Just a few short years ago, Jackie Stiles was on top of the women’s basketball world.

Stiles, the NCAA career women’s scoring leader during her phenomenal stint at Southwest Missouri State, was tapped by Portland with the No. 4 pick in the 2001 WNBA Draft.

She was a WNBA All-Star her first season, as well as the league’s rookie of the year.

She had endorsement deals with the likes of Cingular Wireless and Nike and signed the WNBA’s biggest single-product, single-player retail deal after Wal-Mart ordered 10,000 Stiles T-shirts.

She had fame, modest fortune and adulation.

But her career went downhill – fast.

She missed 11 games during the 2002 season because of injury. The Portland franchise folded, and Stiles was selected by the Los Angeles Sparks as the 14th pick in the dispersal draft.

Injuries and surgeries piled up faster than awards and honors, and Stiles never played in the league again. But the competitive fire that drove Stiles to be one of the best women ever to play basketball didn’t die.

So what did Stiles do? After she sufficiently recovered from surgery No. 13, Stiles, now 26, bought a proper bicycle and started cranking out the miles with the same kind of drive she used growing up in tiny Claflin to become a women’s basketball legend.

But even as she suffers through 200-plus-mile weeks – most rides are done after long days working as a personal trainer and giving private basketball lessons – Stiles doesn’t quite know how to refer to her new obsession of competitive cycling. Career? Sport? Hobby?

Kansas basketball legend Jackie Stiles, right, prepares to race with teammate Lisa Pflughoeft-Goetz. After a string of surgeries cut her professional basketball career short, Stiles has developed a love of cycling and has thrived in several races.

“I’m not sure what it is yet,” she said with a laugh. “I’m so driven, so competitive. I want to see how far I can go in this sport. My dream goal : I usually don’t tell people I want to turn pro. I’m such a beginner. But that’s kind of what the goal is in the back of my mind. I don’t know if that’s possible. It’s a whole new sport, and I have a long way to go, but that’s what I’m shooting for.”

‘This is what I was missing’

To say Stiles is new to the world of cycling is to understate.

Sure, she rode as a kid, but along came basketball, and Stiles devoted herself to hoops. As early as high school, Stiles was known for her hours-long workouts and a regimen that including making – making! – 1,000 baskets a day.

Ride a bike? No time.

But then the injuries started, and the rehabilitation sessions. Rehab for just about every athlete – from figure skater to football player – starts with time on a stationary bike, and Stiles’ was no exception.

“Basically, I started falling apart in my second season,” Stiles said of her brief WNBA career. “I had 13 surgeries in the last three years. The one thing I was able to do was bike. I didn’t own a bike; I’d just get in spin classes. But through all the surgeries, it was all I could do to keep my conditioning up.

“My dad had a mountain bike. Every now and then in the summer, I’d have a surgery and I’d take it out. I can’t stand not doing anything. I remember having a boot on my ankle, and I’d go out and ride for miles. The one thing my body allowed me to do was bike. The bike never bothered me.”

So, 10 weeks ago – Stiles can pinpoint the date because of her detailed training log – she purchased her first road bike.

“I started riding with a group of people,” she said. “Then I did my first race and thought, ‘This is what I was missing.’ I missed competing. I can’t play tennis. I can’t go for a jog. That’s hard for me, because I’ve been so active. But I got in that race, and I knew I loved it.”

So far, so good

As it turns out, Stiles has a knack for cycling.

Though she has been training just more than two months, she has competed in four races in Category 4, the bottom rung on the women’s cycling ladder.

At the Baldwin City Stage Race, Stiles won the Cat 4 criterium and road race. And, late last month, she went to Kansas City for the Kansas Road Race and Criterium Championships. Stiles won the Cat 4 criterium and was second in the road race.

“She had a tragic dropped chain in the road race,” said Beth Hartman McGilley, co-founder of the Wichita-based Cleo’s Bike Shop for whom Stiles competes. “She couldn’t get it back on and had to get off the bike and start up a hill. She was so furious, she got back up, got over the hill and raced past just about everybody. A group of us got off the front, though, so she got second. So she’s been in four races. She has three firsts and a second, but she probably would have contended for the win if she hadn’t dropped her chain.”

There’s no guarantee Stiles would have won had she not lost her chain, but it’s obvious she has skills.

Just ask McGilley, a veteran racer who was stunned by Stiles’ ability from the start.

McGilley followed Stiles’ career since Stiles was in high school, and McGilley recalls being impressed with Stiles’ early track skills.

