Stiles turns to business

Basketball star and businesswoman Jackie Stiles is the latest luminary from Springfield's past who's been unable to resist the Queen City's peculiar magnetic pull.

Missouri State University's most recognizable female athlete is moving back to the city that embraced her remarkable collegiate career and, to this day, holds on tightly to the Lady Bears' halcyon days of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Stiles' prowess as a shooting guard lives on; she still holds the NCAA Division I career women's basketball scoring title with 3,393 points.

These days, Stiles is honing a new skill: entrepreneurship.

Last month, the 30-year-old Kansas native registered Jackie Stiles Total Training LLC with the Missouri Secretary of State's Office, signaling her plan to move the company's base of operations to Springfield from Wichita, Kan., after plenty of deliberation. But any qualms Stiles had about returning to Bear Nation seem to have evaporated.

"Already, I know it was the right move," she said. "I just love it here. This is the place for me."

While closer to family in Wichita, Stiles said something was amiss in the Sunflower State.

"I always - in the back of my mind - wondered what it would be like here in Springfield because I had such an amazing four years playing for the Lady Bears," said Stiles, who earned a bachelor's degree in sports and fitness promotion at MSU. "I just felt like something was pulling me to Springfield."

Not in Kansas anymore

Stiles started teaching basketball lessons in 2005 in Wichita while she was undergoing rehabilitation for a litany of injuries that plagued her "shooting side." In all, she had 13 surgeries on her right shoulder, right wrist, right ankle and right Achilles tendon between 2002 - her last full season in the WNBA - and 2005.

"My rehab was not going as planned, and professional rehab doesn't pay the bills," she said.

Stiles had hoped to revive her WNBA career with the Los Angeles Sparks, which picked her up in 2002 after two seasons with the now-defunct Portland Fire, but the injuries left her unable to compete at the professional level. After a brief attempt to play in an Australian league, the 2001 WNBA Rookie of the Year officially retired in 2006.

"It didn't work out; my body just couldn't do it," Stiles said, adding that she turned her full attention to her business in 2007.

Since that time, she's been paying the bills through a mix of motivational speaking, personal training, and basketball camps and clinics under the banner of J. Stiles Total Training. Her standard speaking fee is $2,500, which is negotiable, and she charges $50 per person for an hour-long personal training session or a four-hour basketball clinic. Stiles will be offering the same carte du jour in Springfield, and some of her closest acquaintances - including former coach Cheryl Burnett - are helping generate business leads.

Burnett, who is now director of development for the College of Education and university libraries at MSU, had been trying to lure Stiles back to Springfield since she graduated. Burnett said she even offered her protégé an assistant coaching gig, but Stiles couldn't be persuaded. Finally, after nearly a year of entertaining a move to Springfield, Stiles squared up and took the shot.

An enthusiastic Burnett thinks Stiles will thrive in business.

"Jackie is the best of anybody I have ever seen at teaching individuals how to train," Burnett said. "I always thought she should start an academy where the best of the best come to train - men, women, in all areas of athletics, not just basketball."

While Stiles wants to start by focusing on Springfield and surrounding rural areas, she's willing to go far and wide for new business. She's been flying to Seattle to do one-on-one lessons with a client's daughter, and she led a basketball camp in Colorado Springs, Colo., this summer. Stiles hopes to someday build her own training facility in Springfield.

Springfield-based consultant David Sims is helping position Stiles to achieve that dream. The duo are drawing up a business plan that will identify Stiles' target demographic and set out a strategy for establishing local and national markets. Sims, who also coaches racquetball at MSU, said he expects opportunities to abound for Stiles as word spreads through the local business community.

"Springfield really lends itself to the referral aspect of business," he said. "It's very easy to find someone who knows somebody who knows somebody."

Stiles said she'll primarily work out of her home - once she buys one - and will conduct most of her business through her Web site, www.jackiestilesbasketball.com. Her clinics move around based on availability; personal training engagements take place at the client's home or at south-side gym CrossFit Springfield.



At the charity stripe

Beyond her business goals, Stiles has a heart for charity, especially Ronald McDonald House.

Stiles is organizing a number of holiday-season fundraisers for Ronald McDonald House of the Ozarks. She's implored area basketball coaches to choose a home game during the first three weeks of December and solicit donations from those in attendance. The charity also will receive a portion of the proceeds from a series of afternoon basketball clinics Stiles is putting on in late December and a New Year's Eve party she's hosting for kids at the south Springfield YMCA.

"I don't play golf, so I thought this was the next best thing," she said.

Stiles said her youngest sister, Carlie, spent time in a Ronald McDonald House in Kansas. Carlie, who was born with a condition that weakened her muscles, died before her first birthday.

Bonnie Keller, president and CEO of the local Ronald McDonald House, said the nonprofit's staff has welcomed Stiles into the fundraising fold.

"We are very excited about the possibilities of working with her," Keller said. "To actually speak with her in person and see the strong, heartfelt feeling she had for helping our organization and some others, it's the real deal."

Stiles also served as a catalyst for an all-female charity basketball game Oct. 30 in Ashland, Kan., that's drawing all sorts of athletic talent to raise money for breast cancer research. Hoops for Hope 2009 is expected to raise about $100,000, said Benjamin Anderson, CEO of Ashland Health Center.

Stiles has signed on to coach one of two teams featuring local high school talent as well as squad members from women's teams at numerous universities, including MSU, Drury, Kansas State and the University of Kansas, said Anderson, who has a bachelor's degree in English and a Master of Business Administration from Drury.

"I was in Springfield at Drury the same four years Jackie was at Missouri State," he said. "She made a women's basketball fan out of me when I was in Springfield. ... I think she did that for a lot of people."[[In-content Ad]]