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Shalee Lehning Part 2: From child basketball prodigy to Sublette's prep phenom
Published 5/12/2009 in Sports
Editor's Note:This is the second of a three-part series on former Sublette and Kansas State basketball star Shalee Lehning.
By BRETT MARSHALL
SUBLETTE — November 30, 2001. Elkhart.
It was the basketball season opener for a group of highly-regarded freshmen girls who had not lost a game during their two-year run through junior high.
It was the debut night for Shalee Lehning and her Lady Larks.
A script could not have been better written for the then 5-8 point guard.
Her team would score 100 points in a blowout victory (100-74) over the Lady Wildcats. Lehning would score 29 points that night. It was the beginning of what would eventually become one of the greatest high school careers in Kansas sports history.
"The year before we (Sublette High School) had only won six games," Lehning recalls of entering her maiden year of high school basketball. "I told my coach, my teammates, my parents that I didn't want to play that way. We wanted to do this thing and turn it around. We had no idea we'd be (that) successful. With three freshmen, I guess we just took everybody by storm."
Lehning's longtime teammate and close friend Whitney Stevens recalled that first game as a high schooler.
"I hit the first three-pointer but I was still shaking out on the floor," Stevens said. "When we hit 100 we were just out of control, it was unreal and a lot of fun. We just kind of said, 'Wow, if we really keep working at this, we might be able to do pretty well.'"
As that first year progressed, the youthful and energetic Lady Larks captured the fancy of area basketball fans. They would go through that regular season with just two losses.
"We knew high school would be a lot different," said Shelby Griffin, another one of the original Sublette players dating back to third grade. "I don't think we realized how good we were. For me, it was just exciting to see her (Lehning) play. I realized that her ball-handling skills were not like any ninth grader."
Griffin, who played on the Larks' junior varsity, had the unenviable task of guarding and being guarded by Lehning during daily practices.
"I got the benefit of playing against somebody that was so good," Griffin said. "She made me much better and I just tried to figure how her mind works. It was a great mentoring system and great for me."
Lehning's coach, Barry Lucas, was just moving into his first year at the helm of the Lady Larks. A native of Sublette himself, Lucas was aware of the talent he was inheriting.
"I just happened to be in the right place at the right time," Lucas said. "From Day 1, I knew she was something special, and not just in her ability to play, but in her personality, her ability to lead and her ability to inspire."
Lucas said that it was the intangibles that so many great players miss that makes Lehning as good as she is.
"Her striving to be the best, whether it is playing basketball, volleyball, running track, she works harder than anybody to get accomplished what she has in mind," Lucas said. "But it is also the caring for the team, the character that she displays. She'd rather the team win and not score than score 30 and the team lose."
The specific skill that has left an indelible imprint on her prep coach is the fact of her ability to pick up players visually all over the floor.
"She can see the court better than anybody I've coached or watched play. Seeing her deliver the ball to someone that she's not looking at always amazes me, but I saw it time and time again so you just see it as something normal -- but it's not. She has a rare gift."
Lehning herself, says she has had different people tell her that they see her eyes always moving when she's got the ball in her hands and dribbling down the court.
"I don't notice that I'm doing it," Lehning said. "I guess it's the psychology of seeing the floor. I can watch things and anticipate what people are going to do. I've always had the mentality to pass first, shoot second."
At the end of that freshman season, the Lady Larks found themselves sitting with a sparkling 21-2 record and qualifying for the Class 2A state tournament in Manhattan, a return to Bramlage Coliseum where Lehning had been a water girl for the Larks in 1995 when Lehning was just eight years old.
"I remember walking out onto the floor to play and saw all that purple (seats) and I just thought this is a great place," Lehning recalled. "I don't think I've ever had that same feeling in any other arena."
The Larks would open the state tournament with a victory but then fell in the semifinals and again in the consolation game. That first season ended for Lehning and her teammates with a record of 22-4. It was better than most expected, but it was far less than what they were after.
With virtually a lineup returning intact for her sophomore season, expectations were high in Sublette and expectations were high for Lehning and her teammates as well.
"We were talented and in my mind, this was our year to win," Lehning said of that season. "We've got to do it now."
And for most of the season, the Larks did just that. Mowing down the area's top teams, they completed the regular season 19-1 and headed to the 2A sub-state where they won their quarterfinal game to set up a semifinal contest in Syracuse against Wichita County, a team they had beaten by more than 20 points during the regular season. It was March 7, 2003.
