It seems like everyone has a story about Claflin's Jackie Stiles, and it's to the point that they've become folklore.

Maybe you've heard about how she decided as a second grader that she'd not only play in the pros but be Rookie of the Year?

Or how she resolved, after one poor performance, to make 1,000 shots a day?

Or how about when she broke her right wrist – on her shooting hand – as a sophomore and then averaged 20 points a game while playing left-handed?

Maybe you were even in one of those post-game autograph lines that stretched endlessly because you had to meet Stiles?

This isn't folklore.

Jackie Stiles is a legend in Kansas basketball.

Not girls basketball. Not women's basketball.

Basketball.

"My internal goal was to be the best that could ever play the game," Stiles said.

The stories, the stats, the successes were all achieved because her focus was built around that goal.

"Our strengths are our weaknesses. I know that my drive to be the best, it also ended my career early because of injuries," she said. I'd still be playing now if I had the knowledge of how to take care of my body. I didn't have the knowledge."

***

Stiles' friendship with Amy Klug Metro started in first grade and continues to this day. It's a friendship filled with pickup basketball games, tennis practices, tap and jazz.

"We did dance together when we were younger," Metro said. "She was at my house all the time. We had a cement (basketball) court in my backyard. We'd have tennis lessons in the summer, too."

Dance, though, was not Stiles' thing.

"I was terrible," she said. "I would not practice, and … then the day before the recital, there would be this major cram and I'd have to learn the routine at least halfway."

Now, basketball, she would play for hours. And go to clinics – coaching clinics with her dad, who was the boys basketball coach at Claflin, and sitting for hours listening to coaches talk about the game. She rode the bus to games.

"I followed my dad to the gym. He'd show me a fundamental skill, and I couldn't wait to show him when I'd master something," Stiles said. "That's how the love of the game started for me.

"I had the vision that basketball was what I wanted to be great at. It was my passion."

Clint Kinnamon, who coached Stiles from 1993-96, said her skills as a middle schooler were off the charts.

"She was fast, athletic, skilled and had a great personality," he said. "She started off and you saw that speed; she was extremely fast and was running really good 200 times.

"What really developed from there was it went from 'I'm going to get a steal and get a layup' to the jump shot, three-point ability, the ability to create a shot on her own."

Stiles went to Kinnamon for individual workouts, so he created 15 workouts designed to last 60 to 90 minutes each.

"Two days later she came to me and asked, 'do you have any more? I've already done those.' I think people believe her work ethic started when she broke her wrist as a sophomore, but it's always been there."

The 1,000 shots a day started after Stiles shot around 30 per cent from the field.

"She was devastated," Kinnamon said. "We lost the game. She vowed she'd make 1,000 shots a day. It wasn't a couple days a week. It was every single day. She'd have her brothers up there rebounding. Even her mom, Pam, was up there."

Teams focused their defensive efforts on Stiles, running a box-and-one or triangle-and-two on her.

"She could handle the ball so well and could break pressure,"said Gregg Webb, who coached Stiles her senior season at Claflin. "When she averaged 46.4 points a game as a senior, people don't understand the attention she was getting. They were putting every kid on their team to stop her. They weren't just letting her score.

"In the open floor, she was unstoppable. There was no press that could contain her, and when she was in that position, she was going to go to the basket and score. There was no secret, she was unbelievable.

"We had a deal – if there's two girls on her and she thinks she can get one (shot) off-balance, she can go and score. But if there's three girls, find someone else."

Stiles' numbers are crazy, and she still holds eight high school records:
   * - 3,603 career points
   * - 1,252 points in a season
   * - 71 points in a game
   * - 35.7 career points per game
   * - 46.4 season scoring average
   * - 1,374 career field goals made
   * - 490 field goals made in a season
   * - 662 career free throws made
And in college at Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State), who she helped lead to the Final Four:
   * - Set NCAA women's career scoring record, 3,393 points.
   * - Led the NCAA in scoring average in 1999-2000, 27.8 points per game.
   And in the WNBA:
   * - Rookie of the Year in 2001, averaged 14.9 points per game.

"She's a superstar, but she's the most humble person," Metro said. "... I was just in awe of her. She was just so dedicated and worked so hard. You just wanted it for her."

And just in case you thought Stiles was a one-sport wonder, she also won 14 gold medals in track and two silvers. The most medals possible in a high school career are 16.

"Some of my best memories from my athletic career were from the state track meet," Stiles said. "I'm so thankful that I was exposed to other sports. I see so many athletes specializing and so many overuse injuries because they don't do anything else."

She also ran cross country and played tennis, in the same season.

"Records didn't drive me," Stiles said. "It's the honest truth. What drove me was winning. I thought everyone had that. When I got into college coaching, it was difficult because I found it hard to relate to a player who isn't affected by losing."

Webb added: "She didn't care about individual stats. She was just so darn competitive."

Stiles' sister, Roxanne, won two titles at Claflin. Their dad has won seven at Central Plains High School and owns the state's longest winning streak at 138 games.

And Stiles is thrilled for both of their successes.

"My dad is a very quiet, shy man, but he works so hard," she said. "I was just home and he spent time watching three films to get ready for the next game. He cares so much about his players."

Stiles never played for a Class 1A title, though. And for someone focused on winning, that's still painful. Claflin lost in the semifinals at Fort Hays State's Gross Memorial Coliseum when she was a freshman and sophomore, and in the first round as a junior and senior.

"Hays is not one of my fondest memories," Stiles said. "... The state tournament always ended in heartbreak. I always left Hays crying.

