When she was a rising star at Stillwater High School, Sara Scalia would routinely pull up from well beyond the arc. Sometimes as far as 10 feet behind the line. It was almost as if shooting the ball came so easy to her that she was in search of a new challenge.

Sara Scalia

It became a phenomenon in the East Metro to the point that her coach, Willie Taylor, would have to field questions from some of his peers.

“They would come up to me like, ‘Why is she allowed to take that shot?’” said Taylor, then the girls basketball coach at Stillwater and now the girls basketball coach at St. Paul Academy. “I would say, ‘Well, she makes them, so she’s allowed to shoot them.’”

That reputation as a sharpshooter followed Scalia to college where she starred with Minnesota for three seasons before transferring to Indiana. She returned to her home state this week for the Big Ten Tournament with No. 3 seed Indiana set to play No. 6 seed Michigan on Friday night at Target Center.

As much hype as there is surrounding Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark nationally — for good reason — Taylor remembers a similar vibe surrounding Scalia locally when she was making a name for herself.

“Everybody wanted to be Sara,” Taylor said. “She was Caitlin Clark here before Caitlin Clark.”

Just getting to watch Scalia play had a big impact on the next generation. There were countless young girls who grew up around Stillwater who wanted to be just like her. Like, senior guard Amy Thompson, the current star for the Ponies, who broke Scalia’s single-game scoring record this year.

“She’s always been somebody I’ve looked up to,” Thompson said. “I feel like we have a similar type of game and I think that probably comes from watching her when I was growing up.”

That feeling persists around Stillwater. Never mind that Scalia has been gone so long she’s about to graduate from college. She led a resurgence of the youth program and it hasn’t slowed down.

“She inspired a group of young girls who are now inspiring a group of young girls,” said Tim Peper, the girls basketball coach at Stillwater. “If Sara hadn’t set that standard years ago, I don’t know if we’d be doing things the same way we are right now. It’s pretty cool to think about. She was the influence that started something that’s going to carry on for years to come.”

That impact wasn’t lost on Scalia as she returns home this week.

“It means a lot being able to inspire young girls from Stillwater,” Scalia said. ” That’s my home. It’s always going to be a special place to me. It was really cool to know a lot of them looked up to me.”

They still do.

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