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Stephanie White McCarty — dressed in warm-up pants and an Indiana Fevers T-shirt — has the undivided attention of nearly 200 junior high school students. About a dozen adults stand on the sidelines watching, obviously impressed. "Wow," a woman eventually says to no one in particular. "She is so good." The others nod silent agreement, as the pro basketball player bounds across the room to answer another question from one of the students.

The group's reaction reflects the awed respect McCarty has commanded throughout her high school and college careers. Now the 5-foot, 9-inch guard for Indiana's new WNBA team will bring that devotion along to the new franchise. Whatever she does, on the court or off, the 22-year-old from Warren County (along the Illinois border) approaches the task with focus and intensity.

Many of the students at Harshmann Middle School on Indianapolis' Eastside get McCarty's personal attention as she gets up close to them to answer their questions:

"What's your average?"

"I averaged 20 points a game during my senior year at Purdue."

"What size shoe do you wear?"

" In sixth grade, I was wearing a size 9. I now wear an 11."

"How long do you plan to play in the WNBA?"

"As long as my body will let me."

"How much money do you make?"

Her short bobbed hair tucked behind her ears, McCarty steadily moves among the students sitting in the school cafeteria, not missing a beat.

"We don't make even close to what the men make," she says with a laugh. "We make about as much as a schoolteacher."

The vast discrepancies in pay between male and female professional basketball players doesn't faze McCarty, who had big dreams as a young girl, but never gave a thought to the remote possibility of playing women's professional basketball in the United States.

By the time she was 11, McCarty already had her mind and heart set on playing college basketball on a scholarship and getting her pilot's license. Her parents, hiding their skepticism, just encouraged her and her two younger sisters to be the best at whatever they set out to do.

However, some of the other people in her hometown thought McCarty a bit naïve. They tried to let her down easy by telling her that it wasn't likely that a big college recruiter would come looking for basketball talent in a town as small as West Lebanon, Ind. (population 784, stoplights 0).

"I like challenges," says McCarty, recalling their response. "I like it when people tell me I can't do something. I like to be able to prove them wrong."

McCarty started proving the naysayers wrong as early as seventh grade, when she got her first letter of interest from a college recruiter. She went on to get her pilot's license, and got that full scholarship playing on the women's basketball team at Purdue University. Last year, she helped the Purdue team win its first NCAA Championship title.

By the time she was drafted by the WNBA that same year, McCarty proved to herself and the other 783 residents in West Lebanon that dreams — including the "impossible" ones — can come true, even for 11-year-old girls from small Indiana towns.

On to the Pros

After she started playing with the WNBA's Charlotte (N.C.) Sting, McCarty never stopped dreaming. She hoped not only that Indiana would be among the select few chosen to have a team in the WNBA expansion, but that she somehow would end up playing for that team.

Parts one and two of that dream came true this year, when the newly formed Indiana Fever added McCarty to its roster as a result of a trade during the WNBA expansion draft.

"Fortunately, it worked out," she says, while taking a break in an exhaustive schedule of public appearances. She's helping to promote the Fever, which starts its regular season at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis this month.

"The fans in Indiana are tremendous," says McCarty, who recently moved into a newly built home in Tippecanoe County with her husband of two years, Brent McCarty. "Everybody loves basketball here. They love women's basketball."

Although she probably would be the last to admit it, she's among the reasons that Indiana's support of women's basketball has reached the level it has, says her former coach, Tom Polf, a guidance counselor at Seeger High School in West Lebanon.

"It was unbelievable to watch her play," says Polf of the early games in which McCarty first started attracting attention as a female basketball player.

"I've run into I don't know how many guys who said they never wanted to watch girls' basketball until they heard about this girl that played like a guy. They went to one game to watch McCarty play and then they were hooked" on women's basketball, Polf says.

The Seeger High School girls' basketball team attracted huge crowds from all over central Indiana. The same thing happened when she started playing at Purdue. Attendance at the university's women's basketball games increased by 5,000 during the time McCarty played with the team, Polf says.

Through it all, McCarty remained levelheaded about her increasing celebrity status. She consistently takes the time to show fans how much she appreciates their support, her former coach points out.

After high school basketball games, long after everyone else had climbed on the bus, she still would be talking to fans. "There would be times I would have to go back in and make Stephanie stop signing autographs," Polf says. "She just felt such a loyalty for the loyalty that had been shown her. I think that's one of the main reasons she chose Purdue. People would constantly say to her ‘Stay at Purdue, so we can watch you play.' "

McCarty's devotion to her fans was particularly evident when recruiters from Purdue met with her and Polf in her hometown, the coach says. A high school senior at the time, McCarty announced a change in plans between the scheduled dinner meeting and a home visit with the recruiters. She had heard about a younger girl who had been teased by her classmates when she told them she knew the town legend, "Stephanie White."

McCarty told the recruiters that she would be stopping by the girl's birthday party first.

" ‘You can go with me if you want,' " Polf recalls her saying.
"And that's what we did. While we sat in the car, Stephanie went into this party and stayed 15 minutes to half an hour.

"She loves little kids so much."

An Early Start

McCarty was a kid herself when she started taking basketball seriously. By the time she could walk, she says, she was trying to dribble a basketball.

She was 9 when her father, Kevin White, started taking her along to a local gym where he played basketball with friends. During breaks between games, the men would let McCarty shoot and helped her with some of her basketball techniques.

