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HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Front page
Dec. 15, 2005, 1:32AM
This small-town girl has big-time talent
Thanks to an ability to fill the basket in unprecedented fashion, Goodrich's Adrian McGowen is going places
By JOHN P. LOPEZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
GOODRICH — Ethel McGowen wants to take you where the roots are.
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You expect to see a scrapbook, perhaps some game programs, trophies and pictures of her soft-spoken darling who shrugs at mind-boggling accomplishments the way she does triple-teaming defenses.
You drive a couple miles into the deep piney woods west of tiny Goodrich High, a Class A school with a student population of 70. There's a two-lane county road, then a left turn down a dirt road. Chickens scurry across the front of your car, and the air is still and smells of pine.
This is Texas logging country, remote and simple. Ethel McGowen grew up here. Her parents and grandparents grew up here. And her husband, Aaron McGowen, has been a cutter in the logging business for more than 30 years, the same job his grandfather had.
"We're country people," Ethel McGowen said. "We play dominoes, cards. Our house is nothing fancy, but it's there. We have meals together and love each other."
The McGowens' life is one of a small patch of land, seven kids, one wood-burning stove, a hunting dog, an old horse named Boy and a daughter, Adrian, whose story is like something from French Lick, Ind.
"Small-town people usually don't do big things," Adrian McGowen said. "I have some dreams."
The red hunting dog yawns and scratches, chained to the trunk of an oak in front of the house. A washing machine and refrigerator sit on the front porch. Green paint is chipping off the walls, a few windows are broken, and the cinder blocks on which the house rests lean wearily.
From the outside, you cannot imagine how tough making ends meet must be. From within, the McGowens couldn't imagine needing anything more.
"There's nothing like family," Ethel McGowen said. "Where we are now, we have each other."
And there to the right of the house are the roots. They are real roots — thick, winding roots, dozens of them protruding through the dirt among three oak trees clumped together near a barbed wire fence that surrounds the house.
This is where Adrian McGowen took the first, most unlikely steps toward an unparalleled high school basketball career, culminating this year with her becoming the nation's all-time leading girls scorer with 4,723 points. And counting.
This is where she worked on her dribbling, crossing the ball from one hand to the other, slashing her way through the roots as if they were defenders. This is where she tossed up shot after shot at a plywood backboard nailed to one of the oak trees.
She scraped knees and fell over these roots. She challenged neighborhood kids, always boys older than her, so she could improve her game.
She spent night after night — starting at age 7 with her brother, Bertram, who is 12 years older — shooting and driving. She played on a tiny makeshift dirt court until her socks and shoes were coated with clay from this exceedingly rural locale 65 miles northeast of Houston.
Daring to dream
Hailing from a place like Larry Bird's French Lick, she dreamed of doing things accomplished by such women's basketball stars as Lisa Leslie and Cheryl Miller. She wanted to hoop, reach for a college education and, maybe, eventually pursue a pro basketball career. But how often does a country girl from such a remote and small place do something like that?
"There was a night that was drizzling and very cold," Ethel McGowen said. "It was one of the coldest days we've had. We heard something outside, and I told my husband, 'That's not Adrian, is it?' She was out there, by the moonlight, shooting in the cold, dribbling on that ground."
By the summer before her eighth-grade year, McGowen was playing with a small-town Little Dribblers boys team. None of the big summer shoe company teams knew of her, but McGowen started on the boys team that won a Little Dribblers national title.
Goodrich coach Pinellafie Gilford suspected McGowen, her second cousin, had a special talent. The coach scheduled the eighth-grade girls to play the Hull-Daisetta junior varsity high school team, hoping to see how McGowen would do against better competition and stronger girls.
The first-quarter score of that game was Goodrich 28, Hull-Daisetta 6. McGowen had all 28 points. She finished with 55 in a 62-45 win.
"That was it right there for me," Gilford said. "She came out and just went crazy. I knew right there this wasn't just another player."
By her freshman year playing for the Goodrich varsity, McGowen was averaging more than 42 points a game, and her coach began sending out statistics and letters to colleges. Most wound up never getting answered.
"Nobody believed the things she was doing," Gilford said. "They thought it was just something made up. A lot of times, people see her numbers and just laugh."
Coach schedules up
After McGowen averaged 45.2 points as a sophomore, word began spreading in the basketball community about the 5-9 guard who could get to the rim against virtually any competition she faced. In large part because she wanted to offer McGowen more exposure, Gilford began scheduling Class 3A and 4A teams.
