Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
With its steep, majestic walls and awe-inspiring mesas, gorges, buttes and river valleys, the Grand Canyon is deserving of its reputation as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
If anybody is accepting nominations for an eighth wonder of the world, the fact that UNLV found a women's basketball recruit hooping it up -- way up -- there might warrant consideration.
Normally, I don't get too excited about UNLV incoming freshmen until they become sophomores, when some will begin contributing to their teams while others become footnotes on a press release or anonymous entries in a media guide.
But it's not every day that UNLV unearths a potential gem in a national park.
Naturally, that's what Lady Rebels coach Regina Miller is hoping Samantha Stickler will become. In that fewer than 100 students attended her tiny school and that she has never played against anybody taller than 5-foot-10 that wasn't a family member, it is probably going to take Stickler a little time to get acclimated to playing college basketball in the big city.
But at 6-foot-6, this native of the South Rim can almost touch a basketball rim in her stocking feet. In the women's game, a 6-6 center is pretty tall pinon, and that's why Miller was willing to ride a burro to the bottom of the Canyon, if that's what it took to sign Stickler.
Actually, about all it took was a phone call, as Stickler wasn't exactly heavily recruited. That may be because you need hiking boots, a pith helmet and the respiratory system of a bighorn sheep to get to the Grand Canyon Village gymnasium (altitude: 7,000 feet).
"I think a few people missed on her," Miller said. "The big upside is her potential. She's got a great personality and she's too good a kid not to present with an opportunity. You always need someone to come in and give you some good minutes."
Stickler averaged 26.5 points per game last season, leading her team to its first state tournament appearance in 23 years. But when I met her recently, we hardly talked about statistics. Rampant wildlife and six-million-year-old abysses were another matter.
"When I leave my house at 6 a.m., sometimes there is an elk at the front door," she said. "That's just how it is. You hear coyotes at night and there's wildlife wherever you go."
When I asked Stickler if there were any traffic lights where she lives, she looked at me as if my mule didn't go all the way to the bottom.
"We don't even have any street lights," she said.
Stickler said she had the typical Grand Canyon upbringing, which meant trying to avoid the four million tourists that visit the park every year and traveling the 81 miles to Flagstaff to catch a movie on the weekend.
Her father has a desk job at a general store. Her mother works in a gift and curio shop where she sells Native American jewelry. Like everybody who lives in or near the village, Stickler said you take work where you can find it. She's been bagging groceries at the general store since she was 13.
"There's no movies, no shopping. There's nothing else to do at the Canyon," she said. "That's why you play sports."
But contrary to what you might think, being the tallest girls' basketball player on the South Rim is not all it's cracked up to be. For starters, it makes dating difficult. And have you ever tried filling the lane on a fast break at 7,000 feet?
Worse than that, Stickler said, is that the referees made her feel like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. She became disillusioned during her sophomore year when she was called for a foul just for stepping off the team bus.
"They made calls against me because they wouldn't want me to hurt the people I was playing against," Stickler said. "I fouled out of every single game. It wasn't fun anymore."
So she didn't play as a junior. But the year away from basketball made her appreciate it all the more. The jaw-dropping beauty of the Canyon notwithstanding, I suppose one igneous rock formation begins to look like the next one when you live there.
"I came back my senior year wanting to play more than anything," Stickler said.
If she winds up playing regular minutes for the Lady Rebels, it could spawn a new recruiting trend. I hear there's a pretty fair point guard at Niagara Falls and a power forward in Yellowstone worth keeping an eye on.
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