"I had a terrible game, just terrible," Lehning said of what became a stunning 62-59 loss to a team that was only 11-8 at the time. "We just didn't click and it was one of those nights where nothing worked. It was unfortunate that it was one where you were one and out. It hurt, it really hurt and it still gives me a knot in my stomach when I think about it all these years later. But it turned out to be the best thing that happened to us. I thought the world had ended, but my mom told me, "Shalee, the sun is going to come up tomorrow' and she was right.
"I remember telling my teammates, my coach and my parents that this will never happen again. I didn't know what it meant, but I was determined from that point forward that I would not let us play a game and not be prepared. We might have gotten big-headed, I don't know, but I think we just thought we couldn't be beat."
Little did she know how prophetic those words would become.
Fast forward to March 13, 2004. Lehning and her teammates hoisted the Class 2A state championship trophy with a hard-fought 66-56 victory over another unbeaten team, Olpe. It capped off the school's second unbeaten season in history (the 1984 Class 1A team was 28-0) as they finished 26-0.
"It was so neat because it wasn't anything like our sophomore year," Lehning said of that first state championship. "All summer, all preseason, we talked that this is our year. We're going to do this together. It's all about team. Our motto was 'We shall -- one game at a time.'"
Ironically, Lehning was not the team's leading scorer that Saturday in Bramlage. That honor would be earned by Stevens, who simply blitzed Olpe with a career-high 25 points, including an incredible 7-of-10 from three-point range.
"She just went off," Lehning said. "It was just a perfect way for us to end the season."
To this day, Stevens is still amazed at what happened that day in Bramlage.
"I was just in a zone," Stevens recalls of that time. "I've never been in that state of mind playing basketball. They were focused on stopping Shalee and it left me open and my teammates were getting me the ball, I was shooting it and it was going in. I still find it hard to believe sometimes."
Once again, eight months later, with most of the 2004 state title team returning and approaching her senior season, Lehning knew teams would have them in their sights for the 2004-2005 season. She had already verbally committed to Kansas State in early August and then signed her national letter-of-intent in mid-November. With recruiting pressure off, Lehning could focus on her final season as a prep star.
She didn't disappoint. And neither did the Lady Larks.
With a few close calls under 10 points, they ran roughshod over the Hi-Plains League once again. They stormed through the 2A sub-state and headed back to Manhattan with a spotless 23-0 record.
"Coach (Lucas) had done a great thing for us at the start of the year," Lehning said. "He gave us shirts that had a target on the back and told us that was the way our year would be -- everybody would be gunning for us. We knew the power of team because it worked for us as juniors. We weren't thinking undefeated, but our goal was to win another state championship. There was just a confidence that we had -- when teams figure that out, the power of doing it together and not caring about who scores or who doesn't, you're going to have success. It was unbelievable and I still get goose bumps thinking of it."
Those goose bumps became real on March 12, 2005, when once again, in Bramlage Coliseum, in Manhattan, the Lady Larks completed another undefeated 26-0 season with a runaway 65-46 victory over Salina-Sacred Heart. Lehning would lead the way with 27 points in the lopsided victory while Griffin, who had finally worked her way into the varsity starting lineup in her senior year, scored 19 points on 6-of-10 shooting to help keep the Knights' defense stymied.
"We had to work for it, it didn't come easily," Lehning recalled. "I couldn't have asked for a better way to end my high school career. It is something I'll always remember, but it was so special to be doing it with the people who are my best friends, even to this day. Many people lose track of their high school teammates or friends, but we've stayed close and I'm very blessed by that."
In her final prep season, Lehning averaged 30.6 points, 15 rebounds, 8.8 assists and 5.5 steals. She was an all-state selection in volleyball as her team finished runner-up in that sport in Class 2A the previous fall. More than two months after finishing her stellar basketball career, Lehning would win two gold medals at the state track meet in Wichita, giving her a total of seven individual career firsts in Wichita. One of those included a state-best 2A mark of 147-5 in the javelin.
Completing her six-year junior high and high school run at Sublette, Lehning could look back at a stunning 126-6 won-loss record, two state championships and a 52-game winning streak. It was now time to move on to the Division I college game.
How would southwest Kansas' star perform against the nation's best collegians? Would she be quick enough? Would she be able to defend? Would she be just as effective at the next level as she had been in high school? Those were the questions awaiting Shalee Lehning when she arrived in the Little Apple in the fall of 2005.
Part 3: Kansas State legend and WNBA draft, Thursday.
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