Hannah Wilkerson — The anti-ballhog

Ballhog.

That word was driving Hannah Wilkerson crazy. And why wouldn’t it? The negative connotations, the behind-the-back insults, the social stigma that was attached to her name, it was sickening.

Every whisper or chant from the crowd seemed to blare over the public address system. The laser-like stares beamed toward her family. It was like every shot — whether it went in or not, whether it was a jump shot or an insult — was cementing her basketball reputation.

Despite putting up numbers that had her primed for a run at Missouri’s career high school scoring record over her first two years of high school, including the single-season record for points by a freshman (749) Wilkerson decided she needed to change her game.

More passing. Have to get those teammates involved. They’re the key, not me. We can still win.

“I decided that scoring that much wasn’t helping us win,” said Wilkerson, a Miller High School senior and future Missouri State Lady Bear. “So my goal was to get eight assists a game. I wanted to get them involved. … That’s when I ended up scoring more than I did the last year.”

While her teammates became more involved, she kept scoring. And scoring. When she was done, she compiled the third-highest number of points scored in a single season — 975. Heading into today’s game at Liberal, the 5-foot-8 Wilkerson is just 45 points away from breaking the scoring record held by Morrisville and Marshfield player Melissa Grider, a number that has stood since 1991.

Could she break it tonight? There’s no doubt. She’s scored more than that in three of her last five games, including setting new school records with games of 50 and 54 in the past two weeks.

How about when she tweaked her game to score all of those points and get her teammates involved last season, Miller won its first girls’ high school basketball district title — ever?

Ballhog, you still say?

“I hate that word,” she replies.

Despite harboring an appetite for winning games, which was larger than the one for hearing her own name after each basket, she realized she was never going to truly be able to convince everyone of her true intentions. That’s when she channeled the energy.

“She’s not a mean girl, but the madder you make her, the more she’ll make you pay,” said Wilkerson’s mother, April.

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As any daddy’s girl, Hannah idolized her father, Darren, a basketball junkie. Her priorities quickly solidified.

“Her first word was Dad, her second word was ball,” April Wilkerson said. “Third was mom.”

While she couldn’t really speak, her uncanny basketball skills put words in her mouth. By 18 months, she could dribble her favorite Pizza Hut basketball more than 40 consecutive times in the kitchen without a hiccup. No basketball shorts, just diapers.

By the time she was in first grade, people wanted her to play up two grades. That trend continued until fifth grade. And she could score at will, even back then despite the fact she was so much smaller than everyone else — sometimes as much as six inches and more than 20-30 pounds.

“She’s always had a knack for it,” Darren Wilkerson said.

The Wilkerson family traveled the country nearly every summer, whisking Hannah away for summer basketball: Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, etc.

She was a star, making double digit scoring games the norm. But as she started to build that traveling reputation, again, the whispers came out.

Ballhog.

Makenzie Smith, a Kickapoo senior and long-time teammate, said that it’s easy to think Wilkerson is a ballhog, because of how easy it she makes scoring look.

“I wouldn’t call her selfish,” Smith said. “Everybody takes bad shots, that’s going to happen, but if you were to weigh out everything she does on the court, she does a lot more good than bad.
“Hannah’s going to win. That’s her deal.”

That drive to compete started at the young age. It started to solidify, taking its form on the basketball court.

During one AAU Tournament in Tulsa when Wilkerson was in seventh grade, an opponent’s elbow knocked out four teeth and bent a few more back, early in a game. After a trip to the emergency room, her family brought her back so she could sit on the bench to finish the game. The coaches saw her and asked if she could play. After obliging, she tried to check in.

“Hannah, you can’t play,” her mother, April said.

“Mom, I have to score on her,” Hannah replied, referencing the girl who displaced her teeth.

What did she do? Wilkerson scored on the girl, driving past her and taking it to the basket. She promptly checked out of the game.

“I don’t know why that stuff gets me fired up, but that stuff happens,” Hannah said. “I need to win.”

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Once Wilkerson realized she could score in bunches, she knew she had an opportunity. This wasn’t just about basketball. This wasn’t just about impressing the hometown folk. This was about something more.

“Once I realized what I could do with (basketball) and where it could take me, I got more serious,” Hannah said. “It became more important to me. Not just playing, but I could do something with it if I stayed at it.”

