As she cut toward the basket at Wulf Rec Center, a 7 year old Jameson Mott’s eyes lit up. Her friend, Jessie Stiller, slipped the perfect pass to her, and two dribbles later, she went up for the layup. Deftly banked off the glass, the ball disappeared through the hoop. Two points! While her friends danced around and celebrated, Jameson barely knew what to do. This was her first basket of her lifetime after all!
She has made a LOT of baskets since then.
On Thursday, Jan 5, Jameson netted her 1000th career point for the Evergreen High School Cougars. This rare milestone was reached on the back of four stellar seasons that began as a freshman shooting guard in 2019-20 with 284 points. She followed that up with a sophomore campaign in which she tallied 209 points and was honored as first team all-conference. And last year she racked up another 334 points and was selected as the 4A Jeffco girls basketball player of the year. This year she already has 177 points despite being one of the most closely guarded players in the state, the focus of every opponent’s attention.
“All those points are the result of a lifetime of training and practice,” EHS coach Maddy Hornecker said. “To witness how hard she works at everything she does is pretty remarkable.”
Asked how many times she has come to the EHS gym to simply shoot, Mott said, “Too many times to count, every weekend day, and pretty much every day on winter and spring breaks too from middle school through high school.” They’d park out front of a mostly empty school. Her Dad, a teacher at the school, would go to the weight room, while she and her older brother, Jackson, would shuffle off to the gym to shoot. And shoot. And shoot some more.
So, who would win a game of horse between her and her brother? “He would,” she said humbly. Are you sure? A little smile creased her face and she qualified her answer, “In his prime…I think I might win now.” Do you have a go-to shot in the game of HORSE if you had a chance to win? “Behind the baseline, Over the backboard, and call Swish.”
And that kind of dedication is how you score 1000 points in a career!
Her favorite part of this accomplishment is getting to do this with those same teammates that she started playing with all those years ago in elementary school. Her longtime teammate, fellow senior Bella Reece, said that Mott, the EHS student body co-president, is the “consummate teammate, always looking in on her fellow players and about their mental health and their academics. She is especially good about encouraging our underclassmen teammates.”
Reece has seen a lot of points over the years by Mott. Playing alongside each other for ten plus years will do that for you. But it isn’t just the baskets made that Reece will remember. She recounted a trip to Durango and a game that came down to the wire. Their team closely ahead in the waning moments of the game…the Evergreen team broke the press and threw the ball to Mott in the corner. Simply holding onto the ball would have sealed the game…but Mott thought they were behind, so she heaved a desperation shot, which clanged off the rim. Dejected, Mott was so upset she hadn’t tied it up…only to find out she was the only one who didn’t know they had just won.
Reece said, “We still laugh about that one. What’s so funny about that moment is that she is our smartest basketball player…and also, the shot made it look like we were trying to get a bigger margin of victory or pad our stats at the buzzer!” Which, Reece pointed out, is ironic, since she said Mott only really cares about the team winning, and not about the stats.
Hornecker echoed that sentiment, “She didn’t even know or care that she was reaching 1000 points, she just cares about the team.” Mott’s 1000th point came like so many others – around a small screen, receiving a pass from Bella Reece, she hoisted a perfectly arched shot. Nothing but net…and cue the celebration. EHS called timeout, the stands erupted and the announcer let the crowd know of the accomplishment. Mott was completely unaware of both the milestone she had achieved, or of the impending celebration that the program had planned. So, like when she was seven years old, she hardly knew what to do. But her teammates did. They swarmed her, as the student section unfurled a banner that read “1,000 points”.
Mott is committed to play basketball next season at Gettysburg College, a sort of homecoming for Jameson and her family. Both of her parents grew up in Gettysburg, her grandfather was a professor there and she still has family in the area.
But before becoming a Gettysburg Bullet, Mott has unfinished business for the Evergreen Cougars this Winter. The Cougars (1-8 overall) have faced a tough string of early season opponents and suffered many close losses. They will continue to look to Mott and their senior leaders to finish strong in conference play. This next week, Evergreen has an away contest against top ranked D’Evelyn at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan 11, and another away contest Saturday, Jan 14 against Bear Creek at noon.