The Hall of Famers :: Jeanne McNulty-King

It's a July morning in Coeur d'Alene and Jeanne McNulty-King is on the go. On the move. Making things happen, making dreams come true. Just another day in her world.

She's been up since 5 a.m. It's part of the deal when you're an agent and you have basketball players in Europe needing your help, coaches and clubs looking to fill rosters for the upcoming season with the right pieces, which they know she has. It's her busiest time of the year.

Her day will go long, maybe only until midnight this time. She has players in Australia as well, coaches who look to her, people asking for a few minutes here and there, her availability needing to match time zones around the world, no matter what her own watch says. She's not 9-to-5. Can't be.

That's why players who want a shot at professional basketball come to her in the first place, why college coaches point them in her direction. They know what they are going to get. It's a reliability and trustworthiness that can be rare qualities to find in her profession.

"I've talked to a lot of coaches over the years. They say, I don't know if you know this but your sister is one of the best female sports agents in the world for women's basketball," says McNulty-King's brother, John. "She's in it because she loves it."

She came by it accidentally, when former Lady Griz Greta Koss got on with the Utah Starzz in the summer of 1997, in the first year of the WNBA. First, she was on the team's developmental squad. Then, Koss got called up to the active roster.

It was a lot to take in for a small-town girl from Malta and Koss was by nature quiet and shy. Her friend, McNulty-King, kept on her. What's the situation with your contract? Have you talked to them about it? Why are you waiting?

Koss asked, will you call for me? Could you? McNulty-King did. They asked if she was Koss's agent. A long pause followed. "I said, yeah. Swear to God," she says. And an agent was born.

Having Robin Selvig in her corner helped, at least at the start. He reached out to all his coaching contacts in the women's college game, opening doors around the country just a crack. It was up to McNulty-King to go through them, to win those coaches over.

She went to Final Fours year after year, worked the lobbies, bypassing the players and going right to the coaches, developing trust, handshake by handshake.

"I remember the first time talking to Jeanne," says Iowa State women's basketball coach Bill Fennelly. "You can tell right away the agents or people you deal with who are in it sincerely for the kids and the families and the ones who are in it because they want to add to their client base.

"The No. 1 thing is that Jeanne does it because she loves the people she works for and with. She does it for the right reasons. She is emotionally attached to the people she works with. I think that's why she does such a unique and special job.

"Every kid that I've had that had the ability to move to another level, I've always said, you need to talk to Jeanne. It's their decision, but I make sure they talk to Jeanne. It's really been a good situation for us."

McNulty-King wouldn't be the agent she is without having experienced the lows and highs of playing overseas herself. She learned how bad it can be, to feel deserted, a young woman in a strange country where you don't speak the language and no agent to fight for you. And she learned how good it can be.

She was the Big Sky Conference MVP as a fifth-year senior, in 1989-90, when she averaged more than 20 points per game for a Lady Griz team that went 27-3 and went to its sixth NCAA tournament.

That fall, after graduating, she departed for Spain with nothing but a bag and a bunch of promises she held as truths. She had been raised in Stevensville and Whitehall, played in the safe cocoon of Selvig's Lady Griz teams. Now it was time for a real-world education.

When she arrived, the club took her return ticket and her passport, just for safekeeping she assumed, so she wouldn't lose them. Her agent? He collected his money and was gone, never to be heard from again. Her apartment? There was no hot water, no heat, windows were cracked or broken.

She told the team about it, what she had been promised and what she actually had. No es mi problema.

Frantic, she picked up a phone, pretended she was talking to a lawyer, was able to get her passport back, was able to travel two hours to Santiago, where she found out the club had called ahead and canceled her plane ticket out of the country.

With no money and no ticket, she somehow talked her way onto flights that got her to New York, where she vowed she would never step foot outside the U.S. ever again. It was 10 days she'll never forget, an experience she would never wish on another player.

The following spring, her views had softened, the itch to give it one more shot remained. She got on with a team in Sydney, Australia, lived with an American family, had the time of her life. It was an experience she'll never forget, one she wishes for every player she represents.

Bad experiences continue, of course. "That would be an understatement," says Fennelly, whose program had two players taken in the first 19 picks in April's WNBA draft. "In any industry, when there is money involved and you can take advantage of people, it happens.

