Claflin, Kansas -- population 705 at last count -- welcomed home its most famous citizen this month when more than 2,000 people turned out for a parade for Jackie Stiles, the senior guard from Claflin who lit up the scoreboard at Southwest Missouri State University for the last four years.

Stiles, who scored 3,393 points in her career, broke the NCAA women's basketball career scoring record this season. Stiles averaged 30.3 points per game, and she led the Lady Bears to the Women's Final Four, where they lost to Purdue University in the semifinals.

As the national media featured Stiles, the locals in Claflin and elsewhere in Central Kansas have had to smile. They've been driving hours and packing gyms for years to see Jackie Stiles, so it was no surprise that the Claflin parade featured 64 floats, all dedicated to Stiles. The all-time leading prep scorer in the state of Kansas with 3,603 points, Stiles also was inducted into the Kansas State High School Hall of Fame recently.

The winner of the 2001 Wade Trophy, a first-team Kodak all-American and one of only two players in NCAA Division I women's history to score 52 or more points twice, Stiles also was a finalist for the 2001 Naismith College Basketball Player of the Year.

She earned all-district academic honors her sophomore and junior years, and this year she was picked by sports information directors for the Missouri Valley Conference's 2001 Scholar-Athlete Women's Basketball Team.

First at Claflin and then at Southwest Missouri State in Springfield, Stiles has quietly become sort of a rural basketball legend. But only when the Lady Bears made it to the Women's Final Four did a lot of national media notice. Then, they couldn't quite explain what was happening. Who was this prolific scorer who drew fans by the thousands?

A little gym rat

Stiles went to her first AAU tournament at age 12, and an assistant coach saw her there and invited her to a basketball camp at Southwest Missouri State.

"I had no idea how good I had to be to earn a scholarship," Stiles said. "My goal was to be good enough so that I could walk-on at a school like (the University of) Kansas. But at the camp, everybody kept telling me that a Division I scholarship was possible if I kept working. That was a turning point for me."

Stiles also was inspired by the death of her younger sister, Carlie, who was 9 months old when she died of a congenital brain condition that had affected her motor skills. Stiles was 12. She had been Carlie's constant companion, often helping with physical therapy. When Carlie was buried, Stiles tucked her gold medal from a national AAU track meet, her only such honor at the time, into the coffin.

Stiles vowed never to waste the athletics gifts she had been given and Carlie had been denied.

"I saw her struggles. I saw her not get a chance," Stiles said. "It made me realize how blessed I am to have God-given talents."

By her sophomore year of high school, Stiles had broken her wrist, so she learned to shoot left handed. Then, as she rehabilitated the wrist, she began shooting until she made 1,000 shots a day, a feat that sometimes took hours and hours. She took home 14 state high-school honors in track, too, developing speed that college basketball teams would see when she took off on a fast break.

A high-school phenom

She got so much fan mail that she couldn't answer it personally anymore. Her family had hundreds of extra high-school senior photos printed up so she could send them out with a newsletter she wrote to fans, many of them young girls who saw in her a role model -- someone who was polite and sportsmanlike, who studied hard and who went out on the court and just did amazing things. A 5-8 guard, Stiles could do a jump-stop in high school that left her unstoppable, even though she frequently saw double- and triple-team defenses. Stiles always stayed after games to sign autographs, a tradition she hopes to continue.

"I enjoy being in the position where I can sign autographs because I know it's not going to last very long," Stiles said. "You look back on it and understand that it wasn't just people in my town, but all around Kansas. They were so supportive of my career."

In addition to spending a lot of time in gyms in high school, Stiles filled the gym whenever she played. Stiles' senor year of high school translated into about $4,500 extra for the Claflin high school. Her college choices included top programs from all across the country -- her family entertained 19 coaches in 20 days --but it was the encouragement she'd received as a youngster that made her sign with the Lady Bears.

A record-breaking career

March 1, 2001, was proclaimed "Jackie Stiles Day," in Springfield, even before Stiles nailed the NCAA women's scoring record.

"I was wondering if they decided that before the game, what happened if I didn't break the record?"

Stiles did get the NCAA record (though Kansas' Lynette Woodard holds the AIAW record with 3,649 points), and Southwest Missouri State had a special ceremony after the game that included the governor of Missouri; Southwest Missouri State President John H. Keiser; and Patricia Hoskens, who had played for Mississippi Valley State University from 1985 to 1989, setting the record that Stiles broke.

Along the way to the record at Southwest Missouri State, Stiles resulted in "more advance-ticket sellouts than ever in the history of our school for any athletics teams, men or women," said Southwest Missouri State Athletics Director Bill Rowe.

The Lady Bears also ended the regular season by setting an average-attendance record for regular-season games with 8,499.

As interest in Stiles was married with interest in women's basketball in general, the Lady Bears have done more than pull their weight at Southwest Missouri State. Rowe said Lady Bears ticket earnings contribute more than $825,000 to the school's sports budget of $8.5 million.

"With the Jackie era, each year it has mounted and this year it has been the most," Rowe said.

The Dodge City Legend of the men's United States Basketball League drafted Stiles recently, making her just the sixth woman (along with Nancy Lieberman-Cline, Saudia Roundtree, Cheryl Miller, Sheryl Swoopes and Rebecca Lobo) ever drafted by the league. It's unlikely that she'll play there, though; Stiles hopes to play in the Women's National Basketball Association, which drafts later this month.

"Hopefully, some WNBA team will want me," said the typically humble Stiles.