Lady Griz Orientation :: Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw

For starters, you have to understand how odd, how out of the box, it is that Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw is even here, in Missoula, in her first weeks as a Lady Griz after playing (okay, not always playing but instead sidelined with injuries, but we'll get there) for four seasons at Iowa State.

Pull up Ames on a map, trace your finger west, using Highway 30 as your guide, and you'll eventually land on Logan as you near the Nebraska border. That roadway, two hours from town to city, might as well double as a series of roots, connecting a family's heart and history to the Cyclones.

It's been that way for generations, Maggie, who was raised in Indianola, in a state that cherishes and celebrates girls' basketball like none other, part of the fourth that began with her great-grandfather, in all more than 30 from the Espenmiller clan attending the school.

It's cardinal, it's gold, it's the life cycle: You're born, you go to Iowa State, you live your life, you pass on but not before passing down those genes to the next round. Cyclone forever.

You can see it in the picture, an Iowa State starter kit: Maggie, maybe 6 or 7, with Lizzie, a few years younger, sitting next to her, Spencer, the youngest, being held upright in Maggie's arms. Iowa State jerseys, ISU pom-poms scattered throughout, all three sitting in front of the Let's Go State yard sign.

There is no other option. There doesn't need to be. It's all a family requires, school and sports teams.

It's an image that begins this story, one that can be told through snapshots of Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw's life.

There's one, of Maggie in the gym with her mom, Sandy, a product of Iowa's 6-on-6 basketball heritage before it went away for good in 1993, the nostalgia overtaken by lawsuits that said the state's girls were being overlooked in recruiting by college coaches who needed 5-on-5 skills.

Maggie is shooting, form perfect, just feet from the basket, her mom's one rule of basketball that will not be broken. You can move back when, and only when, you're strong enough to keep your form, while kids at other baskets shot from the hip, if not lower, from the alluring 3-point line.

Now, mom? Nope. Not as a third grader, a fourth grader, a fifth grader. She's tall and skinny and without the strength. Finally, in sixth grade, mom rebounds for daughter as she finally reaches the 3-point line, form perfect, a self-correcting skill she has carried on, fixing herself when her shot goes awry.

There's another, of Maggie playing soccer, the sport she almost chose over basketball, her mom sitting quietly on the sideline, not able to offer up any kind of advice in this strange sport, other than the cash incentive she came up with.

Look closely and it's not what it seems. Maggie's playing with the boys, so mom comes up with a way to heighten her motivation to up the physicality in her game. Yellow cards, the ones given for playing a little too roughly? Yeah, those are good. I'll give you $5 for every yellow card you receive.

The other parents start to complain, about this girl who's beating on the boys, knocking them to the ground, secretly counting to herself: 5, 10, 15. A $20 game! Sweet!

There she is as a sixth grader, basketball now in control of her heart and every extra minute she has in her day. She'd hoop from sunup to sundown if she could, the only one of her kind, at least with that kind of love, that kind of passion for the game, in Indianola.

She looks 20 miles north, to Des Moines, and finds Kingdom Hoops. There she discovers there are girls just like her, who only need a ball and a hoop to find true happiness. Later it will be All Iowa Attack, where she'll be clubmates with Caitlin Clark, one year her junior, two peas, one pod.

Now she's in Iowa City, or about the worst place on the planet if you're an Espenmiller. She's in middle school. The Hawkeyes want her. It's her first college visit.

John Espenmiller, Sandy's dad, the Cylone-est of them all, joins daughter and granddaughter. The pre-trip family joke: Will dad spontaneously combust once they enter the city limits, once they step foot inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena, once they are gifted something black and gold to wear?

Okay, it's not all rotten. There is associate head coach Jan Jensen, fellow western Iowan, the same Jan Jensen who averaged 65.7 points in 1987 playing 6-on-6 at Elk Horn-Kimballton High, the same Jan Jensen who John loaded Sandy into the car to follow from gym to gym while she was growing up.

Jensen wore No. 13 in high school. So, Sandy Espenmiller did as well. And her daughter did too, in high school, at Iowa State, soon at Montana. Jensen is there, at Iowa, so it can't be that bad, can it? Okay, John, don't answer that.

There is Sandy and Maggie, standing over daughter's phone, waiting for an answer after her coach told her she was supposed to call the Iowa State basketball office, the same coaches who were extending offers that week. It's Maggie's first day of high school.

