The Hall of Famers, Part II: Jeanne McNulty King Inducted

Whitehall native Jeanne McNulty-King was recently inducted into the 2023 Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame. Here, in this three-part story, you'll get an inside look at the life of a Hall of Famer, provided by MT Sports Information.

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.