March 1, 2007
By Jeff Lippman
CSTV.com
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Jeff Lippman
Jeff is CSTV.com's lead women's basketball writer. |
She isn't your normal everyday, average, run of the mill women's college basketball player. Oh no, you better believe that Jenna Plumley is different.
Standing a very generously listed 5-foot-3, she's by far the tiniest thing you'll see on a basketball court. Her size has never been an issue.
An Oklahoma high school legend by the time her freshman season at Frontier High School was over, Plumley led her team to the Class A state title, claiming MVP honors at the ripe old age of 15. She'd go on to win another state championship during her high school days.
Plumley would be a star even if an entire nation of people didn't idolize her--yet she has an entire race of people watching her every crossover. She's one of the .5 percent of Division I women's basketball players to be a full-blooded Native American Indian.
"It means so much," Plumley said after her team's stirring 88-61 win over rival Baylor, a game in which she started and dished out a game-high seven assists. "Being able to come to Oklahoma and the majority of Native Americans being from Oklahoma, they follow me everywhere.
"I get letters all the time and e-mails. Not just Native Americans in Oklahoma, when I traveled to Kansas, there was a big group up there also. It just means a lot knowing that I am a role model to them and I'm able to make them live for their dreams because they see me going after my dreams. I think for the Native American community, I've been everything they've been wanting and I'm just grateful to be able to be that person."
Her Native American framework is a tribal hodgepodge. She's half Pueblo, a quarter Comanche, an eighth Otoe and an eighth Pawnee. Whatever the tribe, doesn't matter, she's loved by all in Oklahoma.
"I wanted to stay in Oklahoma because of all the fans that had gotten to know me and gotten to follow me over my high school years," she said. "Everybody thought I was going to be something special. I am just so glad that those people kept up with me, telling me how grateful they are that I came to OU.
"It's just been a wonderful experience, growing up in Oklahoma and being a small-town girl, being able to focus on what I want to do in life, go to school, play ball and be around my friends and family."
For Plumley, friends and family are the reason she rocketed to basketball stardom in the first place.
Growing up with three older brothers, R.J., Albert and Chris, watching their high school basketball success helped pave the way for her love for the game. Ultimately, where her brothers failed to achieve a Division I scholarship, she prevailed, and through her, she says, her brothers' dreams can be realized.
The brothers routinely challenged her to games of one-on-one--games in which she holds her own quite nicely--yet, the soberness of these games never lasts long.
"I can never play seriously against my brothers because they always make me laugh. One of them will get mad at me and he'll be playing defense on me and de-pants me or something and it just throws the whole thing off."
Her roundball career began when she was just a first grader--if you think she's short now, you should have seen her then. Playing pickup games against the boys at the local YMCA, Plumley learned the style of basketball that she still proudly exhibits.
She loves to run, loves the behind-the-back, through-the-legs, cross-you-up flashy dribble, loves to dish the rock and doesn't mind lighting up the scoreboard from time to time. In fact, it was just two games ago that Plumley made her first career start--something she won't relinquish--and in the two games she's immediately improved the ball movement for the Sooners.
Senior Chelsi Welch said after the Baylor game: "She has a lot of energy and can hit you anywhere on the floor. It is great to have a point guard like her."
As a youngster, Plumley spent a lot of her time around the Native American culture. Both her parents worked full-time jobs so they could pay the bills, leaving her grandmother to "sort of" raise her.
According to Jenna, her grandmother was a staple in the Native American community.
"She cooked for that, she danced, she honored people, and when she passed away I kind of lost that because I had nobody else," Plumley rationalized. "My parents weren't really into it, my grandmother was the one who really showcased that to me and put me on it. After she passed, it just left me a bit."
Though losing touch with her Native American roots, her pedigree never lost touch with her. The community embraces their diminutive star with considerable reverence. Their admiration only fuels Plumley to show more pride for the culture to which she belongs.
"My mom tells me every day, `Be proud of who you are,'" she said. "You should always be proud to say you are Native American. And I am. It's something I've always been, something I could never lose. Being the person that I am, and coming here to make something of myself, it just makes everything better."
There are many words to describe the pocket-sized point guard with silky smooth handle, a soft shooting touch and the quickness to blow past the speediest of defenders, but none of them could ever be ordinary.
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