Mclouth ? It shouldn’t have been a shock when Courtney Edmonds broke the McLouth High girls basketball scoring record earlier this season, then passed the 1,000-point plateau last week.

After all, the 5-foot-10 senior did play with NBA stars in her back yard as a little girl.

An avid basketball-card collector, Edmonds would put her NBA cards in two piles. With her eyes closed, she would pick a player from each pile. Those two athletes would then “play” each other on Edmonds’ court. With Edmonds as the shooter, each star would have a shot at a basket. Whichever player she liked better would get Edmonds’ better shots.

“Sometimes the bad person won, but that was very rare,” Edmonds said.

Long after those days, Edmonds was shooting her own shots.

One of her most notable shots came Dec. 10 against Troy. Edmonds scored her 807th point, putting her ahead of Jennifer Barton, who had held the McLouth career scoring record since 1994.

Edmonds didn’t know about the record until a game Dec. 6 against Shawnee Maranatha, but McLouth coach Vicki Bechard knew last season Edmonds was getting close.

Edmonds’ 30 points in the second home game against Maranatha tied the school record. The senior averaged 12.8 her previous three years and never had scored 30 in a game before.

“When she was one point shy, I was about to have a heart attack because I wasn’t prepared for that,” Bechard said.

In her first three years of high school, Edmonds averaged 12.8 points. This year, she’s averaging 16.3 points, 13.5 rebounds, three steals and three assists.

But Bechard would like Edmonds to be more aggressive.

“I’d like her to step up a little bit more,” Bechard said. “We’ve worked with when to penetrate and when to kick it back out. I think she’s done a really good job of that.”

When Edmonds scored 15 points during a 54-33 loss to Pleasant Ridge Friday, she became the first McLouth player — boy or girl — to surpass 1,000 career points.

“That’s a nice milestone for any high school player,” Bechard said.

Compiling the statistics also has been a joy for Bechard.

“It’s been kind of fun,” she said. “I’m kind of a stat queen.”

Edmonds has earned strong stats in other sports. She thrives in cross country and track. At the state tournament in May, Edmonds won her second straight 800-meter race and took third in the 1,600. She’s also a two-time Class 2A state medalist in cross country.

But her running success has complicated Edmonds’ college decision.

She has received letters from Kansas State, Wichita State and Kansas University to run cross country and track, while smaller schools such as Benedictine and Fort Hays State have showed interest for basketball.

Edmonds has participated in Marian Washington’s basketball camps for years and would love to play for the Jayhawks’ coach. She will inquire about walking on for basketball if she receives a scholarship for cross country and track at KU. Edmonds, though, said she had to be realistic.

“I always wanted to play for a big team,” Edmonds said. “As a little kid, you don’t know what all goes into that. In the last year and a half, I’ve been trying to stay on reality’s side.”

Later this winter, Edmonds has a campus visit to Coastal Carolina, a small Division One school in South Carolina.

Wherever she goes, Edmonds would like to play basketball — and run.

“I’d like to have both, but you can’t always have everything you want,” Edmonds said.