But Bone also is a teenager under seige. Since Sept. 1, her mailbox and inbox have been overflowing with messages from college coaches, full of promise and seduction. Her school has been the scene of visits from a who's who of the country's top college head coaches. They've all come to Dulles High School, in Sugar Land, Texas, just southwest of Houston, and watch her, er, lift weights and play pickup ball. One day, Bone was doing leg curls, glanced up and found herself eyeball-to-eyeball with a couple of college coaches.

The top-ranked, high-school girl's basketball player in the country, Bone would like to keep all her options open, but it's not practical. So the first big step she's taken is cutting down her schools-of-interest list from everybody in the nation to:

Auburn
Cal
Connecticut
Duke
Georgia
Illinois
Maryland
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Oregon State
Rutgers
Temple
Tennessee
Texas
Texas A&M
UCLA
USC
Washington

Yes, it's a long list. But keep in mind that Bone isn't just the No. 1 player in her class, she plays the most difficult-to-fill position in the sport - post. Plus she is worldly, having traveled around the country to play basketball since she was an 8th grader, and truly is open to going anywhere.

Bone has cut her school list to 18

"I'm trying to have a manageable amount of schools," Bone says. "My mom (Kim Williams) would love it if I stayed home and played, but she knows if I'm not feeling it, I'm going to go somewhere else and that's OK. It's been said that the kids in Texas stay in Texas, but the last couple of classes, they've been leaving. I don't know. I like a lot of people all over the place. I love coach Gail (Goestenkors at Texas), but she has her work cut out for her. I'm going to be watching."

The significance of the list, for now, is that those who are on it get a special email address which Bone pulls up on her Sidewinder mobile phone. "If I didn't (limit access to the email address), my phone would never stop ringing," Bone says. Her mother complains that a lot of the email traffic is innane. "They write her to wish her Happy Halloween," William says. "They're just writing to be writing." Bone doesn't mind the traffic - yet. In fact, the emails come in handy when she's laying in her bed, pondering her decision, as she is wont to do. One day, she whipped out the Sidewinder and emailed a set of questions to seven coaches.

"Why are you recruiting me?" Bone asked in the email. "What do you see my impact being on your program? What are your plans for me, once I get in your program? WHy should I choose your school over the other schools I'm considering?"

Bone is pleased with the responses. "The coaches were really honest," she says. "This is all about building relationships, but I don't want people just getting comfortable and joking around all the time. This is a really serious decision for my life."

When coaches are able to start making monthly calls in April, Bone will give out her mobile number only to a select few. She and her mother also are considering changing the number on the home phone. By then, Bone also hopes the flow of mail will have abated.

As of early this week, Bone said she had six big cardboard boxes full of letters. The boxes are stacked in her bedroom and she plans to keep them all, somehow.

"My mom says it's a fire hazard," Bone says. "If we ever have a fire, she says I'll never be able to get out of my room."

Bone laughs. But there is a method to her madness. Each of five boxes is reserved for a major conference. Mail is bunched by school and stacked in order of preference, with favorites on top. If you're in Box No. 6, you're either unknown to Bone - or flat out of luck.

Bone has had to multitask to keep on top
of her decision

Her method isn't flawless. Bone doesn't always know a school's conference affiliation. One Saturday, she was watching college football. A school from which she received letters was one of the combatants.

"All of sudden, the team runs on the field," Bone says, "and I'm like, there you go, that school is in the Big Ten!"

And thus did the letters get moved from Box No. 6.

The other way Bone will dig into her college decision is making numerous unofficial visits. Recruits are not limited in the number of unofficial visits, which are visits in which the recruit and her family pay all costs. Recruits can take five official visits - during which costs are covered by the university - in the fall of their senior year.

Bone already has been to Cal, where her former club coach, Kevin Morrison, now is an assistant. She's also been to Texas, UCLA and USC. Last Sunday, she went to Texas A&M to watch the Aggies play the U.S. national team. Bone says she'll probably visit Washington because she has an aunt living in Seattle and first-year Husky coach Tia Jackson has been recruiting her since she was in the 8th grade and Jackson was at Duke. She'll also likely make a visit to Auburn because she has grandpartents in Alabama.

With the West pretty well covered, Bone and her mother will try to make swings east between March and June. They want to go up north to see Connecticut, Maryland, Temple and Rutgers and then probably swing through the Southeast to see Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Among the things in which Bone has keen interest is how well programs develop post players.

There is a lot of research and a lot of travel on the horizon. Bone is getting a lot of help from her mother. They are looking forward to the road trips, she said.

"My basketball has been a big part of both of our lives the past few years," Bone says. "Some people talk about not being able to wait to get home. Well, the gym, that's our first home now."

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Glenn Nelson is the founder and publisher of HoopGurlz.com. He is a member of the McDonald's All-American Selection Committee and SportsShooter.com (Click for Porfolio [1]), Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Photoshop Professionals, National Press Photographers Association, Online News Association and Society of Professional Journalists. Glenn also founded and coached the Dragons and Northwest HoopGurlz select girl's basketball teams and previously was the editor-in-chief at Scout.com and a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The Seattle Times. His work has appeared in several books and national magazines. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing, 2002). For more on Glenn's World, click here [1]. Glenn can be reached at glenn@hoopgurlz.com [2].