In the third game of her junior year against Class 3A Coldspring, McGowen scored 55 points. Against 3A Shepherd last December, she scored her career high of 75. And against Houston's Class 4A C.E. King High, McGowen led her Class A team — with just eight girls in the entire program — to a 62-45 victory with 49 points.
Texas was the first to make the trip to Goodrich, population 253, to see if these numbers could be true. Texas A&M soon followed. Both invited McGowen to their summer elite camps. Clemson later entered the picture.
"Even when (college coaches) got here, they would ask, 'Which one is Adrian?' " Gilford said. "It's because Adrian walks so nonchalantly; she doesn't really say anything or act like anything but a small-town girl. The coaches thought it was a waste of time. And then they would see her warming up in practice."
McGowen, a two-time state qualifier in the shot put, is explosive off the dribble and strong. Named the MVP in district tennis competition, she also is quick and nimble.
After A&M assistant coach Kelly Bond watched McGowen in person, she told Gilford: "I've got to get coach (Gary) Blair down here now."
Last summer, McGowen starred at the A&M camp and later committed to the Aggies. When she scored her 4,507th point last week, breaking the national record of Missy Thomas of Gibsland-Coleman, La., Blair and the entire A&M staff were in the jampacked stands at the Goodrich gym.
The venue erupted in noise when McGowen scored with 3:40 remaining to break the record, and McGowen's feat made the national sports wires.
'Just wanted to play'
Among the names behind her in the high school annals: Miller, Leslie, Jennifer Taurasi and Sheryl Swoopes. Ranking seventh on the all-time scoring list is current Baylor coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson.
"I just wanted to play," McGowen said. "When I started playing, I told my momma I wanted to be like my big brother. I just wanted to be a good player. I want to represent the small towns."
On Tuesday night, McGowen scored 54 points in a 99-45 win over Broaddus that improved Goodrich's record to 10-3. (Two of the losses were to 3A schools and the other was to a 4A opponent). As has been common of late, several fans in the stands were from out of town — Lufkin, College Station, Houston and Dallas.
"The phone rings, and it's usually someone wanting us to fax the schedule," said Gilford. "We know everyone here. We see a lot of new faces in the stands and just figure, 'OK, they want to see Adrian.'
"It's just amazing to know her and have had the opportunity to coach her. She's going to go on and be one of the best."
But she'll always have her roots.
john.lopez@chron.com
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Front page
Dec. 15, 2005, 1:32AM
This small-town girl has big-time talent
Thanks to an ability to fill the basket in unprecedented fashion, Goodrich's Adrian McGowen is going places
By JOHN P. LOPEZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
GOODRICH — Ethel McGowen wants to take you where the roots are.
ADVERTISEMENT
You expect to see a scrapbook, perhaps some game programs, trophies and pictures of her soft-spoken darling who shrugs at mind-boggling accomplishments the way she does triple-teaming defenses.
You drive a couple miles into the deep piney woods west of tiny Goodrich High, a Class A school with a student population of 70. There's a two-lane county road, then a left turn down a dirt road. Chickens scurry across the front of your car, and the air is still and smells of pine.
This is Texas logging country, remote and simple. Ethel McGowen grew up here. Her parents and grandparents grew up here. And her husband, Aaron McGowen, has been a cutter in the logging business for more than 30 years, the same job his grandfather had.
"We're country people," Ethel McGowen said. "We play dominoes, cards. Our house is nothing fancy, but it's there. We have meals together and love each other."
The McGowens' life is one of a small patch of land, seven kids, one wood-burning stove, a hunting dog, an old horse named Boy and a daughter, Adrian, whose story is like something from French Lick, Ind.
"Small-town people usually don't do big things," Adrian McGowen said. "I have some dreams."
The red hunting dog yawns and scratches, chained to the trunk of an oak in front of the house. A washing machine and refrigerator sit on the front porch. Green paint is chipping off the walls, a few windows are broken, and the cinder blocks on which the house rests lean wearily.
From the outside, you cannot imagine how tough making ends meet must be. From within, the McGowens couldn't imagine needing anything more.
"There's nothing like family," Ethel McGowen said. "Where we are now, we have each other."
And there to the right of the house are the roots. They are real roots — thick, winding roots, dozens of them protruding through the dirt among three oak trees clumped together near a barbed wire fence that surrounds the house.
This is where Adrian McGowen took the first, most unlikely steps toward an unparalleled high school basketball career, culminating this year with her becoming the nation's all-time leading girls scorer with 4,723 points. And counting.
This is where she worked on her dribbling, crossing the ball from one hand to the other, slashing her way through the roots as if they were defenders. This is where she tossed up shot after shot at a plywood backboard nailed to one of the oak trees.
