[title subtitle=”WORDS Dwain Hebda
IMAGES courtesy Megan Wolfenbarger”][/title]
Senior Jersey Wolfenbarger burns for basketball
Coach Rickey Smith of the Fort Smith Northside Lady Bears has seen ‘em come and seen ‘em go in his decorated career coaching basketball. And even he struggles with becoming tongue-tied in describing his five-star senior Jersey Wolfenbarger.
“What do you say that hasn’t already been said?” he says. “Jersey leads by work, leads by example. Her mindset is just come to work every day, show up early, stay late, and get the job done. She’s earned her teammates’ respect by doing that.”
Knowing that description falls short of the phenom’s talent – most do – Coach pauses.
“Here’s the scary thing,” he says at last. “She’s not anywhere close to where she’s going to be. She’s really not.”
Youth athletics are rife with hyperbole when it comes to its stars. Athletes, kids really, are hyped earlier and earlier with very few having even an outside chance to live up to what others say about them. For every LeBron James or Tiger Woods, there are ten, fifty, a hundred who flame out early, crack under the scrutiny or just fade away.
Jersey is well aware of this. A student of the game, she knows how the complacency of believing one’s own headlines can rot an athlete from the inside out. Maybe that’s why when you speak to her, she’s liberal in her use of “Sir” and “Ma’am.” Maybe that’s why when you ask her career stats, she sheepishly says she doesn’t know them. Maybe that’s why she’s different.
“It is a little weird to see all the buzz. Like, everything’s being hyped up,” she says. “But I was kind of like an underdog, so I guess I have that mentality of success is kind of fleeting. You have to just enjoy the process and enjoy the grind because that buzz can go away in a moment, you know?
“It’s kind of crazy. You don’t take it for granted, but at the same time you understand where you came from and what your dream was like. I understand my journey is where I started and I kind of challenge myself to never lose sight of that. I think that’s what drives me more than my momentary success, is chasing something even greater.”
That might be Jersey’s most tantalizing aspect, given what she’s done thus far. She led the team to a twenty-eight and one record and the Class 6A state title as a sophomore averaging over twenty-two points, three rebounds, two assists and a steal per game. As a junior, she averaged more than eighteen points, six rebounds and nearly four assists, landing Arkansas Gatorade Player of the Year honors in the process.
Jersey’s dream began just like thousands of other pee-wees, back when basketball was just another thing she did.
“I literally tried almost every sport before I figured out that basketball was my go-to,” she says. “I really didn’t like many outdoor sports. I did track and cross country for a little bit, but [basketball’s] always been my thing so I stuck with it.”
From the jump, she was better than most, playing in summer travel leagues that went all over her native Missouri as well as across state lines. She and her parents – Megan Wolfenbarger and Tashina Mailes – moved to Fort Smith when Jersey was a ninth grader. She became the first, and thus far one of only two, to be promoted to play on Northside’s high school squad, which is typically open to grades ten through twelve.
“What separated her from the majority of the players, number one, she’s extremely talented, but also her work ethic,” Coach Rickey says. “She’s obsessed with the game of basketball. When I say obsessed, I mean literally obsessed with the game of basketball. If there’s anything that she can’t do, she’ll stay and work hours and hours to master it. Any new drill, any new move, she’s spending hours and hours and hours a day working on it.”
Still, few could have imagined what the now-seventeen-year-old would have blossomed into.
“Jersey arrived as a five-eight, five-seven, ninety-eight-pound runt to be honest,” Rickey says. “She’s now grown to six-five, pushing six-six and still plays the same position as she did at five-seven and five-eight which is guard.”
Players as tall as Jersey is playing guard is next to unheard-of in high school, especially for girls. Few basketballers with the height to dominate around the basket are quick enough to create their own shot or agile enough to handle the ball effectively.
But take one look at the many highlight reels of Jersey circulating on social media and you see the impossible – an athlete who in most cases would be playing center, taking players off the dribble, or spotting up from the three-point arc then, with equal, devastating effectiveness, dominating the boards and playing the power game inside.
Watching her game film, you see something you’ve never seen before: A player capable of dominating at any of basketball’s five positions. It’s a fact that she acknowledges haltingly, but with a steel in her voice that tells you she won’t be beaten at any spot.
“It was definitely challenging because I used to be a short, super, super quick guard,” she says. “Then when you hit the growth spurt, everything becomes awkward. You start moving weird and your shot changes.
“Just trying to figure out how to balance all that, I did a lot of speed and agility training just to make sure that I kept being explosive so I could play the guard position. Then, I also knew that with my height I had to add post play. So, I had to figure out how to use my length to my advantage but still maintain my speed so I can play facing up to the basket.”
Just like Jersey doesn’t take any night off or cruise through practice on natural ability, so too does her coach strive to keep pushing the buttons to unlock her full potential.
“You have to find continual challenges,” he says. “When she was a sophomore, I called a ton of fouls on her in practice. She’d look at me and it probably wasn’t a foul, but I called a foul because I wanted her to get in the habit of moving her feet and playing defense with her feet and not her hands. It irritated her a little bit.
“As a junior she comes back, and I didn’t call any fouls. I thought she had to get physically tougher. They would knock her down and she would look at me and I’d be like, ‘I didn’t see a foul.’ You could just see the blood boiling.
“Honestly, Jersey doesn’t need motivation because she is highly motivated herself based off of her work ethic. There’s a fire burning in Jersey and it’s an intense fire. As a coach, as the staff, our job is to heat the building up with it and if we’re not careful that fire can burn the building down because she’s an intense player. She only wants to do her best every day.”
History is full of superstars who couldn’t make their teammates better and those who did, but in the process savaged the players who didn’t work as hard or want success as much. Part of Jersey’s effectiveness includes developing the passing skills to make her teammates effective, making teams pay for double or triple-teaming her. In return, she expects full commitment and effort from her mates on par with her own and seethes when she doesn’t get it.
“I do find it pretty challenging. I know all the time and sacrifices I pour into being the player that I am,” she says diplomatically. “But at the same time, I appreciate my teammates’ differences. I appreciate the fact that they’re using basketball for joy, whereas I’m using basketball because I’m passionate about it. I want to continue to play.”
Coach is more direct in his assessment.
“As [Alabama football coach] Nick Saban stated, the really high achievers struggle with people that are not high achievers. It’s difficult for them to comprehend the way people think,” he says. “Then you add the fact that they’re teenage girls and that’s a whole other issue.”
“[Jersey’s] just wired differently. She wants to be the best. A lot of kids want to be good. A few kids want to be great. But there’s very, very few that want to be the best and that’s all Jersey wants to be. She doesn’t want to be great. She wants to be the best.”
Next year, Jersey will have the chance to perform on a much bigger stage, having accepted a scholarship offer from the University of Arkansas, a school she chose over more than thirty other suitors. But first, she’s got her final Lady Bears season to worry about and another state championship to win. It’s a goal that she’s attacking with desire, commitment and yes, even joy.
“Basketball’s just so fun to me,” she says. “I would much rather play basketball than any other sport and I find myself getting bored and anxious if I haven’t touched a basketball in a day. I even go play on Christmas and Thanksgiving in the morning because I just can’t stay away from it.”
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View the Northside Lady Bears 2020-2021 Basketball Schedule at
www.TheNorthsideGrizzlies.com/Sports/Basketball/Girls/.
