Tina Klotzbeecher-Thomas and Bobby Thomas, Alyssa’s parents, stand next to a trophy case featuring some of her high school honors.

HARRISBURG, Pa. – The 5-year-old girl stood there stubbornly on the sideline, locked in a struggle she knew her mother would never lose. She had cried and kicked, begged and screamed.

Please, Mom, the girl pleaded once more, don’t make me go out on that basketball court.

It took the glare of every curious eye in the room to get her to relent, to finally step into the spotlight she so feared growing up.

Fourteen years later, Alyssa Thomas can’t seem to leave it. The Alyssa Thomas who was so hesitant to shoot in elementary school that hardwood stardom seemed near-impossible is now Alyssa Thomas, ACC Player of the Year. The Alyssa Thomas who once put basketball second in her athletic hierarchy is now Alyssa Thomas, star of a Terrapins women’s basketball team set to begin its quest for a second national title.

All this from someone who never even wanted to play basketball in the first place.

Painfully shy as a child, Tina Klotzbeecher-Thomas’ eldest daughter rarely left her mother’s side. Too afraid to leave the comforts of her Avon Drive home, too timid to talk with anyone she didn’t know, Thomas clung to her mother’s leg like a blanket wherever she went.

Hoping to shake Thomas of her fears, Klotzbeecher-Thomas and Thomas’ father, Bobby, signed her up for Bitty Ball, a coed youth basketball league in Lower Paxton, a sleepy suburb just outside Pennsylvania’s capital. Maybe if they got her playing with other kids on the smaller hoops erected at the local volleyball court, Thomas’ shyness would melt away.

At least, that’s what the elementary school teacher hoped would happen.

“The only way to get her to play was to force her. It was not an option,” said Klotzbeecher-Thomas, who coached the team. “I made her do it.”

Not without a fight.

“I threw a temper tantrum, I was crying,” Thomas said. “I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do it.'”

She just wanted to be free of the court’s four concrete walls. Her first love, after all, was soccer. She excelled in the sport after joining the local recreational league to play alongside some of her friends, and she ended up good enough to make a local travel team.

All through grade school, Thomas told her teachers and friends, her dream was to become a professional soccer player.

“I liked being outside and being able to run,” Thomas said. “I really liked it a lot more than basketball.”

It didn’t take long for that allegiance to change. Raised by a family with basketball in its blood – both her parents played at the Division-II level just down the road at Millersville University – Thomas and her siblings were taught from an early age to put hoops first. (Her brother, Devin, a senior forward at Central Dauphin High School, is committed to play for Wake Forest next season.)

So it came as little surprise, then, that when her AAU team finished 13th nationally in her sixth-grade season, Thomas began to fully embrace basketball.

“As I got older, I really didn’t like being outside and [dealing with] all of the weather conditions [in soccer], so I really started liking basketball more,” Thomas said. “AAU [basketball] really started picking up, and I couldn’t keep up with both anymore.”

Yet even as she grew more comfortable on the court, Thomas still did her best to stay off anyone’s must-see list. She scored only two to four points per game in middle school, Klotzbeecher-Thomas said, preferring to pass the ball instead and keep her teammates involved.

“As parents, we always stressed that you have to play team basketball,” Klotzbeecher-Thomas said. “Even if the kids weren’t as good as you, you have to pass the ball because you eventually are going to play with kids who can catch the ball, so you need to see the floor.

“Anyone can shoot the ball, but not everyone can pass the ball.”

SIBLING RIVALRY

Perhaps those early flurries of passes – and passed-up looks – obscured something greater building within Thomas.

It was a competitive drive the likes of which her mother had never seen, forged over time inside the Thomas’ small, split-level house. Beige siding and a pale brick facade cover its front, offering a stark contrast against the bright pink carpet inside that served as the Thomas family battleground.

Whether it was board games, a card game at Christmastime or boys-versus-girls basketball, every activity in the Thomas house, Klotzbeecher-Thomas said, turned into “all-out war.”

“[Mom] wouldn’t even let us win at Candyland. She made us work for every win that we got,” Thomas said. “It got way out of hand. We hated to lose, so we did whatever it took to get a win. That’s where I got a lot of my competitiveness from.”

Outside, a concrete driveway no wider than 10 feet across served as Alyssa and Devin Thomas’ personal playground. Though their basketball hoop has fallen into disrepair since the siblings outgrew it years ago – it now lies, discarded and weathered, on the outskirts of the family’s property – the memories of their childhood exploits remain.

One-on-one contests in the front yard and down the street at the local community center used to be the norm for the talented Thomases, battles that Alyssa freely boasts about if you know to ask her.

“He didn’t like that I would always beat him,” she said, smiling.

Devin’s growing frame soon became a powerful equalizer – he now stands 6-foot-8 – but that wasn’t going to stop Alyssa from going at him. Lose to her baby brother? Not a chance. Long after the scales started to tip the other way, Thomas still thinks she can take him.

“Alyssa could out-quick him, but Devin would make her eat everything,” said Klotzbeecher-Thomas, who put a stop to the games when she feared one of them might get hurt. “It would get ugly, I can guarantee you that.”

BREAKING OUT

The first time Central Dauphin women’s basketball coach Bill Wolf saw Thomas on the court, he knew he had something special. After watching her compete at an open-gym workout in eighth grade, it didn’t take long for Wolf to realize that she was, as he put it, “certainly a lot better than all the other rising ninth-graders.”

“She has ‘it.’ It’s hard to define what ‘it’ is, but all the great players – Michael Jordan, Kobe [Bryant] – those guys are just tremendous competitors,” said Wolf, who took the coaching job at Cumberland Valley High School after Thomas graduated. “It’s that competitive edge that they have or that competitive nature that helps them out to be outstanding players.”

