Northwestern University Athletics
On The Record with Amy
4/25/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
April 25, 2011
She was an All-American at New Trier courted by countless basketball powers, but chose to join a Wildcat program that had suffered through 10 consecutive losing seasons. She herself suffered through a five-win season as a jump-shooting freshman, but then transformed herself into a power down low under new coach Joe McKeown. Now she led her team to a pair of consecutive postseason appearances and finally ended her career as an honorable mention All-American, as her school's second-leading rebounder and scorer, and-just two Mondays ago--as the first 'Cat ever drafted by the WNBA. That summarizes the remarkable journey she made while in Evanston, but here we learn her story goes back much further as the six-foot-five Amy Jaeschke sits down with NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski and goes...ON THE RECORD
I remember going to my elementary school, to the blacktop there, and shooting hoops with my sister and brother. My sister was trying out for her junior high team. My dad was teaching her stuff.
I was on a side basket. I wasn't even strong enough to get the ball in the basket at that point. But I put everything I had into it trying to get it up there.
I was probably around six-years old.
It's funny. My brother and my dad were super into the Bulls when they made the huge run with Michael Jordan. So it felt like it was on the TV all the time. And my dad played basketball in high school. But it was not like it was a family thing.
It was always just a social thing for me. I'd play in the Park District league just because all of my friends were doing it. I wanted to hang out with them as much as I could.
It turned out I was good at it and I was passionate about it. Pretty much from fourth grade on I knew I loved the game, but I didn't really get serious about it until I was in seventh grade.
I've always been the tallest one.
I never had a huge growth spurt at one point. I was just consistently growing and growing and growing and growing.
I was self conscious about it when I was younger. But then I think basketball is what helped me learn to accept my height and be OK with it. I learned how to carry myself from the confidence I gained in basketball.
Not anything that was traumatizing. It was just me being self-conscious about it rather than any kids picking on me.
For a while, I would be hunched over sometimes. My parents always tried to correct me and tell me to stand up straight.
The thing that my parents always preached was something about hard work. Always doing everything to the best of your ability and working hard will take you places in life.
In eighth grade is when I started playing basketball everyday. I made sure I was in the gym every day or working on my handles (dribbling), which I don't use because I'm a post player.
It started changing when I was in high school. I started traveling with my AAU team and noticing that playing in college was a huge opportunity that I could possibly do. That's when I thought it was a possibility I could take this (basketball) further.
I really got serious about it then and started spending a lot more time in the gym.
It's interesting. I always looked up to somebody who was on my team. When I came into high school, Deirdre Naughton, she played at DePaul, she was on my team, she was a junior. I really looked up to her. She was the best player on the team, had a great work ethic and really had a lot of passion for the game. So it's always been, for me, looking up to somebody who was older on my team who has taken me under her wing and shown me the way.
When I sat down and started looking at it, one of the things the Northwestern coaches said to me was, "Do you want to go to?" I forget the name they used. But they would have said to me now, if they were recruiting me now, "Do you want to go to UConn and be the next Maya Moore? Be the next Diana Taurasi? Do you want to be the next person in a long list of really great players who have gone through the school? Or you can come in and be the first player to do it, the first player to trail blaze the way and allow other players to come in behind you."
That was something special to me. I wanted to take on that challenge.
I understood everyone was looking and saying, "What is she doing?" But to me it just seemed right. It was my hometown team, it was close by, I don't know. Something about it made a lot of sense to me.
It's funny. I used to come to all the Northwestern volleyball games when I was younger. I don't know if I came to any women's basketball games.
I had no idea what was in store for me. I was completely clueless.
I remember this one day, we had to run all the stairs in the football stadium and literally just wanting to crawl back to my room and fall asleep.
I actually ran into (men's basketball coach Bill) Carmody on the way back and I can't even imagine what the expression on my face was. It was like hating life. And he was like, "It can't be that bad."
I thought, "You have no idea."
It was like that freshman awakening, the humbling experience where you know college basketball is going to be really hard.
I didn't really understand how hard it was to change around a program. I thought maybe we wouldn't be in the NCAA Tournament (her first year), but for sure we'll be over .500.
I was just this naïve freshman who had all these aspirations and goals that were too high at that point.
I wouldn't say I ever regretted my decision.
You can't say it was happiest, easiest time of my life. There was a lot of learning-about-yourself that year.
That I could persevere through hard times. Now, every time I have to do something I don't want to do, I say, "I made it through freshman year. I can do this." It's that thing you look back on and you're like, "I made it through that. I can make it through anything."
I think I've worked really hard to get the things I've gotten. But in high school I came into a program that, at least every four years, one player got recruited by a DI school and went there. So there was a huge history of a winning tradition. So it was easy to step in there and take on that role.
So it was the first time I ever really hit something where there was a huge challenge in front of me and it could have been so easy to give up, throw up my hands, transfer, do something different. But I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.
There were definitely times, after we just got blown out by 30 points, where (she thought), "This isn't what I wanted. This isn't the college experience I was expecting."