"But what drove me to be even better was the people. I wanted to make them proud. To inspire them. I wanted to inspire people to be the best at whatever they did. To lead by example."

***

Because there weren't as many opportunities to play basketball – MAYB didn't exist then – Stiles didn't play in an AAU tournament until she was 12.

"My dad begged me onto a team in KC," she said.

And they drove four hours each way to practice with the team. But in that first tournament, she caught the eye of Southwest Missouri State assistant coach Lynette Robinson, who had just stopped into the gym to kill time while evaluating older players.
"This girl with a ponytail flying in the wind was out there stealing the ball and running past everyone in the gym," Kinnamon said. "Lynette turned to the man she was sitting next to and asked if he knew who that girl was. 'Why yes, I do. That's my daughter.' "

And that's when Stiles' relationship began with the Bears.

It has been a long relationship – Stiles was hired as an assistant coach at Missouri State in 2013 – but making that decision to sign with the Bears was gut-wrenching.  Her final four teams were UConn, Oklahoma, K-State and the Bears.

"She didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings," Webb said. "That pressure of deciding where she wanted to go was legit pressure. She was consumed by it. She wasn't sleeping great, wasn't eating right. She was trying to relive all of it by working out.
"I was taking phone calls from 4-6 hours a day. They couldn't talk to her, so they'd talk to me."

When coaches could visit, they had 18 home visits in 19 days. Since Claflin doesn't have a restaurant, her mom cooked for every single coach – until the community started bringing casseroles to help.

During recruiting, Stiles worked out at 6 a.m., went to school, practiced tennis for two hours, then had cross country for an hour, had dinner with the college coach – and returned to the gym to get shots up.

Everyone knew coaches were visiting when Great Bend's one rental car, which was white, sat outside the Stiles house.

Kansas State fans took out ads asking Stiles to stay in-state. They sent flowers to her house. Stiles – who has long been a superstitious type, even carrying a cutout of Michael Jordan on the bus to games – called a psychic hotline out of desperation. 
 
"Southwest Missouri State had my heart at a young age," she said. "I went to camp there every summer. I finally had the courage to go to Southwest Missouri State. It was the best decision I could make. You have to live with that decision. Do what's in your heart. In your gut."

***

The focus has long been on Stiles' scoring, and rightfully so. She took the shots because her goal was to win.

Only once was her scoring personal.

"I don't normally get caught up in individual records, but my 71-point game came in Macksville," she said. "The year before I was heckled so bad by a group of guys, and I let it get to me. It was one of my worst performances. I told my dad, 'I will break the state scoring record on them.' And it did happen."

Stiles' scoring was a focus in college, as well, as she set the NCAA women's career scoring record.

"But she had a lot of assists," Pat Stiles said. "She could pass the ball really well. And I tell you, coach (Cheryl) Burnett really made her defense a lot better. That was a trademark of (Burnett's) teams. Jackie's defense got a lot better. Her points overshadowed the assists and the rebounds and the steals that she had."

That final Four appearance was special, though.

"Everyone thought that was an impossible dream," Stiles said. "When you accomplish something that everyone thinks is impossible, it's amazing.

"When that buzzer sounded, 'is this real life? Are we really doing this? We are really going to play in the Final Four!' That's the most special thing."

***

While Stiles went on to earn the Rookie of the Year award in 2001 – just as she had predicted in second grade – the rest of her professional career didn't pan out like she expected.  She had a wrist injury that led to a shoulder problem, surgery, limited games and then a partially torn Achilles tendon.

"It was tough on her when she couldn't play anymore," Pat Stiles said. "She kept trying to come back, trying to come back. That was so frustrating for her. For somebody so driven in her sport, it was a tough phase of her life and she was pretty depressed.

"... When she went through the cancer, that really changed her."

Jackie Stiles has long been surrounded by a community that cares. Claflin fans supported the team, standing in lines out to the tennis courts to get regional championship game tickets. Southwest Missouri State fans supported in droves, too.
"Reliving some of the best moments of my life as we talk, it makes you think back and evaluate about what I would have done differently. I don't believe you can ever fail if you fully gave it your all," she said.

"The biggest thing I think about is the people and the relationships and the way the communities supported us."

So when she battled eye cancer, she was not alone. There were fund-raisers and cards, cards and more cards.

"My mom had thousands of letters that people sent me," Stiles said. "She could visit for 30 minutes a couple times a day, and she'd read me those letters when I couldn't imagine getting out of bed. All those people rallied around me, and I know I could never pay it back ever."

Pat Stiles said she focused on being positive and helping others going through the same thing.

"I was proud of the way she handled that, getting through the illness," he said.

Battling cancer pushed Stiles in an unexpected area.

"I vow to pay it forward," she said. "One small act of kindness every single day is my goal because of how it touched me. You don't realize how a text message or a note can make a huge difference."

She also decided that other things in life could come before basketball.

On a January weekend, Stiles canceled all basketball lessons to make the trip from Springfield, Mo., back to Claflin for an early birthday party for her parents.

Always the competitor, there were some friendly wagers as they played games with the nieces and nephews. Her voice was a little ragged after recovering from pneumonia.

But just as she stuck to her 1,000 shots a day, she's sticking to her plan to be an even better person.

"We all have our stories," she said. "We all have our adversity. We have to try to turn it into a positive, even though it's difficult.  My goal is to be more present in all my relationships.

"... Sports has absolutely changed my life. The lessons that you learn, that you carry on in whatever profession you have or when dealing with adversity in life. I've learned so many great lessons from being on a team."