By Terry Mosher

Editor, Sports Paper

Tim Stabler has been involved in sports both as a player and as a coach for almost as many years as he’s been alive. And now when he looks around and watches his daughter Krista play basketball at Central Kitsap he almost has to do a double-take, because he sees a lot of what made him a good athlete in Krista.

“She reminds me of me a little bit,” says Stabler, who played at O’Dea, Olympic College and baseball at Eastern Washington. “She’s intense and has a lot of aggressiveness and heart. She just loves the game.”

Krista Stabler is a sophomore, the leading scorer and a leader for CK this season. She was averaging over 17.2 points after nine games (5-4 record).

“She is a great kid, and has a high basketball IQ,” says Denise Baxter, coach at CK. “She always shows up with her engine running, ready to practice no matter what is happening with her. When she steps on the court she is all about ball. She’s one of those kids you would like to crone.”

Stabler has been playing basketball since the first grade. She also played select fastpitch softball for a long time, but now just focuses on basketball.

For the last four years she’s played select basketball for Megan Murray and Total Package Hoops.

“She is a die-hard,” says Murray of Stabler. “She goes all out, and will do what ever it takes to win. She is tough. She’s been part of our program since the sixth grade. She was the only sixth-grader who played with all my high school girls. She was just determined to be good.”

Because she is a just a sophomore, it’s difficult to predict what Stabler will be like when she’s a senior. Players change a lot in those years, but there is no question Stabler has the good athletic genes and the desire to get better. She lifts weights three days a week in an effort to get stronger and she runs a mile a day on the treadmill.

Stabler also spends a lot of time shooting hoops when she’s not at the gym practicing with her team.

“She is just now starting to mature,” says Murray of Stabler, who is a 5-6 shooting guard, although she also can play the point. “She’s been really working on her shot the last year and has turned herself into a good shooter.”

While she can score – Stabler scored career high 28 points against Bremerton – she also has lots of other good skills.

“She’s a great passer,” says Baxter. “She scores a lot for us, but sometimes she makes people around her look real good. She has a real good sense when to pass, dribble drive, and when to shoot. She’s not real quick, not yet, but she’s so smart in her decision making that she can play this well as a sophomore.”

It’s rare for a sophomore to play like she does, to be able to score at such a high level, and to be thought of as a leader. But Stabler has managed to do it, and do it while maintaining a good balance with her academics.

“She has so much competitive drive and it’s just fun watching her play,” says Tim Stabler. “But what I’m most proud of is she’s a 4.0 student. “

In fact, Stabler was a 4.0 student all through junior high. She says it’s not the easiest thing to do to maintain a perfect grade, but by applying the same high-energy and aggressive style she shows on the court to her homework she is able to maintain that perfection.

To do what she does in the classroom means spending much of her team away from the team studying at home. In order to get better at anything one has to practice, practice, practice, even as it applies to the books.

“It’ really hard. Real hard,” says Stabler of her studies. “I just do what I do. It takes a lot of my time. It’s not easy.”

One thing that helps, she says, is to stay positive.

“I’m a pretty happy person,” Stabler says. “I don’t let anything put me down. That’s just a waste of time.”

Time will tell just how all this turns out for Stabler, but she is off to a great start, both on the court and off of it. And if she continues to improve on the court and maintains her good grades, the sky is the limit.

“She really wants it,” says Baxter. “The good thing about being a 4.0 student is whatever happens with basketball she is going to land in a good place. She will be able to play basketball, at what level we don’t know at this point. Unfortunately she is a 5-6 guard. But her academics is going to kick a lot of doors open for her.”