1 Jayne's Last Shot Stanford's Greatest Women's Basketball Player Ended
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1 Jayne’s Last Shot Stanford's greatest women's basketball player ended her college career with a bad ankle and a host of dreams By Erin Beresini Jayne Appel has no idea what happens next. Sure, there’s the Final Four three days from now, and the near-certainty that she’ll face the University of Connecticut Huskies and her longtime friend and rival, Tina Charles, and their 76-game winning streak. Appel wants to break that streak, and to win the national title for Stanford University, her coach, and her team. But then there’s her right ankle, badly sprained, and in a boot. And her right foot is stress fractured, but she can’t let anyone know that. Not yet. How will this affect her in the WNBA draft three days after the NCAA tournament? Analysts predict she will be picked second after Charles goes to Connecticut. If Minnesota doesn’t choose her with the second pick, who will? Where will she live? Chicago? San Antonio? She’s already been living out of a suitcase for a few weeks—she graduated early and lost her on-campus housing privileges at Stanford, so a kind booster family took her in. For sure, she won’t live close to home—there are no WNBA teams near California’s Bay Area. At least her family will be at the Final Four. But so will pro scouts and general managers. Pressure. This is Jayne Appel’s moment of truth. One life is ending, another about to begin. It all comes down to two more games and her head is spinning and her foot is throbbing and it’s no wonder that Appel is anxious talking on camera just before 10 in the morning on March 31—the day before she leaves for the Final Four. “All I really want to be doing is focusing on Oklahoma—the first game,” says the 6-foot-4 center into the lens, a few strands of her blonde hair falling out of a ponytail. If Stanford beats Oklahoma, in five days Appel will be playing for the national title. If Appel plays her best, Stanford has a chance to win the national title for the first time in 18 years. If she doesn’t… So the camera is probably not the only reason that laid-back, carefree, sorority girl Jayne is hiding somewhere inside anxious, tired, basketball-star Jayne. “Throw me in, feed me to the sharks and see how I do,” Appel says into the lens with an apprehensive grin. *** In a few minutes the camera will stop recording, and Appel will be in a larger press conference answering questions about her ankle when she really wants to be talking about her team. But while her team was gearing up for the Pac-10 and NCAA tournaments, Appel was hanging with Marcella Shorty, the team’s athletic trainer, rehabbing the ankle Appel sprained a month ago that swelled up all black and blue and larger than 2 any human ankle should ever swell. And since Appel is the face of the team, her ankle is the top news story. A few weeks ago, Appel made it through only 20 minutes of practice before her ankle puffed up in protest. Instead of doing layups, she jumped on an exercise bike with JJ Hones, a fellow injured teammate and sorority sister, and cheered on her team from there. By the time her team was stampeding across the court in an intense scrimmage—halfway through a three-hour practice— Appel had disappeared into the physical therapy room with Shorty and Hones. Appel sat on a treatment table while Shorty squished gel over Appel’s injured foot, then scraped it with a hard plastic blade to help get the swelling out. Appel grimaced as she concentrated on the Montana—Weber State men’s basketball game on TV. The perky ponytail at the top of her head looked like it was trying to balance out the purple ankle of doom at the other end. “I’m playing on Friday!” Appel said. Meaning she wasn’t going to sit out the PAC-10 tournament that started Friday with a game against Arizona State. Hones kept stretching her calves while Shorty kept scraping Appel’s ankle. Neither said a word. Appel had missed only two games in her entire collegiate career: her very first, as a freshman, and her very last, against Stanford’s rival, Cal. More than 60 family members and friends were in the stands at the Cal game in custom-made House of Jayne/unstopAppel t-shirts. Appel brought her uniform to the game, knowing she might not be able to play. But also knowing that she should seem prepared to play because her unpreparedness might have a negative psychological impact on the team. She majored in psychology, after all. Her studies helped her understand coach Tara Vanderveer’s motivations for making certain decisions, and they would help her understand her injury’s effect on her team. When Shorty finished manually torturing Appel’s ankle, she put electrodes on it to help reduce swelling, then placed Appel’s size-13 foot in a boot that both compressed and iced it. “Want to help me pack for the next 5 months of my life?” Appel asked Shorty. “I wish I were a kid again so I wouldn’t have to worry about money.” *** Kid Jayne had things to worry about other than money. Or basketball. A true California girl, Appel grew up in Pleasant Hill, a suburb northeast of San Francisco where life is supposed to be…pleasant. And it mostly was. There was, of course, the time when an older brother knocked Appel’s front tooth out with a basketball. And then the time when he knocked Appel’s front tooth out with a tetherball. But such encounters are almost expected for a girl swimming in a sea of brothers. Jayne is the third of four very tall kids in the Appel family, and the only girl. Papa Appel (Joseph) is a lawyer and Mama Appel (Pamela) is a registered nurse. Appel got in her girly time at Carondelet High School, an all-girl Catholic school where she played basketball and water polo. Coaches across the country— 3 including Stanford’s VanDerveer—took notice of Appel her during her freshman year of high school, when she went straight to playing on the varsity basketball team, even though Papa Appel had committed himself to coaching the junior varsity team because he thought he’d be coaching Jayne. Vanderveer started recruiting Appel early because she saw that Appel was motivated and determined to improve. She saw that Appel knew exactly what she needed to do and worked very hard to do it. Coach-speak translation: Appel was good. Really good. And Appel got really good from training really hard. During water polo season, she would practice from 5:30 until after 7 in the morning, go to school, then practice again for two hours in the evening. Basketball, thankfully, didn’t have morning practices. The love of sport kept her motivated, but there was also something else—life at home had become difficult. Appel was in fifth grade when an older brother started having behavioral problems. Jayne thought he was just a mean, angry older brother. If he were having a problem—he’d broken furniture and thrown a chair out a window before—Appel would be sent to her neighbor’s house until it was dealt with. By the time Appel was in high school, the older brother was still at home struggling. Appel never knew what kind of scene would greet her when she walked in the door. As Appel neared the end of high school, she began to realize that her brother was not actually a mean or angry person—he was suffering from a disease. Police came to the Appel house to carry out a 5150—the act of arresting someone against his will in order to perform a psychiatric evaluation. The summer before Appel came to Stanford, it happened again. Appel stood in her front yard as policemen came for her brother. When he resisted arrest, Appel watched as a policeman tasered her brother, strapped him to a gurney, wheeled him into an ambulance, then drove him away. Appel realized she needed to understand mental illness better so she could help. *** Appel’s room in the Pi Beta Phi sorority house was very organized and very clean. Roommate Caroline Levin appreciated the cleanliness because Appel’s room served as the entrance to Caroline’s room. College housing is weird like that. The black and white flowered covers were pulled up over Appel’s queen- sized bed every morning. Her computer and a pencil jar were the only things on her desk besides her photos, including Appel’s favorite photo of her and Papa Appel walking down a street in Italy—Mama Appel snuck in the shot from behind them. There were several more photos in frames on the desk and tacked to the wall. And then there was the white-board calendar, also perfectly organized. Events were color coded, and Appel wrote in all of the activities she’d be doing every single day of her last five weeks at Stanford. In early February, first up on the calendar was a visit to the Saddle Rack, a country bar in San Jose with dancing and a live band and a mechanical bull. Appel 4 had wanted to go forever, so she organized an outing, complete with limousine transportation, for her and a dozen of her sorority sisters.