Not wanting to “step on any toes or outshine anyone” in her freshman season, Thomas admitted her play on the court was relatively quiet. She averaged less than 10 points per game, Wolf said, despite being an everyday starter.

The breakout came in Thomas’ sophomore season. She averaged a team-high 18 points and 10 rebounds per game for the 28-7 Lady Rams, leading them all the way to the 2008 Pennsylvania State Championship.

Thomas scored 18 points and grabbed 18 boards in a 56-49 win over Mt. Lebanon in the title game, her first state championship at the high school level and the third of her career.

“That was a huge game,” Wolf said, “for her and for our program.”

Before long, Thomas was bigger than a blip on the recruiting radar of Brenda Frese. The longtime Terps coach was blown away the first time she saw Thomas play at the Battle of Baltimore tournament the summer after her sophomore season. Frese quickly joined the growing line of schools who had visions of Thomas one day donning their uniform.

“You could see she was just this kind of woman amongst girls,” Frese said. “She pretty much had her way offensively. Rebounding, pull-up, posting people up – she was just an extremely versatile player.”

Frese’s excitement only grew as Thomas continued to post gaudy high school numbers. She raised her scoring average to 19.5 points in her junior year and an impressive 24.3 in her senior year, also posting more than 12 rebounds and three assists per game in each season.

A few days before the Lady Rams’ 2010 state quarterfinal game against Cheltenham, Wolf posted a clip from an article to Thomas’ locker. One of the Cheltenham girls had told the newspaper that, while her team had never faced a player of Thomas’ caliber, they weren’t afraid of her. They could shut her down, she claimed.

That was all the motivation Thomas needed.

In the penultimate game of her Central Dauphin career, Thomas went off for 40 points on 74 percent shooting with 23 rebounds and six assists in a 75-68 win over the Panthers.

“That kind of just stuck in the back of my mind in that game. Every time I saw that girl guarding me, it just kind of fueled me to go at her,” Thomas said. “I just refused to lose that game.”

She finished her career as one of the most decorated athletes in Central Dauphin history, totaling a school-record 2,291 points to go along with 1,390 rebounds, 452 assists and 372 steals in her four years. Her framed No. 30 jersey still hangs in the lobby outside the gymnasium.

When then-Principal Carol Johnson discovered Thomas would forgo her high school graduation ceremony to attend the Team USA youth basketball trials, she quickly made sure Thomas wouldn’t leave the Central Dauphin halls for the last time without being properly recognized.

“We had a mini-graduation ceremony just for her in our auditorium,” said Johnson, now the assistant superintendent of the school district. “Kids came, teachers came, principals came, athletic people came and obviously, her family was there. And when I presented her diploma, I had chills the whole time.”

‘WHERE WOULD I BE …’

Frese knew she had to have Thomas, calling her a “program changer” and a “difference maker.” She wasn’t alone. A slew of offers from scholarship offers from Penn State, Notre Dame, Miami, N.C. State and countless others had arrived even before the start of her junior season, but none, Thomas decided, felt quite like College Park.

“They were one of the schools that was with me from the beginning,” Thomas said. “The first time I came here, I just loved the school. That feeling that everyone talks about, I got, just after being here one time. I came back a couple more times and I knew it was the right school for me.”

Not even the 100-plus miles separating College Park from her hometown could spell the end of her sibling rivalry with Devin, however. When he shattered the backboard with an alley-oop dunk for Central Dauphin against Greencastle-Antrim on Feb. 16, Devin couldn’t resist texting his older sister to rub it in her face.

“OK, watch,” she told him.

Three days later, Thomas blocked Duke guard Haley Peter’s 3-point attempt at the buzzer, securing a 63-61 victory for the Terps over the rival Blue Devils inside Comcast Center.

On SportsCenter’s Top 10 Plays of the Week later that night, Devin’s dunk came in at No. 8.

Alyssa’s swat? No. 7.

“My mom called me and said, ‘Your brother is all mad over here that you beat him,'” she said. “He was like, ‘How does your stupid block beat my dunk? I broke the backboard,’ and all that. So we definitely have a little thing going back and forth.”

“She won’t beat me now,” Devin said.

There have been ample examples of Thomas putting the Terps on her back. She nailed a game-winning jumper with 17 seconds to play in a 77-74 victory over Georgia Tech on Jan. 6 and scooped in a buzzer-beating layup against North Carolina two days later to force overtime in an eventual 78-72 win.

Two weeks ago, Thomas poured in a career-high 29 points in a 68-65 ACC Championship victory over the Yellow Jackets, earning the tournament’s Most Valuable Player honor.

“To see the amount of games this past season that she’s impacted, games that she’s won for this team, last-minute plays, last-second plays – most people dream about having that in a career. She’s had it in one season,” Frese said. “There’s a huge ceiling for her. She could be the best to ever come through, and that’s making a pretty big statement with the tradition we have here.”

Sitting inside Comcast Center three days before the No. 2 seed Terps open their NCAA Tournament slate against No. 15 seed Navy, Thomas couldn’t help but smile.

She’s still a shy person, but her play, of course, has done much of the talking in her two years in College Park: She scored an ACC-best 17.4 points per game this season, earning first-team all-conference honors and a spot as a Wooden Award finalist.

Not bad for someone who had to be dragged kicking and screaming onto the basketball court 14 years ago.

“If my mom never forced me to play, I always think, Where would I be? Would I be a soccer player or would I not even be playing sports?” Thomas said. “If she didn’t put me in this sport, it’s just, Where would I be right now?”

vitale@umdbk.com