That’s when she expanded her game. It wasn’t just shooting jumpers anymore. It was slashing. It was getting to the free throw line. It was rebound positioning, passing drills and defensive stances. It was understanding double teams, Box-and-1s, Triangle-and-2s and odd-looking Amoeba defenses that were disguises for 5-on-1 gameplans.

After having such success, she was certain she could score at the varsity level. So what happened when she played her first summer game with her future varsity teammates?

Zero points.

“I was shocked,” Hannah said. “It made me realize how much harder I had to work.”

The work paid off. By the end of her freshman season, Hannah scored a state-record 746 points, 60 more than Madison’s Lauren Dubbert did during the 2001-02 season.

As a sophomore, she increased that number to 785. She was hitting free throws, 3-pointers and layups, emerging on the public’s radar.

Who is this Wilkerson girl? Miller, isn’t that a tiny school? She must not play against any competition. Her team doesn’t win.

That is, until her junior season, when she changed things up.

Heading into the year, Miller coach Brandon Weiss talked to her about Kobe Bryant and how he had to learn to get his teammates more involved before he could win an NBA championship in the post-Shaquille O’Neal era.

Ballhog? Whatever.

“Her teammates are more involved on the offensive side of the ball and it’s not allowing other teams to go to the defenses we were seeing a lot the last few years,” Weiss said. “They are having to guard her teammates more. It’s getting her the ball in a better position to score.

“She is not a ballhog. She does the things we teach in practice. We teach all of our players to take advantage of the weaknesses of the other team.”

That’s how she scored 975 points as a junior and helped Miller win the school’s first girls’ basketball district title. Only a 75-69 loss to eventual state champion Sparta could derail Wilkerson. Even in a losing effort, she had 35 points.

As of tonight’s game at Liberal, she is sitting on 658 points for this season, just 44 behind former Morrisville and Marshfield guard Melissa Grider.

Hannah still can’t believe that she’s in this position.

“It’s going to mean a lot,” Hannah said, when asked to think about breaking the record. “I look at what I’ve done and I’ve worked hard for it. It will be a good moment and a relief for everyone. 3,200-something (points)? That’s crazy.”

As for that record, Grider, who lives in Springfield and is going back to college to become a teacher and a basketball coach, said she is proud that her record has stood for so long.

“The way she loooks up the floor is amazing. She sees the floor well, takes the ball to the hole well. sees when she needs to pull it up. everyone has something different,” said Grider, who scored a state-record 1,231 points in the 1989-90 season. “It’s not a sad thing. It’s taken someone 19 years to break it. It’s exciting that someone is going to get the record.”

Then, there’s that word. Ballhog.

Grider understands that pain. It’s one that paved the way for her to move from Morrisville to Marshfield, leaving town more for her and her family’s sanity, than to be reunited with coach Gary Murphy, who won a state title with Grider at Morrisville before continuing the Marshfield dynasty.

She said she feels for Wilkerson, who she has not met.

“For me, the pressure of being the scoring leader, you don’t make very good friends,” said Grider, 37. “There were so many people that were so jealous. I was in the paper all the time. I got sick of all the hoopla and sick of people thinking I was a ballhog. I went to Marshfield and played with great players. Could I have scored more points? Yes, but it wasn’t worth it to me.”

So as Hannah drew closer to Grider’s record, she had her eyes set on something else that she valued more — Missouri State University.

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Hannah grew up watching the Lady Bears with her father, just like thousands of little girls across the Ozarks.

When the family wasn’t practicing defensive slides for fun in the living room, it was Lady Bears games on KY3.That turned into years of destination seating for games at Hammons Student Center, before last year’s debut of JQH Arena, as well as summers of Lady Bear camps, interviews from Cheryl Burnett and pictures with former players, like Kari Koch, who ironically she would pass on the Missouri scoring charts one day.

There’s no doubt, Hannah wanted to be a Lady Bear. But, as the points started to pile up, there was little interest from Nyla Milleson’s regime.

Despite legendary AAU coach Allen Wilson’s opinion that she was a Division I player, Hannah prepared herself for Iowa State, who thought she was the next Heather Ezell, and thought of schools like Tennessee-Martin, which promised to build the program around her. She even envisioned herself in Southwest Baptist purple, just in case she wanted stay close to home.

But none of it worked. It’s hard to get excited about playing somewhere else when your dream is right outside your back yard.

“That’s where I always wanted to be,” Hannah said. “I went to all those camps. I always watched them and wanted to be like them. I wanted it so bad.”