"A lot of it happens in the women's game. They get contracts overseas, they are out of the country and they are promised things and it doesn't work out. Now you're stuck somewhere, not getting paid. When those things happen, the players suffer, the families suffer."

That's what motivates McNulty-King, to do her part to make sure it never happens, not to her players.

If you're arranging a family reunion or planning a wedding and you want McNulty-King there, particularly when she's at her busiest, you better guarantee cell service and a strong wifi signal or she will pass on your RSVP. She would love to, but her girls might need her. She's that invested.

She skipped out on one reunion this past summer. The location was perfect. Remote. Private. Off the grid. Disconnected from the rest of the world.

She thought about how fun it would be. Then she thought about that player, the one in Spain, her, fearful, who needed someone to talk to, someone to help her get out of a bad situation. She can't let that person down. She needs to be there for her.

She keeps her client list small for that reason, somewhere from 35 to 50. "It's always been small and connected," says Fennelly. "There is a personal touch. When someone has an issue, it's not, hey, I'll get back to you next week.

"Some of it stems from being part of a program like Montana, playing for Coach Selvig, who is a hall of fame person, a hall of fame coach. That was in her DNA. When you are part of something as unique and special as Lady Griz basketball, you take that into other parts of your life and want to help people."

That's why she's here, of course, or will be, preparing for Friday night's Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony, partly from her work as an agent, helping more than two dozen former Lady Griz continue playing, mostly from her own days as a player.

She was one of the brightest lights in the golden era of the program, when it had gone from upstart in the early 1980s to dominant force later that decade.

She was a freshman in 1985-86, a senior in 1989-90, with a redshirt season thrown right in the middle, in 1987-88 thanks to a shoulder injury that wouldn't heal without surgery.

She returned with a vengeance, scoring more than 1,000 points her last two years, employing her patented turnaround jump shot on opponent after opponent, the echo of Bob O'Conner's voice rising above the thousands who filled Dahlberg Arena night after night. Barbed wire!

Has there been a better, more fitting nickname for a Lady Griz player? Ever? "Jeanne was a heck of a player. Played on great teams," said Selvig. "You never know for sure, but it didn't surprise me she had the career she had. She was such a good athlete."

She was a three-time state champion in the high jump at Whitehall High, led the Trojans to a Class B basketball title as a junior, averaged 25.5 points, 14.0 rebounds as a senior, then arrived in Missoula with that turnaround jump shot.

Didn't matter where she got the ball, what direction she was facing, where the basket was. She could rise, turn her body until she was square with the basket and use her high release to get her shot off against anyone, other than that 6-foot-8 Texas Longhorn she faced in the 1989 NCAA tournament.

It was unorthodox in a program that did things fundamentally. Uh-oh. "When I got to campus, Rob was, what the hell? We have to get rid of this," McNulty-King recalls. She would go on to score 1,327 career points, shooting 48.5 percent. Selvig was stubborn but not stupid. With numbers like that, he let it be.

"She was real difficult to defend because her shot was so high and extended. Didn't make any difference what size person was on her. She had the ability to shoot over people," he says. "High release, jumps and fades a little.

"If she got the ball where she could score, she was going to score, no matter who we were playing." Her brother, John, says, "I always told her, shoot to get hot and shoot to stay hot."

Ah, family, nuclear or athletics-made, it's the thing that's defined McNulty-King through the years. Today it's her own, husband David, an orthopedic surgeon, and sons Connor and Chandler, both enrolled at TCU, the former an aspiring basketball coach, the other a future physical therapist.

And then she has her girls, her players spread across the globe, the ones she cares for like daughters, always protecting, always fighting for. "The longevity of her career speaks to her loyalty," says former Lady Griz Krista Redpath, who used McNulty-King to play professionally in Copenhagen.

"She is extremely loyal with her players and treats them as family. That has certainly served her well."

Despite playing in the program more than three decades ago, she is the glue that holds generations of Lady Griz together. When Selvig retired in 2016, who was it that organized a surprise party that drew more than 100 of his former players to celebrate and to say thank you? McNulty-King.