She scraped knees and fell over these roots. She challenged neighborhood kids, always boys older than her, so she could improve her game.
She spent night after night — starting at age 7 with her brother, Bertram, who is 12 years older — shooting and driving. She played on a tiny makeshift dirt court until her socks and shoes were coated with clay from this exceedingly rural locale 65 miles northeast of Houston.
Daring to dream
Hailing from a place like Larry Bird's French Lick, she dreamed of doing things accomplished by such women's basketball stars as Lisa Leslie and Cheryl Miller. She wanted to hoop, reach for a college education and, maybe, eventually pursue a pro basketball career. But how often does a country girl from such a remote and small place do something like that?
"There was a night that was drizzling and very cold," Ethel McGowen said. "It was one of the coldest days we've had. We heard something outside, and I told my husband, 'That's not Adrian, is it?' She was out there, by the moonlight, shooting in the cold, dribbling on that ground."
By the summer before her eighth-grade year, McGowen was playing with a small-town Little Dribblers boys team. None of the big summer shoe company teams knew of her, but McGowen started on the boys team that won a Little Dribblers national title.
Goodrich coach Pinellafie Gilford suspected McGowen, her second cousin, had a special talent. The coach scheduled the eighth-grade girls to play the Hull-Daisetta junior varsity high school team, hoping to see how McGowen would do against better competition and stronger girls.
The first-quarter score of that game was Goodrich 28, Hull-Daisetta 6. McGowen had all 28 points. She finished with 55 in a 62-45 win.
"That was it right there for me," Gilford said. "She came out and just went crazy. I knew right there this wasn't just another player."
By her freshman year playing for the Goodrich varsity, McGowen was averaging more than 42 points a game, and her coach began sending out statistics and letters to colleges. Most wound up never getting answered.
"Nobody believed the things she was doing," Gilford said. "They thought it was just something made up. A lot of times, people see her numbers and just laugh."
Coach schedules up
After McGowen averaged 45.2 points as a sophomore, word began spreading in the basketball community about the 5-9 guard who could get to the rim against virtually any competition she faced. In large part because she wanted to offer McGowen more exposure, Gilford began scheduling Class 3A and 4A teams.
In the third game of her junior year against Class 3A Coldspring, McGowen scored 55 points. Against 3A Shepherd last December, she scored her career high of 75. And against Houston's Class 4A C.E. King High, McGowen led her Class A team — with just eight girls in the entire program — to a 62-45 victory with 49 points.
Texas was the first to make the trip to Goodrich, population 253, to see if these numbers could be true. Texas A&M soon followed. Both invited McGowen to their summer elite camps. Clemson later entered the picture.
"Even when (college coaches) got here, they would ask, 'Which one is Adrian?' " Gilford said. "It's because Adrian walks so nonchalantly; she doesn't really say anything or act like anything but a small-town girl. The coaches thought it was a waste of time. And then they would see her warming up in practice."
McGowen, a two-time state qualifier in the shot put, is explosive off the dribble and strong. Named the MVP in district tennis competition, she also is quick and nimble.
After A&M assistant coach Kelly Bond watched McGowen in person, she told Gilford: "I've got to get coach (Gary) Blair down here now."
Last summer, McGowen starred at the A&M camp and later committed to the Aggies. When she scored her 4,507th point last week, breaking the national record of Missy Thomas of Gibsland-Coleman, La., Blair and the entire A&M staff were in the jampacked stands at the Goodrich gym.
The venue erupted in noise when McGowen scored with 3:40 remaining to break the record, and McGowen's feat made the national sports wires.
'Just wanted to play'
Among the names behind her in the high school annals: Miller, Leslie, Jennifer Taurasi and Sheryl Swoopes. Ranking seventh on the all-time scoring list is current Baylor coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson.
"I just wanted to play," McGowen said. "When I started playing, I told my momma I wanted to be like my big brother. I just wanted to be a good player. I want to represent the small towns."
On Tuesday night, McGowen scored 54 points in a 99-45 win over Broaddus that improved Goodrich's record to 10-3. (Two of the losses were to 3A schools and the other was to a 4A opponent). As has been common of late, several fans in the stands were from out of town — Lufkin, College Station, Houston and Dallas.
"The phone rings, and it's usually someone wanting us to fax the schedule," said Gilford. "We know everyone here. We see a lot of new faces in the stands and just figure, 'OK, they want to see Adrian.'
"It's just amazing to know her and have had the opportunity to coach her. She's going to go on and be one of the best."
But she'll always have her roots.
john.lopez@chron.com
