Equal Opportunity A Memphis AAU team wins a national title that leaves the players dreaming. by DANIEL CONNOLLY any of us would hem and haw if asked to sum up all our aspirations in a sentence or two, but Jessica Jackson has a ready answer to the question. "To make it to the WNBA," she says. "I think that's most girls' dream, to make it to the WNBA." Jackson, who just turned 12, was the star center for the Memphis Waves, an 11-and-under team which won the Amateur Athletic Union's national girls basketball championship last month. Jessica (who is 6'2", by the way) is an excellent player who averaged 15 points per game for the season. It's conceivable that she might play in the WNBA one day. What's more remarkable about her dream is that the WNBA is barely two years old. Both the WNBA, which started operations in 1997, and the Memphis Waves are part of an upswing in women's athletics. Consider the resources poured into the AAU 11-and-under girls national tournament itself, which was held this year in Kenner, Louisiana. About 750 players representing 67 teams from all over the U.S. were there, not to mention a small army of coaches and parents. AAU basketball is no cheap proposition. Teams and their families contribute both time and money. Larry Jackson, Jessica's father, paid $250 at the start of the season, and that even after team fund-raisers and a contribution from the AAU, he had to pay several hundred dollars for expenses related to the national championship. Though they lost only once in 11 tournament games, this year's national competition turned out to be grueling and extremely close for the Waves, whose average victory margin for the season was an astounding 24 points. "I'm not sure if we'd do it again, because our last four games were three overtimes and a one-point win in regulation," says head coach Vince Turitto, whose day job is professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Memphis. Though Jessica Jackson and point guard Latoya Bullard, who averaged 13 assists per game for the year, were the premier players, Turitto says that almost every girl on the team had at least one big game, and that the depth of talent allowed him to rotate "pretty deeply," thus compensating for the fatigue that comes from playing so many games in a short period. It was no accident that the team had such depth. In 1998, Turitto and assistant coach Gib Vestal each took a team to the national 10-and-under tournament, and both teams finished 17th in the nation. After the tournament, the two agreed to merge their teams, creating what some parents named the "Dream Team." Vestal says several of his players may play college basketball some day. The players came from all over the city and county. "They came from the highest levels and the lowest levels. It was quite a range of socioeconomic status, I would say," says Turitto. After winning tournaments at the sub-state and state level, the team picked up two more players from elsewhere in Tennessee before heading on to the nationals. "The girls got along great -- that was one of the major factors that they did so well." The fact that there were three coaches working with the team of 12 also helped. Turitto, Vestal, and assistant coach Stan Elliott began working with the girls in late February. Practicing three or four times a week in various gyms around the city, the team grew close. Turitto made up nicknames for the players, from Rachel "Not So" Meek to Jennifer "Blue Collar" Allsbrook, to Angela "Little Titanic" Webb. Jessica Jackson was "The Big O." "We won the national championship on the same day and almost at the same time that the [U.S.] women won the world cup [in soccer]," says Turitto. Vestal says it's time to take women's athletics more seriously. "One of the reasons that I started coaching was that I felt my daughter in particular and girls in general were not getting good coaching at these lowest levels," he says. "Most of them were just being put out on the floor and allowed to run around." Competitive outlets for girls basketball are increasing. The spring league Vestal helped form drew 48 teams this year, up from 12 teams in its debut three years ago. "It's expanded tremendously in just the last three years. The interest level is out there," says Vestal. "It's just a matter of giving them the opportunity." For Jessica Jackson, the national tournament was "a lot of fun," and a chance to meet new friends, including some who, like her, are diabetic. (She's currently trying to raise money for a September 25th pledge walk at Shelby Farms for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.) "I had parents come up to me and say 'the only thing she wants to do is play basketball,'" Turitto says. "You never used to hear that about a girl."