"Jeanne's playing days were exceptional but how she's remained committed to the Lady Griz program, spanning over many decades, has been admirable," says Redpath. "It speaks to how passionate she is about our program."

Family is at the heart of her own story, how Bill and Peggy, both from Butte, who met in the hospital, he arriving after an accident, she on duty as a nurse, had five boys, the fourth arriving when the oldest was still just three.

When John, son No. 5 arrived, Peggy did what she could to at least pretend she had delivered what she had been longing for. "They wanted a girl so bad," John says. "When she had me, she made me grow my hair out. I had brown-blond curls."

Four years passed, just Bill and Peggy and the five boys. Imagine. "Chaos. Every meal was like the last supper, everybody for themselves," recalls John. In the background, Peggy, singing "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love," her go-to, countering the arguments, the fighting, the boys being boys.

We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord … KEVIN, PUT HIM DOWN! … We will work with each other, we will work side by side … BOYS! TAKE IT OUTSIDE! … Yeah, they'll know we are Christians by our love … WHO DID THAT!? WHO BROKE THAT!?

Finally, lastly, No. 6 arrived. Jeanne Marie. And somewhere Händel's Hallelujah Chorus broke out in the Bitterroot Valley. The boys? Quite unimpressed, though perhaps she could be put to good use.

"John was a pitcher, four years older than me. I had to sit there and catch for him until my hand was just raw," says McNulty-King. "Then it would be my turn and I'd get maybe five pitches.

"I didn't have dolls or dresses. I had baseballs and basketballs and footballs. And fishing. I'd get up at the crack of dawn and find the good holes, then they'd come steal them. They taught me competitiveness."

And how to stand up for herself, how to fight back. "She and I were playing a game of pool one time and she got mad. She pretended she was going to throw the cue ball at me," recalls John.

"Unfortunately, with a full windup, it came and hit me in the head. I haven't forgot that. It was a slip, of course. At least she says it was."

There were pros and cons, growing up a girl with five older brothers. "I always felt pretty protected. And growing into athletics, you become very competitive. It's built into you, that will to win. It gave me people to look up to and emulate."

Kevin, the oldest, would grow to be 6-foot-10, would be recruited by then Montana coach Jud Heathcote, would, without intending to do so, force his sister to develop her unique turnaround jump shot. How else would she ever get a look at the basket if it didn't catch the defender by surprise?

"I never really thought about where that developed, but it had to come from playing with the boys. They don't know you're shooting. All of a sudden you elevate and turn in the air," she says. "Nobody ever taught me that."

And there were, of course, cons. "Getting a date was very difficult. My brothers were all 6-3 and above. Kind of intimidating. Then there was dad. I think that's why I couldn't get dates. Maybe I was just ugly," says McNulty-King, quick of whit, just like her mom.

Who else but Peggy, who lost a leg later in life, could make light it, saying she now fit her name? Now you can see the genesis of this entire story, where it started, why it played out like it did.

Bill was in insurance and real estate, first in Lolo, then in Stevensville, finally in Whitehall, when his daughter was in eighth grade, where he bought a flat stretch of land that could support an airstrip and built Jefco Skypark, to live his love of flying.

This is, at its heart, a basketball story, but that wasn't McNulty's first love. That was baseball, pitching, striking out the guys in Babe Ruth. "She'd strike those boys out and it would drive them absolutely crazy," says John. "They'd beat the side of the dugout with their bats."

But a girl can survive in a boys-dominated sport only for so long. When it got to Legion ball, with its overnight trips and a bus full of boys one day passed Bill on the road and mooned him? The end. "That was good," says McNulty-King, who played until her junior year. "That's the point boys turn to men."

As for basketball, this was Montana in the early 80s. The high school players were great but the regional and national exposure of the current era was minimal. That's why her very first recruiting letter came from what was then Dull Knife Memorial College across the state in Lame Deer.

As she kept playing, as she kept improving, she rose up the recruiting rankings. How or who put them together, she didn't know. She went to Carroll's camp, Montana's camp and played for Whitehall and with her brothers. That was it. But somehow word was spreading, all the way to Southern California.

