'Bubba do it'

Post Falls High senior “Bubba” Gleaves has been a headstrong girl for as long as anyone can remember.

There’s a backyard full of graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows to prove it.

“She likes to ensure that somebody sees her side of the story,” said her dad, Holly, who is also the Post Falls High softball coach. “She’s always been that way.

“I would try to do things for her when she was a toddler, and she would look at me when she could start talking a little bit, 2 or 2 1/2 years old, and say, ‘Bubba do it. Bubba do it.’ It didn’t matter what it was — taking dishes out of the cabinet that she couldn’t even reach.

“‘Bubba do it.’

“I don’t know if I had anything to do with that.”

That attitude fueled her drive — earning a 4.4 GPA in high school, improving as a softball player, contacting colleges at an early age, playing a key support role on a state championship basketball team, helping her softball team earn a state berth for the first time in eight seasons.

Thanks to a combination of smarts and softball skill, the shortstop attracted and accepted an offer to play softball at Columbia University, an Ivy League school in the Upper Manhattan borough of New York City.

From there, Bubba wants to become an attorney. But more importantly ...

“Columbia is definitely a place where I can make a big impact on the world,” she said. “It’s in the big city of New York ... there’s so many people to meet from all aspects of life. It’s crazy that me, coming from Idaho, is going to Columbia, but ... basically all doors are open.

“If I am successful at Columbia, that will give me more authority, and I can use that for the better.”

Pretty heady stuff for an 18-year-old.

“I grew up in Wyoming,” Holly said, “and I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking about back then, but there was definitely nothing about saving the world.”

WHY ‘BUBBA?’

Born Bailey Gleaves, she said she’s been called ‘Bubba’ for as long as she can remember.

Bubba says the nickname came from her mom, Terry Starkey-Gleaves.

“I was like a chubby Gerber baby, (she) started calling me Bubba when I was a little, and it just stuck.”

“I think it was her brother (Blake, now a freshman at Post Falls High),” mom says, “because he couldn’t say Bailey. He could say Bubba, and it just kinda stuck.”

“It’s kind of a weird nickname to have, but it’s just what everyone has been calling me, so I’m just used to it,” said Bubba, who says she’s never been self-conscious bring a girl called Bubba.

A few minutes later, once he returned to the interview — held in the scorer’s booth behind the backstop at the varsity softball field at Post Falls — after attending to some coaching duties, dad agreed with his daughter, referring to “when she picked up that nickname Bubba because she was kind of a chubby baby.”

“I never thought you were chubby,” mom said to her daughter, seated across the booth from her.

A LIFETIME Post Falls resident, Bubba has played softball since she was 4 or 5 — whatever age her parents fudged on the application form, so she could play T-ball a year or two before the rules allowed.

Not long after that, she decided she wanted to go to Stanford — a not-too-shabby academic institution in its own right.

Through the years, she attended a number of camps at Stanford, and had gotten to know the Cardinal coaches.

But around the start of her junior year, the entire Stanford coaching staff changed — and the new coaches had no idea who Bubba was.

However, around eighth grade, Bubba started emailing colleges — many of them high-academic institutions — just to let them know she existed.

One of them was Columbia.

As an eighth grader, she attended a camp in the Tri-Cities, attended by college coaches.

One of them was Lance Glasoe, head coach at Pacific Lutheran in Tacoma, and also a travel-ball coach for the Seattle-based Washington Majestics. Glasoe invited Bubba to play on his travel-ball team. She joined the Majestics, which would play in tournaments all over the country — including Atlanta, Oklahoma, California, Denver ... As it turned out, coaches from Columbia saw her along the way.

Sept. 1 of her junior year was the first day college coaches could officially talk to her.

When she woke up, she noticed a few emails from colleges. The first one was from Columbia.

At 12:03 a.m.

3:03 a.m. in Manhattan.

She called and talked to the head coach, Jennifer Teague.

A month later, Bubba and Holly traveled back East, for unofficial visits to Princeton, another Ivy League school, and Columbia. All told, four Ivy League schools (including Brown and Penn) were interested, to varying degrees.

They visited Princeton first, but “I wasn’t really feeling like I was supposed to be there, exactly,” said.

Next stop was Columbia, where she felt a much better vibe from the campus, the coaches and the players.

She verbally committed at the end of her unofficial visit, then signed her letter of intent during her senior year.

“I just fell in love (with Columbia) for some reason,” she said.

BUBBA GLEAVES posted an SAT score of 1,340 — well above the requirement for athletes to get into Columbia. Non-athletes, she said, need close to a perfect SAT score, which is 1,600.

“Honestly I got in with softball,” she said. “That was my goal. I wanted to get into a great school, using softball to do it.”

Ivy League schools do not offer athletic or academic scholarships, only financial aid.

Bubba said she took every honors class offered to her at Post Falls.

She hasn’t received a grade lower than ‘A’ since middle school, when she received a A-minus.

“I have to credit that to my parents,” Bubba said. “Ever since middle school, when people didn’t necessarily care as much about their grades, they were always pushing me to get A’s. I couldn’t even get an A-minus.

“My brother made the mistake of getting a ‘B’ one time, and they got him a tutor for the summer. So I was like ‘Nope, I don’t want to do that.’