But it wasn’t going to be that easy. There were concerns about her height, wondering if 5-8 was going to be big enough to play the guard spots. There were worries about her foot speed and if it was quick and fast enough to let her skill set shine through.

While she and her family were in contact with the Lady Bears coaching staff, she was guaranteed a phone call on Aug. 1, the first day college coaches could contact players. She just wasn’t for sure what type of phone call it was going to be: Make-up or break-up.

She still remembers the phone call, riding in the car with her mother in Florida during an AAU Tournament. Her cell phone showed a number she didn’t recognize. Like it was a call from a long, lost relative, she answered.

They offered. She said yes. Milleson said Wilkerson agreed so quickly, the coaching staff could barely form the sentence.

Ultiimately, Milleson said she and her staff decided Wilkerson was a D-I talent.

“There’s a lot to be said about wanting to be somewhere,” Milleson said. “We feel like we have enough talent here that she can come into a low pressure situation and ease her way into it. We think she’s going to be a great Lady Bear.”

As for the wrap that she can’t handle the step from Class 2 girls’ basketball to Division I, back off for a second.

While she’s played at Miller during the school year, she played on many high-level AAU teams over the summers, playing with the Magic, the same franchise that produced current Lady Bears Casey Garrison and Whitney Edie.

While her role changes during AAU ball, where she’s a player who is expected to play a consistent, complete game, she still finds ways to score more than 15 points per game, she said.

Still, her AAU teammates don’t think she’ll have a problem in Division I.

“A lot of people say, well, she plays against nobody all year long in school,” said Makenzie Smith, a Kickapoo senior who will play at Columbia College next season. “Yeah, that’s true and she’s probably not going to have 40 points per game at MSU, but she’s a coachable player and she will be better than a lot of people think.

“She’s a beast. She’s so strong. She’s a beast. I think that’s the best way to describe her.”

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As for that ballhog wrap, Hannah isn’t concerned any more.

While her family jokes if they had a dollar for every time they heard someone call her that dirty word, they’d be rich, they’re more apt to tell a story about how she wore out the carpet in her room from shooting baskets on her mini-WNBA hoop in her bedroom.

Maybe they’ll talk about how she begged her family to set up lights so her and her cousin Justin Jack could find a way to shoot baskets during the last big ice storm.

And while it may have taken some locals many years to realize Hannah wasn’t the ballhog they thought she was, most of them seem to get it.

“I’ve had people and players come up to me and tell me I’m much better than they thought I was,” Wilkerson said. “They’d say that I wasn’t a ballhog.”

The truth is, not only does she have the ability to score against inferior defenders and talents, it’s the best way for her Miller teams to win or to play at a high level. While she still considers scoring fun, it’s also part-chore. She knows if she doesn’t take advantage of the matchups, her team might not have a chance. But, she’s never felt like she needs to take every shot.

“It’s never been just about me,” Hannah said. “I have good players around me and they’re capable.”

How do you know she’s truly not a ballhog? When she puts up a big scoring number and her team loses, she said she feels embarrassed.

“I’ll come to school and the guys will ask how many points I had,” Hannah said. “I’ll say, ‘Well, I had 54, but we lost. They’ll say, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ I’m like, “We lost, it doesn’t matter if we lose.’ That makes it look like I can score, but we can’t win and I don’t like that. I like winning more.”

So, when she gets that point that clinches her spot atop Missouri High School girls’ basketball history, just remember that not only does she not believe you when you call her a ballhog, she’s planning on spreading that message to the younger generation.

Her post-college career plans? Elementary PE teacher in a small town.

“You could get a kid started with a basketball and he or she could love it,” Hannah said. “Teaching a kid how to use that drive, that’s what I want to do.”

That way, she wins. Through all the broken teeth, the name-calling, the behind-the-back whispering, she’s established a new reputation.

“I hate it when people say, ‘She scores because she’s from Miller. She good at Miller, but nowhere else’” Hannah said.

Instead, now she’s the girl from Miller who has persevered and deserves everything she gets.

Ballhog? Now, it’s a badge of honor.

Allen Vaughan is a national award-winning reporter and writer who lives in Springfield. After leaving the Springfield News-Leader in September of 2009, he has taken his affinity for sports in the Ozarks and tried to raise the bar in terms of innovative journalism. Want to get in touch with Allen? E-mail him at Allen@TagSGF.com. You can follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here.