WNBA rookie of the year and dreams of making it back to play on that stage. But that's the distant dream. The more immediate one is to just play basketball at all.
Today in San Diego, she's to undergo what will be her 13th surgical procedure since she left Southwest Missouri as the all-time leading scorer in women's basketball during the NCAA era. In 2001, it was magical for Stiles: setting the scoring record in Springfield, leading Southwest Missouri to the Final Four in St. Louis and then moving on to the WNBA.
"It's been four years?" Stiles said, wistfully. "I can't believe it."
She knows her body believes it, though. As she puts it, "I need a whole new right side."
Stiles has had problems with her right shoulder, wrist, ankle and Achilles' tendon. This next surgery is to deal with the searing pain she feels in her Achilles' whenever she tries to push off on it for a jump shot.
And if this procedure doesn't work, Stiles thinks her basketball-playing days really are over.
"I thought I always had control of my career, that I could be just as good as I wanted to be if I worked hard enough," she said. "But the injuries are something I don't have control of."
She never missed a game at Southwest Missouri, and her response to pain was always to keep playing through it. No matter how much then-coach Cheryl Burnett told her to slow down, Stiles couldn't do it.
"Every day I got up thinking: I have to work harder to get better," Stiles said. "I really destroyed my body, but at the same time, I got rewarded for my work ethic. I don't regret it, because who's to know what kind of player I'd have been without that?"
Of course, the hard work didn't start in college for the Kansas native Stiles; she was doing the same thing from the time she was a child, then though junior high and at Claflin High in track and basketball.
Her injuries, her doctors have told her, are mostly the result of overuse. She said the Achilles' has been the most frustrating, but her shoulder and wrist are feeling good.
"And I'm probably in the best cardio shape in my life," she said. "I just do a lot on the bike and different exercises. That's how I've always dealt with stress: I go work out."
Stiles has stayed in a kind of hopeful limbo since her last WNBA season in 2002. She signed to play in Australia this last year but wasn't healthy enough to do that. She's supported herself in part by doing speaking engagements and conducting basketball camps. And she's been kept busy rehabbing her injuries, which has almost been like a job itself. Now she's coaching, which may be her long-term occupation.
"That's been a little strange, coaching players that are my age," Stiles said. "But it's a learning opportunity, a chance to see if I like coaching. Really, the last couple of years, I had to stay away from basketball. It hurt too much to watch it."
She doesn't have a real "home" base, other than Claflin. She credits her boyfriend, Brian Hargrove, for being with her through all the surgeries and understanding her itinerant lifestyle. His mother, Linda Hargrove, is the former women's basketball coach at Wichita State and now is an assistant with the WNBA's Washington Mystics. [/font]
------------------------------------------
I'm sorry to hear about all her issues. She's worked so hard to be the best, and she just worked herself out of competition. I'd like to see her come back, but it doesn't look too promising.....