“It was super strict, but I’m definitely glad that they did that for me. Now I have so many opportunities to open doors.”

“It’s not fun being unpopular in the household,” mom says, “but ... I’ll take it. I’ve got big shoulders.”

BUBBA IS senior class president at Post Falls. She was also class president as a junior and sophomore.

One of the things she and her ASB mates pushed for was to make all athletes — and others — feel special, not just those in the ‘big’ sports like football and boys basketball.

For spring sports, she said they are organizing a “senior night” tailgate for all spring sports.

For homecoming, rather than make posters for just all of the football players, the student leaders did it for athletes in all fall sports — as well as others, like those in drama ...

“We made sure that everyone got recognized,” she said.

BUBBA’S MOM, mostly quiet while her daughter and Holly talked during the interview, decided to speak up.

“OK, I have to tell the marshmallow story,” Terry said.

“She (Bubba) discovered how to make some s’mores. We were ‘camping’ in the backyard. Had a tent, built a fire, everything, and she discovered how to do the chocolate and the marshmallows. And started feeding them (to relatives) ... And if you didn’t take that marshmallow ... she was like stuffing s’mores in their mouths, and finally ...”

“... Charcoal marshmallows,” Holly interjected. “Her technique wasn’t very good.”

“They mowed a spot for the tents, so the grass on the outside was ‘yay’ big,” Terry said. “She would hand them to ’em and they started throwing them over their shoulders ... ”

Me: “They didn’t eat them?”

Terry: “Well, at a certain point you could (only eat so many) marshmallows. So the next morning, the grass was covered with graham crackers and chocolate and s’mores.”

“The point of the story is ... ” Holly said.

“You couldn’t tell her no,” Terry said.

Bubba, perhaps 4 at the time, said she doesn’t remember the episode. But when she was told the story later, “I thought it was pretty funny,” she said. “That makes sense.”

BUBBA GLEAVES has played basketball for nearly as long as she has played softball. As a junior, she was a key reserve on the Trojans’ state 5A girls basketball title team. As a senior, she started at point guard and was a team leader.

“Bubba was a joy to coach; she is a natural leader who is all about the team,” Post Falls girls basketball coach Marc Allert said. “As a junior she played behind some really good players so didn’t get a lot of playing time. But she would come ask me, ‘What can I do better to help the other girls?’ It’s kids like that that make good teams into really good teams. That’s why as a senior I was really happy to see her have a good year and take control of the team and make it hers. She is the type of kid you really root for because you know she will give you all she has and would do anything for you.

Her smarts helped her in basketball as well, Allert said, and she was a leader on and off the court.

“Bubba is a person with many layers to her,” Allert said. “She can be quite reserved and serious, and then you put her on a bus with her friends and she is the loud, giggly jokester. She is the intense, focused competitor on the court and the one who invites the team for a sleepover and keeps them up all night. She is the smartest person in the room but doesn’t mind being goofy and making fun of herself. She has a unique name for a girl, but once you get to know Bubba you know it just somehow fits. She is a very unique young lady who has done great things at Post Falls High School, and will no doubt do great things in the future.”

GLEAVES WAS an all-5A Inland Empire League selection each of the past two seasons in softball.

This year the Trojans (4-0) have played just the four games, but Gleaves is 10 for 14 (.714) with three doubles, a triple and 11 runs batted in.

“She’s turned into a pretty good hitter,” Holly said. “She’s got some power, and she hits for average. Not the fastest kid that’s out there, but she’ll take advantage of anything that she sees. Defensively, she’s got a pretty quick first step, so she gets to a fair amount of balls that otherwise get through. I wouldn’t say her arm is the strongest, but she’s got a pretty quick transition.”

Holly has coached her pretty much since the start. Bubba said her parents and coaches such as Allert and Brian Stranger, who was Post Falls High head softball coach her freshman and sophomore years, have been among her influences.

Last week at practice, assistant coach Danny Dement told the team a website had posted a softball coaches poll in each classification in Idaho. In 5A, Lake City received votes, Coeur d’Alene received votes, Lewiston received votes.

Post Falls, coming off a state tourney appearance, received no votes.

Bubba, the budding attorney, was asked to make a case for Post Falls being a factor in the 5A IEL.

“I think people give Post Falls a bad rap because, recently, we haven’t been that great a competition in our league,” she said. “My freshman year we starting building ourselves up, and it’s just been getting better every year since then. ... I think we’re all kind of motivated to prove everyone wrong.”

She said the rankings “kind of pissed us off, because we went to state last year — Lewiston didn’t, Coeur d’Alene didn’t, we knocked them out, and nobody’s really giving us that credit. But I think that’s fine. It’s going to motivate us more, and we’re going to be able to prove way more people wrong.”

BUBBA SAID said she wants to become a defense attorney, perhaps through Columbia Law School, or at a law school back out here on the West Coast.

But, obviously, plans change, and majors change.

No matter what, Bubba Gleaves is determined to make a difference in the world.

“I think I’m obligated to, with all the opportunities I’ve been given, going to Columbia,” Bubba said. “Not many people get that chance, and I think I should do something with it.”