The Emporia Gazette

February 13, 2012

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The blonde-haired girl — the one with the hair just past beyond her shoulders — smiles shyly on Jesse Nelson’s wall. She’s one of the easiest ones to find.

Nelson, the Olpe girls’ basketball coach, has managed to cram 30 years of memories on this wall, in his school office that’s not much bigger than a basketball lane itself.

Team photos are lined up neatly, one end all the way to the other, without much space to spare.

Except when it comes to No. 23, the one who was All-State four years though she only started three.

She’s easier to spot because she has another place on the wall — this one right underneath her awkward grin in her high school photo.

The fold-out poster is from a few years later. This is after Michelle Stueve, No. 31, Emporia State Lady Hornets, became a star.

Ask about her, and Nelson tells a story. During Stueve’s sophomore year, Nelson contacted Emporia State coach Brandon Schneider and said he needed to come look at Olpe’s best player. Nelson said she had a lot of similarities to ESU’s Tara Holloway.

Here’s the thing: Holloway was one of the best ESU players in school history. She was MIAA player of the year in 2000 and was third on the Lady Hornets’ all-time scoring list.

“I don’t know,” Nelson said, “whether he believed it or not.”

Nelson smiles. Surely Schneider thought the Olpe coach was nuts at the time.

Six years and two All-American awards later, Stueve is just 15 points behind Holloway.

And the senior has 23 more regular season games to go.

•••

Nelson said he could tell from early on that Stueve might someday turn out to be something special.

For one, she had all the tools. She could run the floor as well — and as fast — as anyone. She played with real joy on the court.

She also was always the team’s best shooter.

“On that team,” Nelson said, “I’d have rather had her 17-footer than another kid’s layup.”

Still, there was something more about her, that extra bit that separated her from the rest.

“She,” Nelson said, “just wanted to be good.”

Nelson said the best example would come in the summer after Stueve graduated from high school.

The soon-to-be college freshman had signed on to play with ESU, and she had already identified an area of improvement: three-point shooting.

If she was going to play guard, Stueve knew she had to add a long-range shot. Nelson was so happy with Stueve’s mid-range jumper in high school that he never encouraged her to shoot from beyond the arc.

Consequently, Stueve only had about 15 three-point attempts during her entire high school career. Schneider, in all the games he saw Stueve play in high school and the summer, had never seen her take a three.

Stueve vowed to make herself into a good three-point shooter. She came into Olpe High’s gym every day and, along with a ball retriever, took 500 shots a day from three-point range.

The results, to begin with, weren’t pretty.

“The start of that summer, she tried to get it off quick,” Nelson said. “It was flat. It looked like a throw.

“It was just an ugly shot.”

It wasn’t by the time the summer ended. By then, Stueve had worked on it so much that she was disappointed when she didn’t make 60 percent of her 3-pointers during a session.

The rest is history. Stueve now has more 3-pointers made than any other Lady Hornet.

She broke the record during her junior year.

•••

Schneider says he knew he had a good player after Stueve’s freshman year. He knew he had a great one before her sophomore year.

In the offseason, the ESU coach talked with her about changing her shot. Though her mechanics weren’t poor, Stueve had a natural dip in her arms and hands during shots, making her release slow and also easier to block.

Schneider gave her drills to work on in the offseason to help her shooting form.

He didn’t expect much. From past experience, he knew that changing a player’s shot usually was met with resistance.

“Typically, (players) never do it,” Schneider said. “When people have been doing something a certain way their whole lives, it’s really hard to change.”

It made Stueve’s transformation all the more remarkable.

Stueve, after doing the exercises all summer, came back with a new, quicker release when she returned her sophomore year.

Her shot came out higher. It was more difficult to block.

Schneider was amazed.

“In watching her revamp that — her shot completely in one summer — I think that’s when I knew that this kid is beyond special,” Schneider said. “You give her something to do, and it’s over with. She’ll take it and run.”

Schneider saw that same hard work pay dividends at the end of Stueve’s sophomore year.

With about six weeks to go in the season, Schneider decided to try to add something new to Stueve’s offensive arsenal: a step-back shot.

For two days, the coach took her to the side and went through it in an individual workout.

“But,” Schneider said, “that obviously doesn’t tell the story of how much she worked on it on her own.”

Without any more instruction, Stueve made herself comfortable enough with the move that she started using it one week later.

A month after that, in the NCAA Tournament, she had 39 points against Tarleton State, 41 against West Texas A&M and 40 against American International.

The secret? Stueve was taking stepback shots all over the floor.

•••

So where exactly did Stueve get her extraordinary work ethic?

The senior credits three people. Two of them are her parents, Mark and Lisa.

Stueve was involved in almost every activity growing up — from rodeo to track and field to basketball, which she only started playing competitively in sixth grade.

There was only one rule: young Michelle had to finish what she started.

“They never really pushed anything, they just wouldn’t let me quit,” Michelle Stueve said. “If I started going out, I had to stay out.”

Stueve also said much of her athletic success could be attributed to Olpe cross country coach Tom Camien.

Stueve, who won State championships in both cross country and distance events in track and field during her high school career, learned the value of hard work and also about preparing herself psychologically during her days with Camien.

“He coached a lot of the mental aspect of it,” Stueve said. “It’s not so much your physical body and what you can do, it’s how well you prepare your mind.”

With her determination and dedication, Stueve has turned herself into one of the best players in school history. Barring an injury, she could challenge Carolyn Richard’s points record of 2,378.

The senior already has become the most feared player in the MIAA.

“When you go to play them, they have a lot of other players, don’t get me wrong,” Washburn coach Ron McHenry said, “but you have to have some kind of a scheme to watch her and guard her, because she can just destroy a game for you.”

Who would’ve guessed that girl — the shy one still wearing No. 23 on the office wall in Olpe High School — would become the star she’s become?

Nelson smiles.

“I really felt,” he said, “like she was going to be that kind of kid.”