When athletic director and Drury Sports Hall of Fame member, Dr. Bruce Harger, put together the plan to bring women’s basketball to the Drury campus the pieces fell together more quickly than anyone might have imagined. He brought in a high school coach by the name of Nyla Milleson and she, in turn, started signing players who put this rocketship called Lady Panther basketball on course from day one. But it was two years before Nyla landed the “fuel” that propelled the program onto the national stage. That “rocket fuel” came in the person of Kara Rutledge and for the next four years the Lady Panthers simply won 122 games and lost only 12. Kara was the only person to start all 134 games.
In those four seasons the Lady Panthers made four trips, the first four in the program’s history, to the NCAA-II National Tournament. Twice they made the “Sweet 16” and the year that will never be forgotten was 2004 when Drury made the national championship game; finished with a 36-2 record; and, won the Heartland Conference with a perfect 12-0 mark. Four players started all 38 games that year. They were Drury Hall of Famers Hope Hunt, Jill Curry, Amanda Newton and today’s inductee: Kara Rutledge, considered by many to be the best point guard in the nation during her career.
The reason team accomplishments are cited first is that is the way Kara would want it. She did whatever it took for her team to win...and she did all. Kara could score, evidenced by the fact that she is third on the Lady Panther all-time career scoring list with 1,529 points. She is fifth on the all-time rebound list with 535 boards and she remains the program’s all-time leader in assists (474) and steals (423). The Lady Panthers won and Kara’s teammates earned many honors during her four year career.
However, Kara was also recognized for her considerable basketball skills. She earned all conference honors all four years and was the Heartland Conference Freshman-of-the-Year in 2003 and she joined Amanda Newton on the Great Lakes Valley Conference First Team in 2006. In 2004 she was named to the South Central Region and Elite Eight All-Tournament teams. In 2006 she earned preseason All-American honors according to Women’s Division II Bulletin and she was a Kodak/WBCA Region IV All-American finalist. That year she was also named to the All Great Lakes Region Second Team.
Kara’s single-game high came in the first round of the 2005 NCAA-II national tournament when she scored 31 points versus Abilene Christian. She had a career-high 11 rebounds her senior season in leading the Lady Panthers to a win over national power Grand Valley State University. She had 10 assists in a game multiple times and she holds the Lady Panther record for steals in a game with10.
In Kara’s case, oustanding achievement did not stop on the basketball court. She earned conference academic honors every year and was honored by ESPN The Magazine by being named an academic All-American. Kara graduated from Drury on May 14, 2006 with a double major in psychology/sociology and a grade point average of 3.976 on a 4.0 scale. She was a Dean’s Scholar at Drury and a National Honor Society member and the salutatorian of her Stockton (Mo.) High School graduating class with a perfect 4.0 grade point average...where she was all state in basketball, volleyball and track.
When Kara signed with Drury during her senior year in high school she became the first basketball “father-daughter” combination in Drury history following in the footsteps of Panther standout, Steve Rutledge, who played at Drury in the 1970’s. Steve, his wife Phyllis, Kara and her husband Clay, all look forward to the next generation of Drury Lady Panther basketball as they are the proud grandparents and parents of Asa, who just turned one year old this past Nov. 10.
Kara, Clay and Asa now reside in Lockwood, Missouri and Kara is the Director of Operations at the Center for Assessment and Remediation of Reading Difficulties (CAARD) on the campus of Pittsburg State University. Today we pause as Kara Rutledge joins teammates Hope Hunt, Jill Curry and Amanda Newton as a member of the Drury Sports Hall of Fame on this date: December 4, 2010.