Joan Bonvicini at Long Beach State, which advanced to the Elite Eight in 1983, '84 and 85, reached out, sent a letter offering McNulty a scholarship. "They were the only team I considered going to," says McNulty-King. Outside of Montana, of course.

She took trips to Fresno State, Utah, Washington State. Mostly for the travel experience. Selvig had her in his grasp and wasn't going to lose her.

"I always knew in my heart I would go (to Montana). First was to play in front of my family. Second, Rob wasn't a legend then but he was becoming one," she says. "Meeting him and (assistant coach Annette Rocheleau), I remember being very impressed.

"Then meeting Cheri (Bratt) and Cathy St. John and Juli Eckmann and Anita Novak, I thought, these girls are awesome."

Before she became a Lady Griz, she became a national champion. In the heptathlon. Which is its own story.

She was a state champion high jumper and standout hurdler. The long jump, shot put, javelin and 200 and 800 meters? No so much. But longtime Butte High coach Charlie Merrifield, a childhood friend of Bill McNulty, saw the potential, reached out to his friend and asked if his daughter was interested.

Merrifield worked with her for two weeks following her junior year, after which she won the multi-events at the Montana AAU Olympics. And, hey, would she like to accept her spot at nationals, in South Bend, Indiana, on the campus of Notre Dame? How could a Catholic family from Butte say no to that?

Bill, Peggy, John and Jeanne hopped in Bill's twin-engine plane and headed east. "I had no idea what else was out there, but I thought there was no way I can begin to compete. I did track in Montana," she says.

Not only did she win, she broke Jackie Joyner-Kersee's age-group heptathlon record. You know, the same athlete who would win Olympic gold in the heptathlon in 1988 and '92, and at the World Championships in 1987 and '93.

We set aside the heptathlon for the time being – there's more, trust us – to get McNulty on the Lady Griz, arriving as a freshman with, among others, Lisa McLeod, who was inducted into the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame in 2011.

Montana had averaged more than 23 wins over the previous five seasons when that freshman class, which included 6-foot-2 Kris Haasl and 6-foot-1 Linda Mendel, got to campus. What, you thought Selvig's Lady Griz were going to take a step back? They were good, really good. They wanted to be great.

"That class had a great amount of potential. That's what made the program so good. You had to fight every day for your position," says Marti Leibenguth, a sophomore on that team and herself a Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame inductee in 1996.

"The competition was just amazing. It made all of us better. You earned every second you got. Jeanne was a competitor. Very feisty. Just got after things."

What else to do but nickname her Nellie, after the devilish Nellie Oleson from "Little House on the Prairie"? McNulty's response: To drop shot after shot right over you. How do you like me now?

"It was the most incredible turnaround jump shot I've ever seen," Leibenguth says. "She's facing one direction and she can just elevate and shoot. She was deadly with it. It was crazy."

McNulty would play sparingly as a true freshman in 1985-86 on a team that would go 27-4, sweep the Mountain West Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament titles, defeat Utah in the first round for Montana's second NCAA tournament victory, then fall to USC in the second.

She was a key player off the bench as a sophomore, averaging 9.1 points and 5.2 rebounds in 20.9 minutes, playing behind front-courters McLeod, Leibenguth and Dawn Silliker.

That team was 25-2 the day in March the Lady Griz hosted Eastern Washington in the Mountain West championship game at Dahlberg Arena, where Montana had gone 78-1 in its previous 79 home games.

This one, it appeared, was going to be more of the same as Montana jumped out to a 42-28 halftime lead. Get the champagne on ice and into the home locker room. We're about to host a party, per usual.

Then the unthinkable played out: The Eagles outscored the Lady Griz 49-32 in the second half to storm back for a 77-74 victory. A building known for its noise was reduced to stunned silence.

"Pretty shocking. Pretty devastating. The Lady Griz program, you expect to win," said Leibenguth. "Eastern came out and kicked our butt in the second half."

While she wouldn't have believed it at the time, maybe one of the most fortuitous moments of McNulty's Lady Griz career happened the following summer, when she was working the team's youth camp and spotted a girl from Whitehall.

She snuck up behind her, slid to the ground and dislocated her shoulder while bracing herself on the floor. It popped back into place, but the damage was done. Try as she did to rehab the injury, in late fall it was decided she would need surgery and have to sit out the season.