Not long after McGilley and Stiles started riding together, McGilley decided to put Stiles’ aerobic fitness to the test, using a program published in cycling magazine Velonews. The test – conducted in McGilley’s garage – involved having Stiles pedal, at increasing speeds, until she reached a speed she couldn’t maintain for two minutes. After taking a day off, Stiles returned to the garage and pedaled up to that speed to see how long she could maintain it again.

“According to this program, a seasoned cyclist would last about four minutes,” McGilley said. “My husband, Keck, and I did it with her. We died to reach four minutes. Jackie held hers for 16 minutes. She’d been on the bike about two months, and she just about had to be peeled off the bike.”

Curiously, McGilley is a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders and athletes. Stiles’ situation – athletes impaired psychologically or physically and unable to compete in their primary sport – is one of McGilley’s favorite topics, though their connection was purely coincidental.

“Jackie is absolutely not through with performing at a professional level,” McGilley said. “What the bike gave her was carte blanche to experience herself again in a new way as an elite-level athlete. After her last surgery, she was on the knees of her heart. The bike gave her a whole new forum to experience herself.

“She’s a genetic giant, but being strong like that is no good if you’re not strong mentally. Her capacity to stay tuned right into that place in her mind is what sources her. She’s gifted. She’s amazing.”

‘I hurt all the time’

How far Stiles will go in cycling remains to be seen, but it’s unlikely she’ll be as successful as she was in basketball.

But that’s not a knock on her cycling so much as a testament to her basketball prowess. She scored more points than any Kansas high schooler – girl or boy – and then set the NCAA women’s scoring record (3,393 points) at Southwest Missouri State.

She was everybody’s All-American in college and had days and awards named after her.

But a run of injuries to her arms and shoulders, legs, feet and ankles all but ended her professional career before it began.

“All my injuries were from overuse,” Stiles said. “For the most part, I was doing too much, combined with the physicalness of the game. My joints ached. I hurt all the time. Now, for the first time, I’m off anti-inflammatories. I was on anti-inflammatories since 1997. For the first time, I get out of bed and I don’t hurt everywhere.”

That’s not to say cycling is easy.

“You can push yourself so hard,” Stiles said. “I ran track and had some grueling workouts, but nothing compares to some of the times when I’m riding with a bunch of guys, training rides where I go beyond exhaustion and think, ‘This is the hardest workout I’ve done in my life.'”

Stiles tries to temper her workouts so she doesn’t ride herself into the ground again. It’s a battle, however.

“It’s really hard,” she said. “I’m hard to be around on my days off. I’m addicted to exercise. But I hope I’ve learned my lesson. I went through a lot of pain and suffering. I need to listen to my body. It was telling me I needed a day off. I should have listened, but it’s hard for me to do.”

Isn’t that Jackie Stiles?

Stiles hoped to remain anonymous as a cyclist.

“It’s kind of quiet,” she said. “I get recognized every now and then, but not much that I notice. I was worried about that. I hoped they wouldn’t expect me to be good at this. I didn’t know if I’d be awful and take somebody out. I was kind of glad people weren’t recognizing me. I didn’t want them to expect me to be where I was at in my basketball career.”

Actually, many cyclists have recognized her. They just confirmed it was THE Jackie Stiles with her teammates.

“People don’t come up to her, but she’ll sign up, and people will say, ‘Is that Jackie Stiles the basketball player?’ We have the same jersey, to they’ll come up and ask me,” McGilley said. “Jackie wanted to keep a low profile. I told her, ‘Jackie, you don’t have that option. We’re in Kansas.'”

If she is to progress in cycling, McGilley said, Stiles will have to leave Kansas. McGilley has a few pro contacts who have been receptive to helping Stiles take the next step in winter training camp.

“She’s going to have to fly this coop,” McGilley said. “She won’t be able to race professionally from Kansas, if that’s her dream. It’s absolutely not too late. Bike racing tends to be very gracious. She’s not starting without a huge aerobic base behind her. She knows how to be a professional athlete. It is truly her essence. And it helps because she is who she is. This is Jackie Stiles. She has marketability. She has a stellar reputation. She’s a Nike athlete.”

She also isn’t ready just yet to call it a career in basketball. After her last surgery in February, doctors told her to give it a full year’s rest.

“I was hoping to make a comeback this summer, but my body wouldn’t allow it,” Stiles said. “I still love basketball. I won’t close the door on it. I’ll just have to wait a year.”