Studying The Score St. George’s Point-Producing Miranda Routh-Corker Is Weighing Her Options: Basketball, Music Or Both

At the center of Bizet’s “Carmen,” the 19th-century French opera, are the choices Don Jose must make, and their consequences.

The corporal’s desire to marry Micaela, the girl who brings him a kiss from his mother, is forgotten when Don Jose loses his heart to a gypsy, Carmen.

The opera is Miranda Routh-Corker’s favorite.

As well, its characters’ struggles to make the right decisions come to mind, in a somewhat less dramatic way, as the St. George’s School junior thinks about her own future.

Routh-Corker, a 5-foot-9 post player from the South Hill, is the leading scorer in the Panorama League.

She also is an accomplished junior pianist and vocalist.

Routh-Corker’s basketball coach, Ross Thomas, says she has a chance to play basketball at a Division I school.

Routh-Corker would love to play hoops at a premier university, but she also has her own dreams of someday singing operas.

Her dilemma: Routh-Corker knows if she were to receive an athletic scholarship at a major university, she probably would have to give up her musical ambitions, or at least put them on hold.

“I’m having a serious problem with that right now,” says the outspoken and goodnatured 16-year-old.

“Basketball feels like there will inevitably come a point where I need to let it go. Music is something you can have the rest of your life.”

Basketball or Bizet? A choice not as desperate and passionate as Carmen’s Don Jose faced, but still a decision Routh-Corker never imagined she’d have to make.

Fortunately, while she’s at St. George’s, Routh-Corker can enjoy both music and basketball.

She is averaging 23.3 points a game, second in the Spokane area only to Cheney’s Anna Getz.

Two weeks ago, Routh-Corker scored 41 points against Springdale to set the St. George’s single-game scoring record.

“I wasn’t even shooting all that well in the first quarter,” she said. “Some of those bonehead shots you wish you never put up.”

Coach Thomas shakes his head in awe when he reviews the scorebook for that night.

Routh-Corker made just 4 of 10 shots from the field in the first quarter, and was 7-17 in the first half. But she went 8-13 in the second half, along with hitting 11-15 free throws.

“Anybody who can read a box score knows she is scoring many of our points,” Thomas said.

“So in each game it gets increasingly difficult, but she’s still scoring.

“In fact, she’s increasing her scoring, which means she’s improving rapidly,” he said.

While Routh-Corker is playing at post now, Thomas said that with her quickness and range she could easily move to small forward or guard after high school.

St. George’s is currently in second-place in the Panorama League’s South Division, with an 8-2 league record.

Routh-Corker quickly shares the credit with teammates, including Wein Chi Liu, a freshman point guard.

“She’s absolutely amazing,” said Routh-Corker.

“I think she’s why I have scored so much. Wein just passes the ball so well.”

When basketball practice ends, Routh-Corker, a 4.0 student, heads to Whitworth College for vocal lessons.

Despite her skills as a pianist - in 1994 she won top honors at the Greater Spokane Music and Allied Arts Festival for a Rachmaninoff concerto - she says she’s now even more excited about singing.

Routh-Corker is now working on an Italian classical piece called “My Mother Bids Me To Bind My Hair,” which she calls “lively and upbeat.”

That describes how she’s been feeling lately, even when her thoughts stray to future choices between athletics and music.

“At least for now, I’ve broken free of that mentality,” she said.

“I’ve realized that when you’re doing something, you’ve got to concentrate on one thing at a time.”

Another option for Routh-Corker might be a smaller school, perhaps Division III, where she could both play basketball and pursue her musical interests.

For example, two recent St. George’s grads, Chrissy Peterson and Dawn Trowbridge, have gone on play basketball at Middlebury College in Vermont.

“A year ago, I don’t think Miranda had any thoughts of playing basketball in college,” Coach Thomas said.

“Now, I think there’s the possibility she could do both for four years in school.”

In the third act of Carmen, Don Jose broods alone.

He has deserted his military post and joined Carmen’s band of smugglers. Looking down from his hideout in the mountains above Seville, he asks himself, what will happen now?

As Routh-Corker continues to excel in basketball and music, she also asks herself what role the two will play in her own next act.

Carmen’s words to Don Jose, sung as the two stand together in that mountain pass, may provide an appropriate answer to Routh-Corker’s dilemma.

Destiny, the gypsy sings, is after all the master.