After freshman year, I reevaluated. Then I was, "OK. I can get there in a few years. But this isn't going to be snap your fingers and everything's going to be where you want it to be."
It was almost like doing freshman year all over again. You have to learn a new coach, what he expects from you, you have to learn a new system, you have to go through all of that. But, at the same time, you trusted him because you'd seen all the great things he'd done at George Washington as a coach.
It was kind of like a sigh of relief. You had someone who's going to be able to show you the way now, someone who has that knowledge.
I hated contact. But as a 6-5 post player in the Big Ten, Coach McKeown wasn't going to have any of that.
During my freshman year, I probably got more than half my points on jump shots outside the paint. When he first came in, he learned that about me pretty early on from watching me scrimmage and so he made a rule that I was not allowed to shoot outside the paint. I had to be posting up, getting contact, getting hit. If I did shoot outside the paint, my points wouldn't count during scrimmages.
It was very frustrating. I would be in the middle of shooting a jump shot and I'm like, "Oh, no. This isn't going to count. I should have been in the post."
Honestly, it was the best thing for me. It expanded my game tremendously and now it's almost like I'd rather be inside the post than outside shooting a jump shot.
To love to get hit. That was the toughest thing to learn. To love to get your body abused and be OK with it.
It's a tougher mindset. If someone shoves you, you got to shove them back.
I had learned a lot of hard lessons my freshman year and so was able to be more open to what coach wanted me to do.
The moment I was like, finally I've gotten to the point that I wanted Northwestern basketball to be, was my junior year. We played DePaul and they were ranked in the Top 20 and we beat them. In previous years, I remember my freshman year, we'd got beaten by like 40 points, the next year, we got beat by 30. Then they came to our house and we beat them and it was exactly what I wanted.
It showed our program could compete with these highly-ranked teams. It was like, "We did it."
It feels great. Again, I wanted to come in and help change the program around. It was something I thought I was going to be able to do right away freshman year. But, although it was three years later, that was realistically when it should have happened. So it was a great feeling to know that we'd finally arrived to the point where we had made a post-season tournament.
Everybody loves winning. Everybody's so much happier when they're winning games. It's a much different feeling.
Even this year. There were times when we'd win three games in a row, then there'd be times when we'd lose two games in a row. Just the feeling at practice, when you're on a three-game winning streak versus a two-game losing streak, is tremendously different.
To be honest, I probably don't appreciate it as much as I will years from now. I'm very excited and very appreciative for everything that I've achieved thus far. But I don't think I'll really appreciate it until I'm far removed and done with my basketball career. Then I'll be like, "Wow. These are the things I achieved."
I hadn't always known I wanted to play pro. It took me to the beginning to my sophomore year of college to say, "OK. This is what I want to do." But I always wanted to opportunity to get drafted. It was a goal of mine to at least put myself in the position where, if that's what I decided to do, I could. So just knowing I reached one of the goals I set for myself is pretty awesome.
A great night would be hanging out with friends. I love playing board games. It's not necessarily going out to the bars and going crazy. For me it's more hanging out at an apartment.
Oh my gosh, yes. I get upset. It's horrible. The competitiveness in me, I can't handle it.
I don't have to win. But, in my mind, I get a little upset.
Everyone's going to laugh when I say this, but J.K Rowling, the Harry Potter author. I think what she's done is amazing. She's basically the reason I like reading now. I hated books, then I read her books and felt, "Hey, books can actually be good."
The books we read in school weren't my favorites. But I think what she's done is amazing. For somebody to come up with a storyline that lasts seven books and makes sense, it blows me away.
As I'm reading it, I can picture what's going on in my mind.
It does ruin it. I was kind of upset after I saw the first movie. I liked it, but it changed what I had in my mind. The picture in my mind was different.
I don't know if I'd ask her anything different. I'd just try to see what she's like as a person. I don't think I'd quiz her about everything.
It's a wasted day if you're not trying to get better.
First of all, I can make it through a workout in the weight room. Freshman year, it was not a pretty fall freshman year. I was definitely out of shape. But, more seriously, I think mentally I'm a lot more mature than I was freshman year. I can handle a ton more.
I just know in 20 years I hope I'm still coming back for alumni stuff, I hope I'm still seeing the girls I've played with and meet the new girls on the team and hopefully coach will still be here to visit.
Obviously, I wanted to go to the NCAA Tournament. That wasn't something I was able to achieve in my four years. But I was able to help get the ball rolling.
We were at such a standstill. The program, we only won five games my freshman year. But we got the ball rolling to the point where we were over .500 and set future teams up to have the success to get to the NCAA Tournament.
We started instilling, "We've got to win. Losing is not acceptable."
It leaves me feeling good. Although I'm upset we didn't make it to the NCAA Tournament, at least I know somewhere in the future Northwestern will be there.
I don't know that they'll point to me. I don't think they should point to me. But I know I can look at it and think, "Somewhere along the line, I helped the program get to that point."
