The Hall of Famers, Part III: 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.

Leibenguth saw McNulty come into the program, was her teammate for three years, and watched her go out. After playing overseas, she was on Selvig's staff as a graduate assistant coach in 1989-90, when McNulty was a fifth-year senior and named the Big Sky Conference MVP.

McNulty scored in double figures in all 29 games she played, 16 times scoring 20 or more, four times 30 or more.

"When she didn't get to play (in 1987-88), I think it kind of lit a fire under her butt a little bit. She was definitely ready to go those next couple years," Leibenguth says. "She had all the confidence in the world, the type of confidence that makes you a better player."

She was first-team All-Big Sky as a junior and a senior, a Kodak District 7 All-American as a senior, and scored 1,327 career points, 1,017 her final two years, or what would be considered a nice four-year career for most college basketball players.

She played in three NCAA tournaments, was on teams that went to four. She went 57-1 in four seasons as a player in league games, winning four regular-season titles. Her teams went 107-16 overall, 135-18 if you throw in her redshirt season.

Montana went 77-4 at home in the five seasons she was on the team. Watching, starstruck, from as close as she could get to the court those years was Redpath, who was raised in Great Falls and brought to Dahlberg Arena by her parents whenever they could make the trip.

"I started to gain an awareness of the Lady Griz program when I was around 10 years old," she says. "That was right during Jeanne's years. I would wait after games to get Jeanne's autograph. I still have her autograph from when I was a young girl.

"Pretty amazing to have that type of a role model to look up to when you're young. That's when I decided I wanted to play for the Lady Griz."

The end of any season is a shock, that it's over and that now the schedule you've followed for month after month, of practice, practice, practice, then games, games, games has ended, being around team, having that competitive outlet on the court.

The only thing the NCAA allowed teams at the time was open gym through the end of the spring semester, so Selvig had no issue with his top athletes heading over to Dornblaser Field and competing for the Montana track and field team.

This wasn't for the fun of it for McNulty, not with her history in the sport, not with her competitive nature. If there was a winner and a loser, it was on. Even mostly untrained outside of what she got from basketball, she was still a presence in the Big Sky Conference.

She tied for fifth in the high jump as a sophomore at the outdoor championships, clearing 5-5.75. She would later equal the then Montana program record of 5-8.

After finishing her Lady Griz career, she went all in that spring, entering the heptathlon at the 1990 Big Sky outdoor championships, which were held in Missoula.

It was supposed to be a coronation for Idaho State's Amber Welty, runner-up the year before and the 1988 NCAA high jump champion, the kind of athlete who could get off the bus and clear six feet barefoot and in sweats.

McNulty had other plans, especially after Welty opened the door with a substandard (for her) performance in the high jump, the heptathlon's second event, clearing 5-9.25. Instead of burying the rest of the field, here sat McNulty just 140 points down after Day 1, after four of seven events.

The two went back and forth on a tense Day 2, ultimately bringing it down to the 800 meters, the final event, a miserable race for an athlete on the best of days, a cross between not quite a sprint and not quite distance. Just agony for two trips around the oval.

McNulty was in second place in the individual standings and needed to beat Welty by more than eight seconds to earn enough points to surpass – and surprise – the favorite. Except McNulty hadn't raced the 800 meters since high school and had avoided training for it all spring.

"I wouldn't go practice it because I hated the 800," she says. "I can just do it." With the heptathlon title on the line, she got out fast and held form and pace as long as she could, with Welty sticking close behind, not needing to beat McNulty in the race, just needing to remain within a few lengths.

The finish-line photo shows McNulty's eyes closed and thinking who knows what, a basketball player straining for a finish line that couldn't arrive soon enough, unaware of how far Welty was behind her and not really caring, not in that moment. She just wanted to get to the line and stop, end the pain.

"I never in my lifetime thought I was going to die. I remember seeing that picture and I looked like death crossing that finish line. Never been so tired in my life," she recalls.

Welty did enough to win, outpointing McNulty 4,986 to 4,934, champion and runner-up. It's worth noting that McNulty's score would have won the heptathlon the following year, in 1991. "(Welty) deserved to win. She was a better heptathlete," McNulty says.

It's also worth noting that McNulty came back a day or two later and won the open javelin with a throw of 148-7, winning by more than 10 feet and giving her another Big Sky title to add to her basketball hardware. She would score 18 of Montana's 48 team points at the championships.

