Truman senior Khristaijah Jackson surpassed the 1,000-point mark in last Friday’s season finale.
By Mary Jane Souder
Khristaijah Jackson can still recall – during her sophomore year - watching an opposing player at Hatboro-Horsham surpass the 1,000-point mark and immediately telling her teammates she planned to do the same someday.
Her bold prediction was met with more than a little skepticism.
Jackson silenced her doubters in last Friday’s season finale against William Tennent, connecting for the historic basket after pulling down an offensive rebound of her own miss.
“When she said she was going to score a thousand points, one of her teammates said, ‘That’s not possible. We don’t win games,’” Truman coach Collette Munford said. “But she stuck with it and put in the work, and that teammate – they’re really good friends now – said, ‘I am so proud of you because I remember the day you said you wanted to get a thousand points, and I said it wasn’t possible, but you made it possible.”
Jackson, who scored 20 points in Friday’s season finale, is just the third female at Truman to reach the historic milestone and first since Nikki Walker accomplished that feat in 2003.
It’s quite an accomplishment for someone who had no interest in playing basketball in middle school.
“In seventh grade, I was the tallest person in the school, and she (Munford) was trying to recruit me,” Jackson said. “I just basically got forced into it.
“I started off playing in high top Converses. I didn’t know anything about basketball. I couldn’t dribble, I couldn’t do a layup, I couldn’t shoot, nothing. I didn’t like it at all.”
Munford remembers Jackson’s struggles in those early years.
“She was wearing black Chuck Taylors,” the Tigers’ coach said. “In seventh grade, they had her in center. Basketball is a contact sport, but she would step away so nobody would hit her.
“In eighth grade, she still couldn’t do a layup, and she still couldn’t do a whole lot of stuff. She came out in ninth grade, and from then on, she just got better and better, and she started liking basketball. She was learning, and she could see that she could really be good.”
Jackson admits she really didn’t take basketball all that seriously until the end of her ninth grade year. Around that time, her friends began playing as well, so she worked at her sport with them.
“It was mostly my friends and people cheering me on telling me I could do it,” Jackson said of her motivation to achieve her goal.
The Tigers haven’t won a whole lot of games during Jackson’s years on the squad, but that hasn’t kept her from enjoying the experience.
“I just try to stay positive and keep everybody else positive,” she said. “I had my goal of reaching a thousand points in the back of my head.
“I have worked really hard. My mom has spent a lot of money sending me to camps.”
Basketball will be part of Jackson’s future, and although she has not made a choice, Jackson will be playing at the collegiate level and dreams of one day playing pro ball abroad.
“I’m still trying to nail down my options,” she said of choosing a college. “It’s kind of a hard decision.”
Heading into last Friday’s season finale, the Truman senior needed nine points, and for a player averaging more than 20 points a game, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion she’d hit the prestigious milestone.
“My coaches said, ‘It’s not about scoring. It’s about doing what you do best and playing as a team,’” Jackson said. “In the first and second quarters, I didn’t score.”
All that changed in the second half, and the historic basket came on a putback in the third quarter.
“It was a hook shot,” Jackson said. “They blew the whistle, and I thought I got fouled. I was looking around clueless, and then they announced it.
“It was a relief. I was so happy.”
Jackson received the game ball to commemorate the occasion.
“It was a really big achievement because I had the whole entire school behind me the whole time, counting down and coming to our games,” she said. “Even though they knew we weren’t (winning), just them having my back made me feel like I could do it. That pushed me.”
It pushed Jackson into a spot in Truman’s record books, and she’s hoping the best is yet to come.
“I don’t want to stop here,” she said. “I want to keep going.”
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