MOULTRIE — From the time she scored 22 points in her first game as a sixth-grader playing for the Norman Park High eighth-grade basketball team against Brookville, it was apparent that Jill Middlebrooks was an outstanding talent.

And all she did was get better.

One of the most gifted in a long line of outstanding Trojanette players, Jill Middlebrooks started four years, leading the Norman Park High team to the state championship in her junior season in 1971, when she was named the Most Valuable Player of the Class A state tournament. She helped lead her team to the state semifinals the following year.

She also was an outstanding tennis player and teamed up with Terry Stuckey, soon to be her sister-in-law, to win a state doubles championship.

And on Thursday, Sept. 28, Jill Middle-brooks Stuckey will join her high school coach Julian Grantham in the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame at the annual induction banquet at the Colquitt County High cafeteria.

Also in the 2006 Hall of Fame class are Nina Brannon Cooper, Jerry Croft, Veronica Freeman Reese, Lonnie White, James Stancil, Dennard Robison, Richie DeMott, Jeffery Moss and Lynda Baxter Moseley.

And while she was an outstanding athlete and an outstanding scorer on teams that made it a habit of going to the state tournament, Stuckey says her biggest thrill was being part of a winning program in a small town where basketball was a big part of the community.

“It wasn’t just me,” she says. “It was always a team effort. The school was so small and basketball, baseball and tennis were all we had. We really were like family. We’d go to church and then we’d go practice.

“I’m extremely honored that of all the people who could have been chosen that it was me. I am what I am because of my teammates.”

And she had some outstanding ones on the 1971 Norman Park team coached to the state championship by Julian Grantham. The guards were Bobbie Ruark, Mary Tanner, Patsy Hall and Judy Hall and the forwards were Stuckey, Gail Key, Jeannie Hall and Kay McKellar.

All gave up something to put in the extra time demanded by Grantham to have a successful program.

For Jill Middlebrooks, it was horses.

Born Sept. 8, 1954, Jill as a youngster was most happy on a horse.

“I could ride a horse before I could walk,” she says.

Jill also found she was athletic in other areas.

She first started playing when her father put a goal up in the backyard.

“I played with a rubber ball and learned how to dribble by having to bounced that ball in the dirt,” she said. “I learned to dribble low.”

She also played basketball at the Moultrie YMCA. Watching Peggy Moss play inspired her to become more competitive, leading to a chance to play on the eighth-grade team as a sixth-grader.

But she came by her athletic ability naturally. Her parents, Billy and Lillian Norman Middlebrooks, both played at Norman College.

Older brother Billy Gene was one of the finest basketball players Norman Park has produced. And Jill calls sister Susan, now Susan Cannon, a teacher in Lee County, “an awesome athlete.”

As a child, Jill would pile in the car with her parents and travel throughout Georgia watching her older siblings play.

When Billy Gene played for Lowell Mulkey, the coach watched the younger sister play and told her, “Your brother is good. But you can be better.”

And after Norman Park won the Class C state championship in 1971, Mulkey shook her hand and said, “I told you so.”

Grantham returned from Griffin to take over the Norman Park program when Jill and many of the future members of the state championship team were in the seventh grade. He remembers Herbert Houston, his predecessor, telling him that there were some outstanding student/athletes coming through the program.

“I didn’t have to worry about building a program,” Grantham said, and remembers thinking “all we have to do is work hard.”

And the rest, he said, is history.

Grantham, who lived next door to the Middlebrooks family and became a favorite fishing partner of Jill’s mother, kept close tabs on his young player.

Jill remembers riding a horse to the gym to practice by herself one day.

“I guess he was watching me,” Jill remembers. “He said I needed to work on my one-hand jump shot and put that horse out to pasture.”

Grantham knew he had a special athlete.

“Jill had outstanding ability from the start,” Grantham said. “She could shoot a jump shot and a set shot, she was very aggressive, could fake and drive, pivot and think well on her feet. She had good ball-handling skills and was good rebounder and had good defensive skills. But she also was a good team player.”

When Jill first began playing, the game was half-court with three guards and three forwards and Grantham remembers her scoring 25 points in her first varsity game.

When she was a sophomore, the Trojanettes reached the state semifinals before being eliminated 52-49 by Taylor County at the new Macon Coliseum.

The year the Trojanettes won the state championship in 1971, the Georgia High School experimented with a rover, who could play on either end of the courts. Jill played the rover for the Trojanettes.

Norman Park finished 24-1 that season, losing only to Whigham early in the season. But the Trojanettes avenged that loss on Feb. 17, 1971, and took a 10-1 region record and 19-1 overall record into region tournament held in what was known as “the old cracker box” in Whigham.

Norman Park defeated Doerun 40-29 in the semifinals and Whigham 40-35 in the finals.

In the team’s fourth straight appearance in the state tournament, the Trojanettes defeated Loganville 45-28 in the semifinals and Cave Spring 30-23 to bring the state championship trophy back to Colquitt County.

During her career, Jill never played on a losing team, played on four region championship teams, played on a state champion and on team that reached the semifinals in 1972 and the quarterfinals in 1970.

Jill doesn’t remember what her scoring averages were in high school, but Grantham guesses 25 points a game. Her career high was 38 points against Turner County..

“Jill probably could have scored 100 if I had left her in the games,” Grantham said. “I would take her out and let a young player play.”

Also an outstanding tennis player, Jill and Terry Stuckey won the region doubles championship four times and took state Class C doubles championship in 1972 at Mercer University.

While in high school, Jill and Terry’s brother Randy, a fine baseball player for the Trojans, dated — and competed.

“He was extremely talented in baseball and basketball,” he said. “And I wanted to out-do him and get my name in the paper and have more pictures in the paper than he did. We challenged each other.”

Jill was contacted by the All-American Red Heads while still in high school, but decided she did not want to travel, preferring to stay close to home.

After graduating in 1972, Jill went to Abraham Baldwin College for two years before graduating from Valdosta State in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in education.

She earned her master’s in education rom Georgia Southwestern in 1981.

Jill began her career in education at her old elementary school, teaching first, second and sixth grade from 177-1994 at Norman Park Elementary. Since 1994, she has been the ninth-grade Project Success Coordinator at Colquitt County High.

The last two years, she has been a member of the Board of directors for the Project Success Youth Organization, VOCA.

She has begun a two-year term as a director of VOCA’s Region V.

Jill and Randy’s two sons — Will and Waylon — played baseball at Colquitt County High.

“I always wanted them to experience the thrill of a state championship,” Jill says.

And they did. Both were members of Colquitt County’s 1997 state championship baseball team. Will went on to play baseball at ABAC and Savannah State and currently is an assistant baseball coach for the Packers. Waylon also played baseball at ABAC.

“They have been so much fun,” Jill says of her two boys. “And for our next challenge, Will and I are going to get a bass boat and hit the circuit.”