"She definitely got all the talent in the family, no doubt about that," John, her brother, says. "She was quite a determined young lady. That's why she got where she got."

She wasn't done getting somewhere quite yet. The two-time GTE District 7 Academic All-District selection as a zoology major had eyes on medical school. Until she took a practice MCAT.

She opened it up and read an essay question that asked her to write about something she had never heard of, tapped out. "I didn't know what the word was. I panicked." She threw out the practice exam. Life, what else you got for me?

There was overseas basketball, which was a disaster, then the greatest thing ever. But it wasn't long-term. She interviewed for a Montana-based job in pharmaceutical sales. "It's all personality and networking, getting doctors to believe you, then like you," she says. She got it, did that for 10 years.

She still hooped when she could, went with a group of former Lady Griz to Havre to play, blew up her knee. Got home, called her doctor on a Sunday morning looking for help, didn't get a return call.

She remembered a date she had been on when she met this other guy, this orthopedic surgeon. Maybe he'd take her call on a Sunday. He did, immediately, got the process rolling. They've been together ever since, patient and caretaker hitting it off, just like Bill and Peggy.

"Silver lining. He did not do my surgery, so I did not marry my doctor, but that is what brought us together," she says.

Then Greta Koss just couldn't ask the hard questions of the Utah Starzz, and nothing has been the same since. Are you her agent? Long pause. I sure am. And 2X Inc. was born.

"I remember the evening that we were at the Depot Deck and she was sketching on her napkin what she wanted to call her business and what her logo was going to look like," says Redpath. "She wanted to help athletes navigate through this very complicated experience that should be positive."

2X? You know it. Girl power from birth, baby. A young Jeanne fighting for her way in her home amongst five older brothers, now fighting for players who needed some guidance, from someone who had seen the ugly side and the opposite. "She has really found a niche with the female athlete," says Redpath.

Her next get, after taking care of Koss, was Sytia Messer, who played at Arkansas under coach Gary Blair, a FOR (Friend of Robin). "Those coaches took me under their wings. They just put their faith in me and I learned as I went," she says. "Now it's 26 years later."

Because coaches know. Over years in the game, they develop a sense for those people on the periphery of the sport who are in it for good and those who are in it for themselves. That's why Jeanne McNulty-King stood out. Why she still stands out, because character doesn't change. If it's real, it's a constant.

"She played the game, and she loves women's basketball," says Fennelly, the coach at Iowa State. "She presents herself in an ultra-professional manner. She did it because she thought, hey, there is something here that's needed."

She's dabbled in representation for other sports but 95 percent of her clients are women's basketball players. She has a soft spot for all of them, the big-time all-American to the unknown NAIA player who just has a dream that won't go away, not without trying, not without giving it a shot.

That's why she works so hard, why she's always available, why she keeps her numbers small and her personal service high, for them. She's a dream-maker after all, a privilege she does not take lightly.

"Every one of them deserves a chance and there is a level for every one of them," McNulty-King says. "I love it. It's dreams coming true. Sometimes they cry. It's awesome. Amazing to be a part of. It's not me doing it, it's them, it's what they've done. I just help facilitate."

Every year her family grows, more girls to take care of, to bring into the fold. At the other end are players she first represented who are now getting into coaching. She's getting into that side of the business as well. Family doesn't end just because years have passed and situations have changed.

She had her family at the start, mom and dad now passed on, plus a pair of brothers. Then came the Lady Griz, first her teams, then the whole program, from over the decades. She wrapped her arms around the whole lot of it, keeping it close to her heart, those bonds never to break, not on her watch.

Then family, beyond husband and sons, became the players she represented. Now, a new family, the best of the best, the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame.

She becomes the eighth former Lady Griz to be inducted. She fell for the Lady Griz when Cheri Bratt was in uniform, played alongside Leibenguth, McLeod, Cate, was teammates with Ann Lake when Lake was a redshirt freshman, represented both Koss and Skyla Sisco. It's tight. It's family.

McNulty-King was in Butte this past summer, bumped into Marc Mariani, another inductee in this year's class. She was left speechless. "He's right there. Oh, my God! For me to go over and talk to him, I just got chills," she says.

Little did she know he had the same thoughts. "The way he treated me, it was like, what are you talking about?" Just greatness recognizing greatness, one Hall of Famer to another.