Walk into any gym where the Westminster High girls basketball team is playing and the first person who gets your attention is Beth Lister.
She is the tall girl with a big smile, loads of enthusiasm and the one who seems to be having so much fun playing the game.
In fact, Lister simply appears to be in love with life itself and is enjoying every minute of it.
"Beth is a special person," said her father, Ed Lister Jr. "The one thing I want her to know more than anything else is that her mom [Anne] and I are proud of her no matter what else she does in sports or in the classroom. She has already excelled in both of those areas."
But Beth Lister, 5 feet 11 3/4 inches, wants more.
The senior hopes to lead the 15th-ranked Owls (13-3) to a state 4A basketball championship before heading off to Towson State or Western Maryland College to get good grades and possibly play volleyball and basketball.
If she choses Division I Towson State, Lister realizes her chances of playing both sports are slim because the two seasons run close together.
At Division III Western Maryland, she believes she possibly could compete in volleyball and basketball.
Lister was the 1994 Volleyball Player of the Year in Carroll County and has been contacted by Towson State and Division I Virginia Commonwealth about playing volleyball.
Virginia Commonwealth was interested in Lister as a hitter before the Richmond, Va., school signed a big hitter from the West Coast.
That leaves Towson State as Lister's most likely choice.
"It looks as if we'll probably work out a situation with Towson State," said Ed Lister. "Beth's brother [Ed III] and sister [Cindy] both went to Towson and liked it. And Beth is comfortable there."
Lister, with her high-flying kills, led Westminster through a magical volleyball season. The Owls came from nowhere to win the Carroll County championship and advance to the 4A regional semifinals.
Both South Carroll and North Carroll entered the season ranked ahead of Westminster.
However, Lister had more mountains to climb once the basketball season started.
She jumped right into it and led the Owls to a 10-0 start while averaging 21 points and 11 rebounds.
She not only became the leading scorer and rebounder in Carroll County but one of the leaders in the metro area.
Even though Lister and the Owls have sputtered lately (3-3 in the past six games), she still is averaging 20.7 points and 11 rebounds.
Opponents have started to double- and triple-team her, taking her out of the game for long periods of the time.
Linganore and Montgomery Blair both concentrated on stopping Lister and they came away with victories.
Westminster coach Bernie Koontz said: "Teams are respecting Beth and they're double and tripling her. She's just going to have to be smart enough to get the ball off to someone else for a better shot. Our whole team has been a little impatient lately. We have to get our confidence back and get back to basics."
No one has been hurting more than Lister during this midseason slide.
At times during games, the smile has been replaced by a glare or an icy stare at an opponent or an official.
She also has made impassioned pleas for her teammates not to let down or give up when they get behind.
Lister is the fiery leader of the team and she gets results.
"I like to push our players," she said. "We've all been too anxious and taken some shots we shouldn't and we've had some miscommunications but things are fine now."
Lister denied that a team such as Montgomery Blair might have too much quickness for the Owls.
"We're just as quick as the other teams," she said. "We just need to know when to settle down."
About the surprising 62-42 loss to South Carroll, in which Nicole Spencer scored 33 points and had 15 rebounds, Lister said: "We played well in the first quarter and then it was just a matter of who would step up and take charge. South Carroll did it. They were thinking it was a bigger game than we did, and I've never seen Nicole Spencer play like that before. She knew it was a big game and responded."