And what a season to miss. Montana won its first 26 games by an average of more than 17 points, none closer than eight, lost for the first time in the regular-season finale at Montana State, then rolled to the Mountain West tournament title, beating Boise State by 19, Eastern Washington by 26.

That set up an NCAA tournament game between Montana and Stanford, Robin Selvig and Tara VanDerveer, two coaches on their way to becoming giants in the profession. It was one of those events that hardly needs a description, even today: The Stanford Game. Everyone knows what you mean.

The Cardinal would win 74-72 in overtime in front of a crowd of 8,709, still the second largest in program history. Two years later, with largely the same lineup, Stanford, those underclassmen now seniors, would win its first national championship.

Watching, then practicing with that team when she was finally cleared, was McNulty. "Practicing against the quality of those girls, it gave me another year to compete against the best in the conference," she says. "Watching, learning, maturing, learning what it's going to take."

After opening the next season 5-3, Montana would roll off 22 straight wins and return to the NCAA tournament. McLeod led the team in scoring and rebounding. Close behind was McNulty. Finally given her opportunity, she and her turnaround averaged 13.7 points on 52.9 percent shooting.

The Lady Griz would dominate Cal State Fullerton 82-67 in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, a No. 10 seed beating up on a No. 7, before falling at No. 2 Texas against all-world Clarissa Davis, that year's national player of the year.

What had the potential to be maybe the best team in program history, the 1989-90 Lady Griz never got that chance when Vicki Austin was lost to a knee injury in the days leading up to the season opener against Washington.

Austin had averaged 10.6 points and nearly four assists the year before, her first year of eligibility at Montana after transferring from Long Beach State. Without Austin, McNulty averaged 20.4 points, Shannon Cate added 20.3 and the Lady Griz went 27-3.

They lost their season opener, at home to Washington, a team that would go 26-2 in the regular season and earn a No. 1 seed in that year's NCAA tournament. They lost to San Francisco at Cal's tournament right before Christmas. They lost at home to Hawaii in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

That was it but the what-could-have-been's still linger, heavily, even after all this time, because those teams, those chances come around once in a lifetime for those involved.

"I'm biased but it's scary to think how far we would have gone with Vicki. She was absolutely amazing, just a phenomenal player. She was the missing piece," said McNulty.

"She was smart, she distributed, she scored when she could, quick and deceptive. She was so good. We wouldn't have lost the games we lost if we had had Vicki. She made us a complete team. I think it would have been one of the best teams Montana ever had."

It was still good enough to go 16-0 through the Big Sky, including a 73-53 road win at Nevada when McNulty scored a then program-record 35 points on 16-of-23 shooting, fueled by nothing but Gatorade and her need to compete.

"I remember we ate at Tony Roma's. Sorry Tony Roma's, but I got sick. I was throwing up all night before. All I got in me before the game was Gatorade," she said.

"It was one of those nights. I think it was almost a half-court shot at one point. It was crazy. No matter what I did, it was going in. Everybody has one of those."

It was one of the most unique seasons in Montana history, for a program known for its balanced scoring, for its top player to average 13 points, the next four between nine and 11. McNulty averaged 20.4 points, Cate 20.3 points, two of just five times a player has averaged 20 points in program history.

And they did it in the same season. "There are all kinds of different teams. Obviously, they were great scorers. The kids did a good job of getting them the shots, but they had good players around them too," says Selvig.

Hosting a first-round game of the NCAA tournament for the fifth time in seven seasons, No. 8 Montana lost 83-78 to No. 9 Hawaii in front of a crowd of 8,407.

McNulty went out with a 30-point, 13-rebound game, with Cate adding 25 points and 11 rebounds. In the end, it was Hawaii's balance that overcame Montana's superstars. All five of its starters scored in double figures. "I can tell you every play of that game," McNulty-King laments even today.

Leibenguth saw McNulty come into the program, was her teammate for three years, and watched her go out. After playing overseas, she was on Selvig's staff as a graduate assistant coach in 1989-90, when McNulty was a fifth-year senior and named the Big Sky Conference MVP.

McNulty scored in double figures in all 29 games she played, 16 times scoring 20 or more, four times 30 or more.

