It’s a familiar story. A young girl sets out on a magical journey of adventure to an Emerald City, only to find that the things she values most are home and family. Except that in the case of Lauren Jackson, it was a lesson she had learned long before leaving the land of Oz  to join the Seattle Storm as the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick. So why would a 19-year-old who, save for her 6’5” stature, could pass for any of her fresh-faced peers back in Albury, New South Wales, travel halfway across the world away from all she holds dear? For the money? Not likely. Unlike many of her NBA counterparts of the same age, Jackson is not only pursuing her college degree,  but doing it while she’s playing. For the fame? Not even close. Jackson openly disdains the spotlight. The simple fact is that while there’s still no place like home for this latter-day Dorothy, Lauren Jackson wants more than anything to play the game she loves. “The traveling and the three-hour workouts, that’s the job part,” Jackson confessed recently. “When I get out there on the court and play, that’s when I’m happy. That’s when it’s fun.” Check out Behind the Scenes for more shots of Lauren   Though both seem to have landed—with the help of a Storm in both cases—in a far off land where they became the center of attention, Jackson has no yellow brick road to follow—and no script. She must make her own way in an environment that is new, strange and not always friendly. So far she seems to be doing just fine. Perhaps it’s because by the start of the 2001 WNBA season, Jackson had already been playing at a professional level in her native Australia since the tender age of fifteen. Before that she had spent her childhood immersed in the sport as the daughter of not one, but two basketball standouts. Her mother, Maree,  is still the career scoring leader at LSU  and played on the Australian National team, as did Lauren’s father, Gary. When Maree left the national team to join Gary as a youth basketball coach, Lauren, still a toddler, came with, catching naps beneath the bench during practices. Having literally grown up on a basketball court, Jackson could easily have rejected her hoop heritage, as her brother did to play rugby. Instead, she decided early on that her future lay somewhere over the rainbow jumper. “I played other sports as a kid, but I just always remember wanting to play basketball,” Jackson says. “Not because of my parents, necessarily—my brother grew up around it and he did his own thing—but because of being around it and enjoying it.” If Lauren’s love for the game was a product of being nurtured in a basketball environment, her talent for it was pure nature. “My Mum was really strong, and I have a bit of that. My Dad was more athletic and could really jump… I’m lucky enough to combine a bit of both,” she says, in a classic bit of understatement. For the record, Lauren wouldn’t say who would win in a game of one-on-one between her and either of her parents, but in a three-way game of H-O-R-S-E, she claims “Mom would win, every time.” Lauren’s admiration and affection for her mother are evident, even when she’s not speaking about her. On her hip Lauren sports a small tattoo of a four-leaf clover encasing the word “Mum.” When asked if she sees her as a role model for her career, Jackson replies,” No, I don’t think so. Maybe when I was younger, yeah, but now she’s my best friend and, you know, my Mum.” Even more than a specific role model, Jackson credits the opportunity for young girls to play sports in Australia as a big factor in her becoming an athlete. “I think it’s much more equal in Australia. There were a lot of sports for girls when I was growing up that I would get involved with both through school and outside of school. I was never pushed or anything like that, it was always just an option. And nowadays you have girls who can look at women in a lot of sports and say ‘yeah, I want to be like her.’” As for her own status as a role model, Jackson demurs, saying, “I don’t really try to be a role model. I just do what I do and that’s it.” After a pause, however, she smiles and admits “But it’s sort of exciting when young girls will come up to me and ask for my autograph. It’s kind of special.” Though her double duty with the WNBA and the Australian League keep her playing year round, Jackson is no gym rat. She spends much of her free time studying for a degree in business management through correspondence courses from an Australian university (how many No.1 NBA draft picks her age could claim as much?) and when home in Australia  still takes the time to “hang out with my friends and do all the regular things.” In fact, talking to her, exhausted from little sleep and an all-day photo shoot, you get the impression that this “regular girl” could easily do without all the travel and exposure that her budding WNBA career has thrust upon her. You also get the impression that what she could not do without is the level of competition it affords her. She knows that a college program, even at a top American university, would be a step back at this point, and this is one young woman who isn’t likely to step back for anyone. “I’m an aggressive player. I show a lot of emotion,” Lauren says with perhaps a touch of pride. It’s a combination that has landed the young redhead a league-leading number of technical fouls and a reputation for having some of the sharpest elbows in the game. A reputation she tackles head-on. “I actually follow a little of my mother’s game in that respect, she was very physical and I grew up wanting to play like she played. That’s just a part of my game. I don’t intentionally go out there to hurt anybody; I never have,” she says. “I get a hell of a lot it, so I don’t see why it’s such a big deal when I give it back, she adds in a way that reminds you she isn’t exactly a little girl from Kansas. So maybe there’s nothing to this whole parallel story lines thing, after all. Unlike Dorothy, Jackson doesn’t seem in any way overwhelmed by her new surroundings. “I’m just having fun and I want to stay healthy this season, so I’m just sort of taking it easy and enjoying myself.” Nor does she suffer from delusions of an ideal place where everything is wonderful. “I’m not putting any expectations on myself, I came to a team that didn’t do so well last year and we’re doing ok this season, so I’m really happy with that at the moment. I know that if I go out there and play my hardest it’ll be good enough.” But what about a certain rival from the LA Sparks who the media would have you believe Jackson sees as the Wicked Witch of the Western Conference ever since an incident in the Olympics? “I went up for a rebound and I came down and my finger got caught in the end of her ponytail, Jackson says, “and as I went to pull my hand out of it her hairpiece came with it. We were 20 points down with five minutes to go so it was something to joke about even though we lost the gold medal. So it’s something that I look back on and laugh about.” She’s certainly not lacking for courage, as her attitude about the sometimes rough and tumble action in the paint reveals. “You come off the court and you’ve got bruises all over your body and things like that. It’s pretty tough, but that’s what I love about the game. I mean it feels good to get hurt like that and say ‘see this? It’s from playing basketball.’” And when asked about the biggest difference between her experiences on the Aussie Olympic team and in the WNBA, she displays both brains and heart. “I’d say the style of play. And my teammates of course. My teammates on the national team are just brilliant and I love them to death. We trained a lot together and we had a lot of chemistry. We do on the Storm as well but it’s different because we were all Australian and were all on the same page. We all knew what we wanted and what we expected from each other, and we knew how to treat each other. That’s something you just can’t learn in a month at training camp, you need three or four years of training with and playing against them, and all that stuff. And that’s something we’ll develop with the Storm, because we’re a young club and we know it. We know that’ll come.” But for all her precocious maturity, Jackson does share one final thing in common with the young girl from Kansas. Like Dorothy, she’s likely to find that the ability to attain her heart’s desire has been within her power to accomplish all along.