By the time she reached the ripe old age of 11, McCarty already had her mind made up about what she wanted to do with her life. "I want to pay for my own college with my basketball and I want to fly," she announced to her parents.

While there is nothing particularly amazing about a child saying what she wants to be when she grows up, the work ethic that went behind those goals was impressive.

Stephanie started taping her intermediate goals above her bed so that she could think about them every morning when she woke up and just before she went to bed. The scraps of paper included specifics such as: "Play on the sixth-grade team by the time I'm in fifth grade;" "Start on the high school varsity team as a freshman;" "Become Indiana's Miss Basketball."

She met every single goal through hours of hard work.

She remembers spending an hour shoveling snow from her grandparents' driveway so she could play basketball on their outdoor court for 30 minutes. As a high school freshman, after she realized her free throw shooting was lousy, she started shooting 500 baskets a day to improve her average.

McCarty was in the gym at 6:30 a.m. practicing, even if she stayed up late the previous night playing one of her other two sports, volleyball or softball, coach Polf recalls.

"She's beyond your typical gym rat. She was the type of kid you had to drive out of the gym. Sometimes I would come in and I could tell she was physically and mentally exhausted from practicing so long, but she was so driven. I have never seen a male or female athlete as determined as Stephanie to reach her goals. She never wavered."

Even off the court, her work ethic made her parents, Kevin and Jennie White, sometimes pause in wonder.

Kevin, who works for Quaker Oats Co. in nearby Danville, Ill., recalls his daughter mowing lawns as young as 9. She kept at it for four years until she made enough money to purchase a motorcycle.

One day, White decided to mow the lawn himself when he noticed that it was about to rain. When McCarty returned with her mother, he noticed her furiously running across the yard toward him.

"I'm thinking, she's going to say, ‘Thanks a lot, Dad, for helping.' But she gets to the mower and she yells, ‘Shut it off! Shut it off!' After I shut it off, she asked, ‘Did you check the oil before you started this? Always check the oil before you do this,' " Kevin recalls with a laugh. "That's the kind of thing she was always doing."

Jennie uses such words as "driven," "responsible" and "mature" to describe her daughter

"She can be stubborn, because she's so driven about things. She's very responsible, very mature. If you told her she couldn't do something, she was going to prove you wrong," says Jennie, a fifth-grade teacher and volleyball coach at Williamsport (Ind.) Elementary School.

The White family, which includes sisters Shanda, 21, and Stacey, 17, (who also plays basketball), still is trying to get used to Stephanie's celebrity status.

Jennie says she finds it a little unusual to be informed of her daughter's activities by people in the community who keep tabs on the basketball player through the Internet or the news media.

"Every day someone says something to me about her," Jennie says.

"To us, she's just Steph," says her dad.

The Toast of Her Town

But "Steph" has been the town hero for years. When she married Brent McCarty two years ago, more than 800 guests showed up for the wedding. An outdoor reception was the only way they could accommodate the crowd, Jennie says. "We put tents outside and we prayed for no rain," she recalls.

For her high school graduation, the family posted an invitation to McCarty's open house in the local newspaper. About 700 came by.

"There were droves of people," says Jennie, who still reveals traces of anxiety in her voice about hosting that size crowd.

But McCarty wouldn't have it any other way. "It was important to her to have family, friends and everyone who had affected her life there," her mother says.

"She's a symbol of pride for the community," Polf says of McCarty's devoted following. "She's a hero."

Sharing Her Life

Lately, McCarty's public life has left little time for her private life. But she manages to fit in time with her husband Brent, whom she started dating in high school. During college, they tied the knot and made the marriage work by trading responsibilities during his football season at Wabash College and her basketball season at Purdue.

"During his season, I'd do the cooking, cleaning and laundry," she says. During her season, he'd take on those duties.

"He kind of got the shaft, because my season was longer," she says with a laugh."

She says Brent, a purchasing analyst for Caterpillar in Lafayette, never has been competitive or jealous of her success in sports in any way.

"He's been right there with me. He's been my rock. He pushes me … saying, "This is your life, your career."

When she gets some spare time, which has been seldom lately, she likes to fly. "It takes my mind off everything. It's relaxing," she says.

Hiking, camping, horseback riding and watching soap operas also works wonders for McCarty, who counts Days of Our Lives, Passions, Guiding Light and The Young and the Restless among her favorite daytime shows.

She likes to shop, too, but that pleasure can elude her in her home community. During one outing, she and Brent were able to hit only two stores in two hours. With her being the town celebrity, the duo couldn't get far without people stopping to get autographs or talk. But she's not one to complain.

"I realize basketball is not everything. I want to be the best person I can be off the court," says McCarty, who eventually wants to have a family and possibly pursue a career in sports broadcasting. She tries to pattern her off-court behavior after some of the athletes she admires: former Chicago Bulls player Michael Jordan and Jennifer Azzi of the WNBA's Detroit Shock, for instance. They're both classy on the court and off, she says.

To the young fans she was taking time out for at Harshmann Middle School earlier this year, McCarty already is that type of role model.

Shannon Whitney, a seventh-grade basketball player, says, "She's a good role model for anyone who wants to make their dreams come true."

Eighth-grader Heather Patton simply concludes: "She's pretty cool."