She is offered by the Cyclones. OMG! OMG! OMG! Mom hits the mute button, tells daughter to thank them but tell the coaches she'll have to get back to them. After all, the daughter hasn't even attended her first day of school at Indianola High.

She'll go to school that day and pile even more on her mom when she gets home. She tells her she's been invited to Homecoming. By a boy. Mom's oldest, her firstborn, gets offered and asked on the same day. OMG! OMG! OMG! It's a lot for a mom to process in a single day. She's a mess.

There Maggie is, wearing a headband for the very first time, what will become her signature accessory, the thin strip of material the girls who look up to her start wearing themselves. They don't want to be like Mike. They want to be like Maggie.

There she is as a senior at Southeast Polk High, just east of Des Moines, the school she attends as a senior, the one where she can finally be a small fish in a big pond, just another face in the crowded hallways after being the famous Maggie McGraw at Indianola.

It gives her a jumpstart on making the transition to college, being away from home, if living with your grandparents, who have a home in Logan but an apartment near Des Moines and season tickets to all things Cyclones, who cook for you and do your laundry, can be called roughing it on your own.

There she's coached by Tracy Dailey, who played at New Mexico and is now guiding Maggie through her senior year, the last season of preparation before she heads to Iowa State.

There she is, a senior at Southeast Polk High, sitting on the bench prior to introductions before the Rams host West Des Moines Valley in early February. For life she's been known as Maggie McGraw. That's about to change.

Iowa State men's basketball player Naz Mitrou-Long did it first, adding his mom's last name to his own. Maggie loves the idea, of honoring the woman who performs magic on a daily basis, being everywhere all at once, all things for three kids as a single mother.

She'll be first-team all-state at Southeast Polk High, play in the Class 5A state championship game, be named to the all-tournament team, average 19.8 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.9 assists that season while shooting 55.8 percent, but it's that moment that will remain as the most memorable from that winter.

Mom knew it was coming. Sister didn't. Grandparents didn't. She is introduced for the first time as Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw. One person starts crying. They pass it on to another. More tears. Soon the entire building knows what's happened. More tears, so many tears.

There she is, a freshman at Iowa State, 23 minutes off the bench in her college debut, a starter by the fifth game of the season. To commemorate the occasion, she goes for 15 points, nine assists and six rebounds. She keeps starting. The goosebumps arrive every time for the Espenmillers in the stands.

There she is, celebrating with her teammates, after the final game of the regular season, a 57-56 home victory over No. 2 Baylor, the defending national champions. Soon she'll be named to the Big 12 All-Freshman team.

It's the last game she and Iowa State will play that season. Before the Big 12 Championship can even start in Kansas City, the season is shut down. Covid is here. And life for Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw, which was only going up, up, up, has never been the same.

--------------------

This story could have started earlier, two generations and decades earlier, with Mary Lynn Strong, Maggie's grandmother, who has her own story to tell.

If you think that's too early for girls' basketball in Iowa, you don't know girls' basketball in Iowa, which began holding state tournaments for the 6-on-6 sport in 1920, more than half a century before the passage of Title IX. Fair access for the lesser sex? In Iowa, that oftentimes was the boys.

The girls' basketball state tournament was first televised in 1951. In 1955, seven out of 10 high school girls in the state played basketball. By 1970, 20 percent of all girls in the U.S. who were competing in high school sports were doing so in Iowa. They weren't ahead of the curve, Iowa set it.

In other states, it was held that girls couldn't handle the physical demands of sport. In Iowa, mostly rural and farm-based, they knew that was laughable. The girls could not only work on the farm, they could play just like the boys.

One of them was Mary Lynn Strong, who became Mary Lynn Espenmiller, who left Logan to play at Northern Illinois. In 1972, she and her team headed two hours south, to Normal, and the 16-team AIAW national tournament, hosted by Illinois State.

On one side of the bracket, Northern Illinois defeated Washington State, then lost to eventual runner-up West Chester in the quarterfinals. On the other side of the bracket, Tennessee-Martin, led by Pat Head (later Pat Summitt), also won one and lost one. Immaculata would win the whole thing.

It was after that season that Mary Lynn Espenmiller received a letter from the U.S. Olympic Committee. Women's basketball would be held at the Olympics for the first time in 1976 in Montreal, and she was good enough that they wanted a better look. Would she consider it, at least trying out?

