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M-Club Messenger Online Exclusive
By Dr. Sharon Ocker
Lefler certainly has an athletic family. Her husband, Mick, was a quality athlete as a freshman at Bishop Heelan High School. He was a starting ninth-grade quarterback and was the city champ in the freshman hurdles. But there were 19 children (not a misprint) in his family. His dad, an electrician, said that if he wanted to attend Heelan, he had to earn his own way. He had to work year-round in order to swing it, so athletics weren't possible.
Amy and Mick have two sons. The oldest, Austin, is a 15-year-old sophomore at Lawton-Bronson High School. He has already played more basketball games than Amy did in her entire career. He started for the Eagles as a freshman and is a very gifted athlete. He played football in both the sixth and seventh grades, but was injured both years. He also has played baseball and run track, but the current cultural pull to specialize in one sport is beckoning. His mom prefers that kids play a lot of different sports, like she did. Their second son, Andrew (A.J.), is 11 and is also quite handy in basketball and baseball.
Amy has really enjoyed Morningside’s recent success in basketball and volleyball and has been able to attend the national tournament games here in town. The coverage in the media has been outstanding – much more than when she played. Women’s athletics has come a long way in fan interest and in coverage. Back then, they were lucky to have even a score in the papers and on TV. She isn’t able to attend many regular season games nowadays because of her boys’ games and the fact that she does some junior high volleyball coaching.
Amy is happy that Morningside beat Briar Cliff every time they played in basketball while she was in college. The rivalry was just as intense then as it is now.
Her Morningside basketball statistics are as follows:
Year GP FG-ATT Pct. FT-ATT Pct. St. Ast. Pts. Ave.
83-84 25 154-319 48.3 22-40 55.0 43 39 330 13.2
84-85 28 234-477 49.1 102-116 87.9 56 75 570 20.4
85-86 31 314-608 51.6 122-140 87.1 53 133 750 24.2
86-87 30 286-555 51.5 110-131 84.0 83 121 682 22.7
Total 114 988-1959 50.4 356-427 83.3 235 368 2332 20.5
At one time Amy held the Sioux City high school single-game scoring record with 66 points. Besides the basketball records already mentioned in The Morningsider, she was a four-time National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) All-District 15 selection, a four-time NAIA All-District 15 Player of the Week and a three-time NAIA honorable mention All-American.
Amy has been a fourth-grade teacher at Lawton-Bronson for 18 years.
She remembers a comment that coach Chuck Mounts 1960 often said: “Get out there on the concrete slab and play.” She would walk four blocks down to the school with her ball and find some kids to play with, often boys, who were good to practice with because of their toughness.
She has fond memories of several games. One time Morningside played in Omaha against Creighton University and lost by one point. Members of that Creighton team included Tanya Warren and Connie Yori, who is now the coach at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Amy played several times in the Iowa Games along with Irene Prince 1985, Nicole (Newberg) Goodwin 1994, Paula (Hunter) Olsen 1989, Carolyn (Lamaak) Pederson 1988, and Val Uken 1987. The last year they took part, they beat a team composed of University of Iowa and Iowa State University women, who weren’t too happy about that.
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