Jolie McKiernan recalls career
talks basketball, athletic budget, fashion... and mooning

By Wesley Reynaud, The Herald Staff

Jolantha may be what's on her birth certificate, but to her friends and fans at Arkansas State University she's Jolie McKiernan.

This 6 foot, two inch forward began playing basketball in the third grade while in her hometown of St. Louis, Mo.

"My family has stories where they would drive like an hour in the ice and rain in St. Louis," she said, "just to come watch me pick up the ball and run down the court without dribbling once and throw it at the basket."

From such humble beginnings, Jolie has become a solid player for the Lady Indians.

"You have to find a deeper reason for playing once you get to the collegiate level," she said, " because you can't play on just love. Everyone loves the game, but you've really got to want to take it to the next step to achieve success here."

She must have found her deeper reason, as she was selected for the 2001-2002 All-Sunbelt Conference Team, and she doesn't plan to stop anytime soon.

She red-shirted her freshman year at A-State and is eligible to play for one more season, even though she will be graduating in May with a bachelor's degree in radio-television. She hopes to get the chance at a contract playing on courts in Europe, where women's basketball is huge.

Her final game in high school might have been her final game in her career, but Jolie is not one to let a little thing like a torn anterior cruciate ligament to stand in her way. She turned what might have been to most a crushing setback into greater opportunity.

"Basically, that's where everything changed in my life," she said. "If I hadn't torn my ACL, I wouldn't have red-shirted, and I'd have to live with the year I had. Because of the opportunities I'm getting this year, that has to be the biggest game of my life, even though it was sucky!

"I believe that God," she continued, "with every door you close on yourself or every door closed on you, really, if you just turn around and open your eyes, He opens about ten more no matter what. I definitely believe in that."

Jolie likes to keep a proper attitude on life, meaning she has a little fun now and then.

"I'm a big fan of mooning," she said. "I believe it lightens people's days up. Literally, because my ass is pretty white. I think people take things too seriously."
Her teammates and friends love her and look at her as a leader.

"She's always giving me her advice," Nickie Wooten, a senior management of information systems major of Crawfordsville and the Lady Indians manager. "I can talk to her if I need, and we always make time for each other. She's very sincere, and a good leader."

Casie Lowman, a junior of Germantown, Tenn. agrees with Wooten.
"I've known her for three years," Lowman said. "She's great, a lot of fun to be around. She's a great leader, on and off the court."

Lowman also contributes her car to Jolie's mooning escapades.

She doesn't take herself too seriously, and is not afraid to poke some fun at her appearance.
Describing herself as having "poop" brown hair and eyes, she has a striking streak of blonde in front she swears is natural.

"And this color," she said, looking at her skin, "yeah, you can't buy that in a bottle, baby. I'm white!"

When she tried that line on her friend Jesse Duncan, "he goes, yes you can, it's called whiteout."

Aside from joking about being a little pale, Jolie is serious about basketball.
While at ASU, she has gone through six coaches, but she looks at this as a plus.

"It's allowed me to be more accepting, I think, of people in general because everyone has their own style (of coaching.) I enjoy (Head) Coach Brian Boyer's style," she said.

Jolie also gets pretty passionate about the athletic funding debate on campus.
While she can understand why people are upset and tensions are high, she believes not all sides of the issue are being given a fair chance.

"They say the football team's a waste," she said. "Well, I see tons of waste on campus. I mean, how much do you think they (ASU) pay for one dorm to run all the electricity for all the stuff people leave on? You know, people leave their lights on, their TV on all the time. When you're in your own regular apartment and you have to pay for it, you'd better believe it's turn that light off if you leave the room.
"It's not like the actual athletes are doing anything. We're just here, trying to play, trying to make ourselves better and be better all-around people. The media only exposes the bad ones, but at the same time on the football team we've got a couple of All-Americans, tons of academics, 4.0's, stuff like that. It just gets kind of upsetting."

There is excess in athletics, she said, but the trick is recognizing the excess and shifting it into other areas.

"I believe restructuring does need to go on," Jolie said. "I know someone's probably going to kill me for saying this, but at the same time I'm one of those people (who) don't need a lot of stuff."

However, Jolie believes going back to NCAA Division II is not the answer.

"If they went back to Division II, I agree, the money situation might be fine," she said. "But at the same time, you have to remember this is people's pride, people's work ethics you're destroying. I can't even think of a better word because that's what it would be.

"All my life I've worked for a Division I scholarship, that was my main goal," she continued. "And to have it ripped away from me my senior year, to go down a division? I came here to be able to play the Western Kentucky's, to be able to advance to a higher round of such and such play, not to go down a division. If that was the case, if I'd known they were going down a division, I would have gone somewhere else and not even wasted your money on me.

"So you have to take all things into consideration," she finished.

On top of all she's accomplished, Jolie is also a fashion consultant.

"On the refrigerator I have a picture of me when I was 13. I had the short hair; the glasses and I have on a fanny pack in St. Louis. How can I wear a fanny pack in my own hometown? Think it's so wrong when you wear fanny packs and you're not a tourist. I think they're an incredible fashion no-no."