But that was a long way off, and she was ready to start a family.

If you're wondering what her granddaughter is doing in Missoula as part of the Lady Griz, embracing one final season of college basketball, this is the genesis of Maggie's motivation. That was my biggest regret, she told her granddaughter. Take advantage of every basketball opportunity you can.

It's no surprise that Sandy Espenmiller gravitated toward the sport while growing up in Logan, where her dad drove school bus in the morning and sold insurance the rest of the day, and her mom, Mary Lynn, was a schoolteacher. The family house was the family house until just three years ago.

She grew up in 6-on-6, the variation of the sport that has three forwards on the offensive end, three guards on the defensive end, none of whom could cross over the center line. Forwards, with the ball in their hands, could take no more than two dribbles and had three seconds to pass or shoot.

It led to spacing and movement, and 16,000 people buying out Veterans Memorial Auditorium by the 1950s to watch it played at the state tournament. It's how Lynne Lorenzen piled up 6,736 career points as a schoolgirl.

The first blow to the 6-on-6 game came in 1983 via lawsuit. Girls weren't being prepared for the 5-on-5 game and losing college opportunities because of it, it claimed. Though Jan Jensen did just fine after making the transition. She led Division I in scoring at Drake in 1990-91 at nearly 30 points per game.

The state high school association in 1983 gave schools the option to play 5-on-5 or 6-on-6. The latter held on in rural Iowa until 1993, when it was declared every school had to play 5-on-5. RIP 6-on-6.

"Six-on-six made me a better ball-handler," says Sandy, who would play 5-in-5 during the summer while attending every camp she could find, then switch back to 6-on-6 while playing for her high school team. "You could only take two dribbles, so there was nothing wasted. I could do a lot with two dribbles."

She could have played somewhere, but you know Iowa State was calling her name. "It was just in your blood when you were born," she says.

But she remained around athletics. She was hired as a student to be a recruiting coordinator for the Iowa State football program, then under coach Jim Walden. It was weekend work, taking recruits around campus, through the facilities, to the game on Saturday.

When new coach Dan McCarney arrived prior to the 1995 season, Espenmiller became his go-to person. A position coach had been hired? She was dispatched to the airport to pick him up. When McCarney's administrative assistant went on maternity leave? Espenmiller filled the role for an entire semester.

Once in a while a call would come in from Madison, where McCarney had been the defensive coordinator for the Badgers under Barry Alvarez. She'd patch it through, then warn everyone else in the office about what was coming.

"Barry would call and they would be so loud and rowdy. You could hear their voices echoing in the hallways," says Sandy, whose sister would marry former Cyclone football player Nik Moser.

The art major got a job with Wells Fargo – go figure – and settled in Indianola, where Maggie was followed by Lizzie, then Spencer.

For the record, it's officially Maggie Jane, not Margaret, and try as some did, "MJ" never stuck, which would be a blessing two decades later when she became teammates at Montana with MJ Bruno, who became MJ just so she wouldn't have to have the same name as a teammate.

Mags works or, if you were her teammate at Iowa State, Mag Swag.

Her first memories of basketball were of being taken to weekend clinics put on by her mom for local kids, playing off to the side because she wasn't of age. When she did become of age, it was mom's one rule. No 3-point shooting until you're strong enough.

"Her big focus was on using the correct form and not changing it for distance," says Maggie. "It made me so mad. All I wanted to do was shoot 3-pointers like everyone else. But her emphasis on form and getting reps up inside the 3-point line helped my form and my consistency."

When she could finally shoot the long ball, it was a double blessing. She loved to shoot what had long been a forbidden fruit. Now she couldn't get enough of it. And that form? So sweet, so repeatable. So fixable.

"She's her own shot doctor, I call it," says Sandy. "When she's off and goes through a bad patch, she knows what she has to do to get back on track and get her shot back. Luckily she trusted me."

She admits to paying off her daughter in soccer, $5 per yellow card, the better to prepare her for the rigors of basketball. "She got plenty but I didn't want her to back down. She kind of made a name for herself with opposing parents who thought she was too rough. They called her dirty," says Sandy.

If she was making a name for herself in soccer for bullying the boys, she did in basketball with her skills. And her love for the game. Her mom couldn't get her out of the gym. There were piano lessons to add some variety, but that was never going to stick.

