High school athlete of week: Bath's Jessica Stoskopf

Jessica Stoskopf didn’t quite feel like herself when she returned to the basketball court in the middle portion of last season following an ACL injury.

Now the 5-foot-8 senior forward is back to feeling normal again.

And Stoskopf is making her mark in what has been a 3-1 start to the season for the Bath girls basketball team.

Stoskopf has made key contributions in the season’s early stages while helping Bath get off to a 2-0 start in CMAC play. She averaged 12.0 points as the Bees opened their CMAC schedule with wins over Pewamo-Westphalia and Saranac last week.

“I was really excited to actually be able to play and feel like myself again,” said Stoskopf, who was voted the Lansing State Journal high school athlete of the week. “I’m really excited to play with my team too, because were supposed to be really good this year and we have a lot of potential. I’m excited for that.”

While sitting out for half of last season as she recovered from the ACL injury was difficult for Stoskopf, it did help her become comfortable more than in the post.

“I had to work on my outside game a lot because I had so much off time,” Stoskopf said. “The only thing I could do was shoot. I just feel like I have an outside game that I’ve never had before.”

That new element is something Stoskopf said has helped her contribute to the strong start for Bath, which suffered its lone loss to Class A Howell.
Stoskopf said last week’s wins were important to kick off CMAC play for the Bees as they strive to repeat as league champions.

“We talk about all the time that we have so many returning players and we have our starters back,” Stoskopf said. “This is our year. We have four senior starters and a bunch of seniors on the team. This is our last shot to do it, and we just want to build off last season and go forward and hopefully make it farther than we ever have.”

Mainly, Stoskopf is just trying to make the most of her time playing basketball and helping in whatever way possible as Bath tries to reach its lofty goals.

“I just want to do the best that I can and make the most of it, especially after missing so much,” Stoskopf said. “I just want to work the hardest that I can and impact other teammates.  I just want them to maybe take from me how hard I work on and off the court and hopefully they can do the same.”

Contact Brian Calloway at bcalloway@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @brian_calloway.