"When she didn't get to play (in 1987-88), I think it kind of lit a fire under her butt a little bit. She was definitely ready to go those next couple years," Leibenguth says. "She had all the confidence in the world, the type of confidence that makes you a better player."

She was first-team All-Big Sky as a junior and a senior, a Kodak District 7 All-American as a senior, and scored 1,327 career points, 1,017 her final two years, or what would be considered a nice four-year career for most college basketball players.

She played in three NCAA tournaments, was on teams that went to four. She went 57-1 in four seasons as a player in league games, winning four regular-season titles. Her teams went 107-16 overall, 135-18 if you throw in her redshirt season.

Montana went 77-4 at home in the five seasons she was on the team. Watching, starstruck, from as close as she could get to the court those years was Redpath, who was raised in Great Falls and brought to Dahlberg Arena by her parents whenever they could make the trip.

"I started to gain an awareness of the Lady Griz program when I was around 10 years old," she says. "That was right during Jeanne's years. I would wait after games to get Jeanne's autograph. I still have her autograph from when I was a young girl.

"Pretty amazing to have that type of a role model to look up to when you're young. That's when I decided I wanted to play for the Lady Griz."

The end of any season is a shock, that it's over and that now the schedule you've followed for month after month, of practice, practice, practice, then games, games, games has ended, being around team, having that competitive outlet on the court.

The only thing the NCAA allowed teams at the time was open gym through the end of the spring semester, so Selvig had no issue with his top athletes heading over to Dornblaser Field and competing for the Montana track and field team.

This wasn't for the fun of it for McNulty, not with her history in the sport, not with her competitive nature. If there was a winner and a loser, it was on. Even mostly untrained outside of what she got from basketball, she was still a presence in the Big Sky Conference.

She tied for fifth in the high jump as a sophomore at the outdoor championships, clearing 5-5.75. She would later equal the then Montana program record of 5-8.

After finishing her Lady Griz career, she went all in that spring, entering the heptathlon at the 1990 Big Sky outdoor championships, which were held in Missoula.

It was supposed to be a coronation for Idaho State's Amber Welty, runner-up the year before and the 1988 NCAA high jump champion, the kind of athlete who could get off the bus and clear six feet barefoot and in sweats.

McNulty had other plans, especially after Welty opened the door with a substandard (for her) performance in the high jump, the heptathlon's second event, clearing 5-9.25. Instead of burying the rest of the field, here sat McNulty just 140 points down after Day 1, after four of seven events.

The two went back and forth on a tense Day 2, ultimately bringing it down to the 800 meters, the final event, a miserable race for an athlete on the best of days, a cross between not quite a sprint and not quite distance. Just agony for two trips around the oval.

McNulty was in second place in the individual standings and needed to beat Welty by more than eight seconds to earn enough points to surpass – and surprise – the favorite. Except McNulty hadn't raced the 800 meters since high school and had avoided training for it all spring.

"I wouldn't go practice it because I hated the 800," she says. "I can just do it." With the heptathlon title on the line, she got out fast and held form and pace as long as she could, with Welty sticking close behind, not needing to beat McNulty in the race, just needing to remain within a few lengths.

The finish-line photo shows McNulty's eyes closed and thinking who knows what, a basketball player straining for a finish line that couldn't arrive soon enough, unaware of how far Welty was behind her and not really caring, not in that moment. She just wanted to get to the line and stop, end the pain.

"I never in my lifetime thought I was going to die. I remember seeing that picture and I looked like death crossing that finish line. Never been so tired in my life," she recalls.

Welty did enough to win, outpointing McNulty 4,986 to 4,934, champion and runner-up. It's worth noting that McNulty's score would have won the heptathlon the following year, in 1991. "(Welty) deserved to win. She was a better heptathlete," McNulty says.

It's also worth noting that McNulty came back a day or two later and won the open javelin with a throw of 148-7, winning by more than 10 feet and giving her another Big Sky title to add to her basketball hardware. She would score 18 of Montana's 48 team points at the championships.

"She definitely got all the talent in the family, no doubt about that," John, her brother, says. "She was quite a determined young lady. That's why she got where she got."