"She never would have quit, but I asked her, Mags, do you really want to keep playing piano? Because if you don't love it, you don't have to do it," Sandy says. I don't love it. I love basketball, daughter told mother. "That was my ah-ha moment that I knew she was nuts about basketball."

She ventured north to Des Moines to find her basketball soulmates, every starter on that sixth-grade team at Kingdom Hoops eventually going on to play Division I basketball.

When she joined All Iowa Attack, she became clubmates with Caitlin Clark, who led Iowa to last season's national championship game. And she did more than that, bringing attention and television ratings that women's college basketball had never seen before. The Clark Effect.

"You hate cheering for the rival, but it was super special watching her bring all this attention. You could always tell. She was a very competitive, spirted person. You could tell from a young age that she wanted to win," says Maggie.

They took the recruiting trip to Iowa, not so much because that was the dream, though meeting Jensen was worth the drive, but because they knew it would cause Iowa State, which had been quiet, to take notice.

"There would have been some of the family that would have had a real hard time with (Maggie playing for Iowa)," says her mom. "I made her go. That's how recruiting works. When Iowa State learns Iowa is after you, then they'll start paying attention."

When the Cyclones did start paying attention, they liked what they saw, enough that she was offered a scholarship on her first day of high school, before she had attended her first class.

Her mom wanted her to hold off on committing, not to wait for other offers but to keep her daughter from having to play her first year of high school basketball under the glare of that spotlight, being the future Cyclone in Cyclone Country. The hotshot didn't need any additional heat on her at that age.

"It was protection. I felt like it was going to put unneeded pressure and eyes on her. Get through your freshman year, then decide if it's what you want," says Sandy. "In April (of her freshman year) she went up there and committed."

She played three years at Indianola High, her senior year at Southeast Polk High and became a 5-star recruit, though that hardly mattered. She was already committed. "I didn't take recruiting very seriously because I was so locked in on going there. It was my dream school," she says.

Committing didn't cause her to ease off, the hard work done, the goal achieved. She pressed on like never before. "She never let off the gas," says her mom. "She didn't just want to be there, she wanted to be good and make an impact."

Iowa State needed a point guard in 2019-20, when Espenmiller-McGraw would be a freshman, so, under the tutelage of Dailey, she added another element to her game her senior year at Southeast Polk: a scorer who could handle and distribute. Someone who could be ready to step in and play immediately.

Iowa State would win 18 games and tie for fourth in the always-competitive Big 12, the regular season ending with the Cyclones defending their home court, defeating defending national champion Baylor 57-56, with Espenmiller-McGraw, the freshman, assisting on a pair of critical fourth-quarter 3-pointers.

She's not saying Iowa State, given the cancelations that were to come, should have been named that season's national champions, but they were the team that defeated the previous year's national title winners, so … an argument could at least be made?

"That's what I'm thinking," says Espenmiller-McGraw, who became a fan favorite from the moment she stepped foot on the court inside Hilton Coliseum, given her deep family ties to the school, the passion she played with and that headband she wore, which she'd been doing since middle school.

"In high school, I had a bunch of little kids looking up to me and copying what I did, so I felt like I couldn't let it die," she says. "It got bigger over time, where people kind of associated me with the headband." Enough so that she got an NIL deal out of it while at Iowa State.

Covid hit that March but Emily Ryan, an incoming freshman point guard from Claflin, Kansas, also was arriving, joining Iowa State for the 2020-21 season, which would allow Espenmiller-McGraw to play more off the ball, where her shooting could be highlighted.

While the country largely shut down, Espenmiller-McGraw kept working, wherever and whenever she could, preparing for her time as a sophomore, then as an experienced upperclassman, the long-held dream reaching fulfillment.

The Iowa State staff wasn't so sure, wondering if anyone on the team had been doing enough on their own over the previous months, so when the Cyclones returned to campus that fall to begin a new semester, the workouts were extreme. Overly so. There was no build-up, just full go.

Espenmiller-McGraw's legs paid the price. "We were going hard six or seven days a week. This was a different pain. I couldn't run. I had a hard time walking. It was painful to walk or drive my car," she says.

MRI. X-ray. They revealed a Grade 3 stress fracture, on a scale in which a 4 is a broken bone. At first it wasn't even noticed. They were looking for a spot, a point where there might be a stress fracture. They weren't looking for something that ran down the length of her fibula, which goes from kneecap to ankle.

