TicketsApril 1, 2009
By MARK SCHMETZER
Jill Stephens probably didn't mean to sound like Groucho Marx, but her response to her mother's suggestion could have been written by the legendary comedian.
Stephens was still a senior at Parkersburg (W.Va.) South High School and was trying to decide on a major at the University of Cincinnati, where she would be a freshman basketball player in the autumn of 2005. She remembers her mother Linda being determined that Jill settle on a major rather than starting out as undecided.
"She said, `You could be an audiology major,'" Jill recalled. "I said, `I've never heard of it. I don't even know what that is.'"
You could say Jill picked it up pretty quickly. The 6-foot-3 Bearcat forward needed just three years to earn her bachelor's degree in communications sciences and disorders, and she's currently pursuing her A.D., which she described as the audiology version of a Ph.D.
"I have three more years of school -- two here at Cincinnati and my last year, which will be a clinical fellowship somewhere," said Stephens, who graduated second in her high school class and was a member of the National Honor Society and Key Club. She is looking forward to her fellowship year. "I'm really excited. I'm dreaming of warm places. I'm thinking that I might want to be at the beach for a year." She's just as keen about settling into her career.
"I want to work with children," she said. "Originally, I wanted to teach kindergarten, but I didn't think I could work with that many children at once. I would like to specialize in pediatrics, working with kids who have had hearing loss."
Specifically, Stephens wants to work as part of a team that surgically implants devices in children who have suffered profound hearing loss.
"I wouldn't be doing surgery," she says, chuckling. "No worries there. I would just be doing a lot of audiological rehab afterward. Basically, you have to teach them how to hear again. Hearing is so important. You have to be able to hear to learn the language.
"I just love working with kids. They're so cute, and they say the funniest things." Stephens was carrying a 3.8 grade-point average in the early stages of her doctoral pursuit after graduating with a 3.9 GPA. She fell short of a full A in just three classes, she said.
"I got an A-minus in my Sign Language class and a B in Working With and Supporting Family," she said. She also got a B-plus in History of Jazz and Popular Music, which she admittedly didn't expect to be so challenging.
"It met on Tuesdays and Thursdays in winter quarter, which just happened to be right in the middle of the season, and traveling got in the way," she said. "I would have loved to get a 4.0. I was really mad about that A-minus. I mean, who gives an A-minus?"
She did get an A in one of her most challenging classes -- Neurology.
"It was also one of my favorites," she said. "It was difficult. There was just so much information. There's so much about the brain we don't know. I was really interested."
"Jill comes from a family that's very well-grounded," second-year Bearcats coach J. Kelley Hall said. "They're wonderful people. She and her sister Anne both are the kind of people we want to turn out from the university."
Jill actually followed Anne to Cincinnati, and the two roomed together even after Anne graduated. That arrangement lasted until this season, when Anne -- who earned four letters at UC before her career ended in 2006 -- moved into her own place. Jill's success in the classroom is mirrored by her accomplishments on the basketball court. Through UC's first 19 games of this season -- of which they won 13, including three of six BIG EAST games -- she was second among the Bearcats with averages of 10.3 points and five rebounds per game. She started all 19 games.
The 2008-09 season was shaping up to be one of mixed emotions for Stephens. On one hand, the Bearcats seemed to be bouncing back from a troublesome 2007-08 season, when they were 12-16 overall and didn't post their third BIG EAST win until the 16th and final conference game of the season.
Season-ending injuries helped cut UC's roster to nine players last season, and Hall had to get more out of less, which meant players such as Stephens and Kahla Roudebush had to be on the court longer than usually preferable. Stephens was second on the team with an average of 13 points per game in 2007-08 and she led the team with an average of 9.4 rebounds per game.
She also averaged a team-high 37.4 minutes per game, more than 11 over the 26 she is averaging this season while splitting time at the low post with 6-foot-1 redshirt junior Michelle Jones, who is averaging about 14 minutes per game.
"I'm definitely less tired this year," Stephens said. "I get to relax a little more. Practices are different, too. We're able to play five-on-five. There's more rest time in practice, and we're able to do harder drills and learn more. "I wouldn't say there's less pressure, though. This is my senior year -- my last chance. I want to do everything right."
Hall pointed out that Stephens' performance has improved since UC started its BIG EAST schedule. She is averaging 10.3 points, 5.2 rebounds and 26.8 minutes per game against BIG EAST teams.
"We're asking them go up against some of the best low post players in the country, and that can take a toll," Hall said.
The upside to this season also included a 61-55 win at West Virginia on Jan. 7 in Stephens' final game in her home state. She marked the occasion with her first double-double of the season, scoring 12 points and grabbing 10 rebounds in 31 minutes.
"That was fun," she said. "We started off a little shaky, but that was a wonderful game to win. There were so many people from my hometown there."
The bittersweet side for Stephens and classmate Angel Morgan is they seem to be wrapping up their college careers one season too early. Too soon for them -- they'll be leaving behind the three girls with whom they'd teamed up to form one of the most highly- regarded recruiting classes in the history of UC women's basketball. Injuries had cost Jones, Shelly Bellman and Roudebush one season each. They all have redshirted, which means they received an extra year of eligibility and can return next season as seniors.
"We came in -- the five of us -- and now we're down to two lone seniors," she said. "I think God works in mysterious ways. God knew, for example, that Shelly needed to be there next year, when the team's going to be even better."
Stephens doesn't expect to continue her basketball career after college -- in any capacity.
"I think I'm kind of at the point where I'll cross that bridge if I ever come to it," she said. "I don't know if I'd be the best coach. I'm not the most patient person. I don't know if I want to get into coaching down the line. It would be a huge transition. I'm not anticipating playing in the WNBA. I guess playing overseas is an option, but I'm kind of a homebody, and it would have to be a place where they speak English. I don't think I'd ever be able to learn another language."
Unless, that is, her mother tells her to.
(This story was previously printed in the Bearcat Sports Digest.)