In basketball, certain numbers show success: 20 wins in a season, a player averaging 20 points a game or just having your team’s final score being higher than your opponent’s.
Then there are the harder-to-reach career numbers accomplished by a much smaller percentage of basketball players.
Senior Kaitlin Schneden reached one of those milestone numbers: 1,000 points in a career, Feb. 19 against William Jewell College.
She needed just two points going into the William Jewell game, and she got the record out of the way early, scoring the first basket of the game.
“I knew she’d score at least two points,” head coach Susan Decker said. “We came down on a fast break and she hit the first one in transition, which she’s hit a ton of those for us this year.”
Schneden’s parents made the trip from Iowa to see her play as she pursued the record. They saw the Culver-Stockton College game Feb. 14, where Schneden came up two points shy of the record, the game against William Jewell, where the record was broken, and the Missouri Valley game Saturday, where she was honored before the game.
“It was about a 6 1/2-hour trip for us to come watch her play, and so it was worth every mile of it,” Bill Schneden said. “It’s wrapping up a lot of years of playing basketball. It was fun for Kaitlin because she’s worked so hard all through high school, junior college, and then to come here and be able to accomplish that.”
Schneden said she didn’t even realize she was close to the 1,000-point mark until her parents came down and told her.
“They’ve been great supporters. They’re my No. 1 fans,” she said. “They’ve definitely followed through and made an effort to get to a lot of the games, and it’s great having them here.”
Schneden, a native of Davenport, Iowa, transferred from Kirkwood Community College, where she was a member of the 2006-2007 team that won the National Junior College Athletic Association Division II National Championship.
Schneden said this accomplishment makes all of the work she has put in over the past six years worth it.
“To get to 1,000 points on a team like Baker with all of these girls is just amazing because they’re all so supportive and so excited,” she said.
Schneden was at 1,027 career points going into Thursday’s game at MidAmerica Nazarene and has scored 289 points this season for an average of 10.32 points per game.
“She’s very important to what we’re doing, especially from an offensive standpoint,” Decker said. “She’s definitely somebody that obviously we want to recognize.”