And it was in both legs.

She was cleared in December and practiced just two times before making her debut against Kansas State on the 18th. She went 4 for 6 from the 3-point line, scored 14 points in 17 minutes. Four days later she went 4 for 6 again against Drake, scoring 14 points in 18 minutes.

But she'd been cleared too quickly. By late January she was on the court in tears from the pain. Her season was over, just 144 minutes in. Into her role charged freshman Lexi Donarski, who led the team with 53 3-pointers on 41.1 percent shooting.

But that's college athletics at the Division I level: next woman up.

Espenmiller-McGraw had the same Grade 3 stress fractures of her fibulas and now had added one to her right femur.

She was in two boots and on crutches in the middle of an Iowa winter, and her roommate had left the team, leaving Espenmiller-McGraw living alone, alone, alone, the team moving forward while she remained behind, each day ending alone, alone, alone.

"It was devastating because I'd never had a major injury before," she says. Her value, or at least the way she valued herself, was in basketball. Now she didn't have that.

"After not playing a whole season after a successful freshman year kind of took a toll on my mind. I dealt with a lot of depression and anxiety and sleep issues. It was difficult to see value in myself as a player if I wasn't playing. That was something I struggled with."

What was supposed to be a six- or eight-week injury could not be shaken. And nobody could tell her why. Doctors, specialists, supplements, she tried everything, a baller desperately just wanting to hoop.

The injury messed with her mind, which messed with her sleep and nutrition, everything connected, in lockstep, nothing improving without everything improving. Everything was spiraling in the wrong direction.

"It was hard to see her doing everything right and still not healing," says Sandy. "That was excruciating. What amazed me was that throughout, she remained the best teammate. You never saw her on the sideline moping or sitting down. I can't imagine how hard that was for her."

She shouldn't have come back as early as she did her junior year, but Iowa was coming to town in early December, and she wasn't the only one who was injured. A thin team needed every player who could will herself onto the court.

She played 11 minutes off the bench as Iowa State defeated Iowa and Clark, who scored 26 points, 77-70.

"It was a lot sooner than I should have come back, but we had other injuries and I felt I needed to be back for such a big rivalry game," says Espenmiller-McGraw, who played the rest of the season, returning to walking boots every time she wasn't on the court.

It was her teammates who got her through, particularly her junior-year roommates, Donarski and Beatriz Jordão.

"Being around teammates the second year of my injury helped me have people to talk me out of my bad days," she says. "Get out of your room, let's go do something. They helped me see my value and realize there is more to life than being a good basketball player. That's something that stuck with me."

The standout basketball player was becoming a standout leader, able to reach people where they were, injured, a freshman struggling to learn plays, a returner struggling with expectations.

"I found this new sense of purpose for everyone on the team, which was good for me," she says. "I'm able to connect with people a lot more. I have a greater appreciation for all types of roles."

After her junior season ended with a loss in the round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament, the player who had become so skilled at looking out for and helping others, turned that attention inward.

Because personally, she was still a mess. The very idea of going right into offseason workouts, with the same injuries still lingering, left her in tears, dreading the pain that she now associated with basketball, no longer the joy.

Her mental health wasn't right, the nights could still be sleepless. And those needed to be addressed before her legs could ever begin to heal, the body, mind and spirit as one being.

"It started to get a little scary," says her mom. "I never told her this, but I was ready for her to be done," which hints at the gravity of the situation, mom asking daughter, both Iowa State to the core, to consider stepping away from the Cyclones for her own good.

"It was hard to watch her struggle. Every college athlete walks away with battle scars, whether mental or physical, and I really felt like the cost-benefit was swinging way too far the other way. But she was committed to Iowa State and getting back to basketball."

She set up a meeting with the staff and told them her plan: she would rehab and do conditioning, but she was taking a break from basketball. "It was a very unpopular decision with Iowa State," says her mom.

But it saved Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw, body, mind and spirit.

She got an internship with the Ames Public Library, spending her summer working with kids. Without the stress of basketball, of meeting expectations day after day after day, with little break to recover, to heal, everything started to reset back to baseline, to full health.

Her nutrition improved. Her sleep patterns returned to normal. Her head space got right, the joy of working with kids doing the miracles the doctors, specialists and supplements couldn't perform. Her legs began to heal, for the first time in 18 months.