She wasn't done getting somewhere quite yet. The two-time GTE District 7 Academic All-District selection as a zoology major had eyes on medical school. Until she took a practice MCAT.

She opened it up and read an essay question that asked her to write about something she had never heard of, tapped out. "I didn't know what the word was. I panicked." She threw out the practice exam. Life, what else you got for me?

There was overseas basketball, which was a disaster, then the greatest thing ever. But it wasn't long-term. She interviewed for a Montana-based job in pharmaceutical sales. "It's all personality and networking, getting doctors to believe you, then like you," she says. She got it, did that for 10 years.

She still hooped when she could, went with a group of former Lady Griz to Havre to play, blew up her knee. Got home, called her doctor on a Sunday morning looking for help, didn't get a return call.

She remembered a date she had been on when she met this other guy, this orthopedic surgeon. Maybe he'd take her call on a Sunday. He did, immediately, got the process rolling. They've been together ever since, patient and caretaker hitting it off, just like Bill and Peggy.

"Silver lining. He did not do my surgery, so I did not marry my doctor, but that is what brought us together," she says.

Then Greta Koss just couldn't ask the hard questions of the Utah Starzz, and nothing has been the same since. Are you her agent? Long pause. I sure am. And 2X Inc. was born.

"I remember the evening that we were at the Depot Deck and she was sketching on her napkin what she wanted to call her business and what her logo was going to look like," says Redpath. "She wanted to help athletes navigate through this very complicated experience that should be positive."

2X? You know it. Girl power from birth, baby. A young Jeanne fighting for her way in her home amongst five older brothers, now fighting for players who needed some guidance, from someone who had seen the ugly side and the opposite. "She has really found a niche with the female athlete," says Redpath.

Her next get, after taking care of Koss, was Sytia Messer, who played at Arkansas under coach Gary Blair, a FOR (Friend of Robin). "Those coaches took me under their wings. They just put their faith in me and I learned as I went," she says. "Now it's 26 years later."

Because coaches know. Over years in the game, they develop a sense for those people on the periphery of the sport who are in it for good and those who are in it for themselves. That's why Jeanne McNulty-King stood out. Why she still stands out, because character doesn't change. If it's real, it's a constant.

"She played the game, and she loves women's basketball," says Fennelly, the coach at Iowa State. "She presents herself in an ultra-professional manner. She did it because she thought, hey, there is something here that's needed."

She's dabbled in representation for other sports but 95 percent of her clients are women's basketball players. She has a soft spot for all of them, the big-time all-American to the unknown NAIA player who just has a dream that won't go away, not without trying, not without giving it a shot.

That's why she works so hard, why she's always available, why she keeps her numbers small and her personal service high, for them. She's a dream-maker after all, a privilege she does not take lightly.

"Every one of them deserves a chance and there is a level for every one of them," McNulty-King says. "I love it. It's dreams coming true. Sometimes they cry. It's awesome. Amazing to be a part of. It's not me doing it, it's them, it's what they've done. I just help facilitate."

Every year her family grows, more girls to take care of, to bring into the fold. At the other end are players she first represented who are now getting into coaching. She's getting into that side of the business as well. Family doesn't end just because years have passed and situations have changed.

She had her family at the start, mom and dad now passed on, plus a pair of brothers. Then came the Lady Griz, first her teams, then the whole program, from over the decades. She wrapped her arms around the whole lot of it, keeping it close to her heart, those bonds never to break, not on her watch.

Then family, beyond husband and sons, became the players she represented. Now, a new family, the best of the best, the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame.

She becomes the eighth former Lady Griz to be inducted. She fell for the Lady Griz when Cheri Bratt was in uniform, played alongside Leibenguth, McLeod, Cate, was teammates with Ann Lake when Lake was a redshirt freshman, represented both Koss and Skyla Sisco. It's tight. It's family.

McNulty-King was in Butte this past summer, bumped into Marc Mariani, another inductee in this year's class. She was left speechless. "He's right there. Oh, my God! For me to go over and talk to him, I just got chills," she says.

Little did she know he had the same thoughts. "The way he treated me, it was like, what are you talking about?" Just greatness recognizing greatness, one Hall of Famer to another.

University of Montana Athletics

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