"I was really proud of her for figuring out what she needed, then going out and advocating for herself, even when it's unpopular," says Sandy. "That's hard to do when you're 21. I guess she proved me wrong. She wanted to finish, to finish her commitment, to help her team as much as possible."

When she returned prior to her senior season, she was fully healthy, from head to fibula. Personnel-wise, the Cyclones had moved on but welcomed back a senior who could fill a reserve role.

She played fewer than 10 minutes per game but played an outsized role among her teammates, who saw her value in a different light than those giving out the minutes.

"Playing-wise, it was an adjustment because I felt healthy. I was excited to play and be back on the court, but those opportunities weren't given to me," she says. "It was something to adjust to.

"My role was more as the glue player. It was good for me to get that experience, to be the best possible teammate I could be. I was that relationship person. I was old enough to know what people needed to get the best out of them each day."

In early February, a high school classmate of Espenmiller-McGraw's died in an accident. She was drawn to both, to be there with her teammates and to be there with her friends. She chose the latter.

She missed Iowa State's road trip to West Virginia, where the ranked Cyclones lost to the unranked Mountaineers 73-60, shooting 34.5 percent and turning the ball over 17 times.

After the game, a teammate told her that it just wasn't the same without her. Iowa State had been out of sorts. "That validated her role and how important she was," says her mom. "Her teammates knew the value she provided."

Mom and daughter talked frequently, about celebrating the small things when the big things get taken away.

"Her career didn't go the way she thought it would, the trajectory everyone thought after her freshman year, but that's life too," says Sandy. "She had to learn that lesson maybe earlier than a lot of her peers. When you can celebrate the small things, it helps you so much in life down the road."

She entered her senior year prepared to be done at season's end, but it wasn't how she wanted to go out. She has more to give, as a player and now as a leader. She's seen the highs and the lows, lived through them both, and has come out the other end, ready for something new.

"Definitely encouraged her to not close that door if you're not ready, because once it's closed, it's closed," says Sandy. "Really, really happy she decided to continue and seek out another opportunity someplace else. Different is sometimes good and change is sometimes necessary."

Espenmiller-McGraw lived with Donarski again as a senior, older sister of Macy, who signed with the Lady Griz in November.

Even before she had considered transferring and playing a fifth season, she had heard, from Macy, all about Montana and this coach, Brian something, who, in the oftentimes bleak desert of college basketball, was preaching about relationships, about valuing person over player.

It wasn't a mirage. On her visit, she discovered an oasis in the desert. She wanted relationships with the coaches. She wanted a school where women's basketball is important. She wanted a program where she could connect with the girls on the team. Check, check and check. "Kind of a no-brainer," she says.

She wasn't going to commit on her visit. She was going to give it some time, think about the numerous options she had. But the final visit in Brian Holsinger's office sealed the deal. "I started crying, and I'm not a crier. I was so relieved. Guess I'm stuck with the Donarskis for another year."

Assist: Macy Donarski. Hockey assist: Her dad, Dave, who played intermediary, giving depth to the speed-dating environment of the transfer portal, telling Montana's coaches everything they needed to know about Espenmiller-McGraw to go all in on their pursuit.

"We wanted a perimeter scorer, a veteran who could we could count on, a taller guard who could score and shoot," says Holsinger. "Then we learned about her character from a trusted source. That helped us make a quick decision to go after her really hard."

She received her degree in communication studies from Iowa State in May, arrived in Missoula in June, ready for a career reset.

"She had to stuff away her competitiveness while she was battling her injuries. I don't know that has been unleashed fully," says her mom. "I'm excited for her to be able to compete.

"Most importantly, I want her to have a good, healthy experience with people who share the same values as her. I want her to be around good people who care about her and value her for the person she is. That's what I want her to experience this year. She knows she still has a lot of basketball left."

When Espenmiller-McGraw was growing up, she used to spend month after month in the summer at her grandparents' cabin on Kabekona Lake in northern Minnesota.

It was life stripped down to it simplest pleasures. No TV, no air conditioning, just a girl and the outdoors and a quiet lake bordered on its west and south by Paul Bunyon State Forest and all her cousins, her besties. "It was good on the heart and soul," she says.

She's found her Kabekona, which means "end of the trail," once again, this one in Montana. May it also be good for her heart and soul. She's earned it.

University of Montana Athletics

Related Videos