Syracuse, N.Y. — They stop to stare, to point and to whisper. Sometimes, they lurk at a distance, bold enough to snap photos on their cell phones but not brave enough to approach. The courageous ones sidle up and ask for autographs or photographs.

Most are polite and respectful. Some are not.

Their numbers seem to swell after each award, each accomplishment. For Breanna Stewart, the admirers have become an inescapable appendage. The two-time NCAA women's basketball tournament MVP, the winner of the AP Player-of-the-Year award, the owner of an ESPY as the nation's best female college athlete, is learning that high-beam celebrity entails a certain sacrifice of privacy.

"We were at Destiny the other day looking for a pair of shoes for me. And it was right after the ESPYs," said Ally Zywicki, Stewart's longtime friend from Liverpool. "And I was like, 'Why is everybody staring at us?' People were making comments, like, 'Oh, I saw you on TV.' It's definitely gotten more prevalent."

"That's why my teammates say they never want to go anywhere with me. We go to the movies, we go anywhere and they're like, 'You need to be in a disguise,'" Stewart said. "I'm like, 'Listen, I'm tall. There's not that many people who look like me.'"

At 6-foot-4, Stewart can be as physically imposing as she is impossible to ignore. Her stature in the sports world continues to expand despite the cloak of invisibility her gender imposes. Compared to their male contemporaries, the nation's best female basketball players mostly stroll the streets in anonymity.

Connecticut forward Breanna Stewart (30) embraces Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma against Notre Dame during the second half of the championship game in the Final Four of the NCAA women's college basketball tournament, Tuesday, April 8, 2014, in Nashville, Tenn. Connecticut won 79-58. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

By choosing the University of Connecticut out of Cicero-North Syracuse High School, Stewart understood the adulation that accompanies winning championships at the nation's foremost women's basketball factory. But she was unprepared, she said, for the intensity of interest.

UConn basketball fans approached her at the summit of New Hampshire's Mt. Washington, which she climbed with her family. People recognized her when she hung out with friends in New Jersey. Malls in Syracuse and Connecticut have morphed into impromptu photo opportunities. Other famous athletes approached her at the ESPY Awards.

"If you're with her, it can be overwhelming," her dad, Brian Stewart, said.

When ESPN nominated Stewart for two individual ESPY awards, flew her and her parents to Los Angeles and provided Stewart with a "TV seat" at the end of a row of UConn teammates, Heather Stewart hoped her daughter would be free to experience the event without the shackles of celebrity.

Stewart admires Kevin Durant. She watches a variety of sports and can identify LaDainian Tomlinson and Lolo Jones in a crowd. A chance to mingle with other renowned athletes in a red-carpet setting thrilled her.

"Heather said, 'I hope we don't have any of those over-the-top fans waiting out there for you,'" Brian Stewart recalled. "And I said, 'Heather, they're here to see LeBron James, not Breanna.' I was wrong about that. When we got there, she was a little more well-known than I thought she was. That was a surprise."

The onslaught started with a gentle mention. Stewart's name first appeared in local media as an eighth-grader, her mother said. By her senior year at C-NS, she had been designated the best girls basketball player nationwide. USA Basketball kept selecting her for its age-appropriate teams. Soon after she graduated from C-NS, the school retired her number (30) and erected a shrine on a gym wall.

By then, she had sampled the appetizer of stardom.

"At every game in high school, there was a line of people who wanted to meet her, to get an autograph, to take a picture," C-NS coach Eric Smith said. "We'd spend a half an hour at away games so she could sign autographs for parents of the other players."

The attention, Stewart acknowledges, can be intoxicating. She chose UConn partly because she believed she could win multiple national championships there and partly because the program offers the kind of exposure few other women's teams can match.

Connecticut forward Breanna Stewart (30) shoots against Notre Dame during the first half of the championship game in the Final Four of the NCAA women's college basketball tournament, Tuesday, April 8, 2014, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

"At UConn, you just know it's going to happen," Stewart said. "And, you know, it makes you feel good. It shows that you've done the things that you want to do and people want to be around you, they want to meet you because you're someone they look up to."

"I think she enjoys it for what it is. We've talked about it," said UConn teammate Morgan Tuck, who has known Stewart since ninth grade. "That's pretty much what she signed up for going to Connecticut and with her being so good. I tell her she's being rewarded for all the hard work she's put in."

For her parents, the celebrity can be fraught with ominous possibilities. Stewart changed her telephone number this summer because too many fans discovered it. One day, she said, 40 text messages from strangers infiltrated her phone. She purposely omitted a personal message on her voice mail to throw strangers off her scent and now she restricts her number to friends and family.

Her parents have seen people grab Breanna's arm to seize her attention. Others have barged into dinner conversations demanding autographs or pictures. One woman accosted Stewart at a mall and told her to invest more effort into her hair style. Last year, Stewart sought a quiet refuge at the back entrance to the Mohegan Sun arena to meet her parents. She wanted, Heather Stewart said, "some alone time with us."



"But people just kept coming up to her," Brian Stewart said.

Tuck tells a familiar Stewart story. UConn's most famous women's basketball player apparently assumes the identity of an apparition when she appears in public. Brian Stewart said people talk about her "like she's a statue in a park or something."

"This kind of thing happens all the time: We'll be walking and people will say, 'Oh, there's Breanna Stewart!'," Tuck said. "And then they'll just stop moving and stare. They won't say anything to her. It's funny. We'll say, 'We can hear you. All you have to do is ask.'"

Stewart attracts routine proclamations of devotion on Twitter and Instagram, but she and her friends say it never reaches the level of scary stalker behavior. One of the things the Stewarts liked about the UConn campus is its isolation in rural Storrs. They believe the community protects their daughter.

But Breanna Stewart is 19 years old. Her father admits he worries.

"You worry about your girls more than you worry about your boys in different settings," Brian Stewart said. (The Stewarts also have son who turns 12 this month.) "That's just a fact of life."

Breanna is learning, too, how her great gift for basketball translates to other aspects of her life. As a girl growing up in North Syracuse, she would dribble around her block, shoot baskets at the local Y and imagine that she was the best basketball player on earth.

Breanna Stewart talks to high school coach Eric Smith at the Cicero-North Syracuse Summer Basketball Camp. Dick Blume | dblume@syracuse.com

Her definition of fame never included the awkward stares or constant scrutiny.

"She wanted to be known as the best female basketball player," Heather Stewart said. "That's what her goal was. She wanted everyone to know her name and what her abilities were."

Her friends and family admire the way she handles the curious and the reverent. Her dad told her, in one of her rare displays of public frustration, to consider how she would react if Kevin Durant entered the same room. She would want to meet him, he told her. She would ask for a photo. That advice, she said, guides the way she treats fans.

Her friends and her high school coach say Stewart always signs for people who ask; she always submits to photographs. They say the attention has failed to alter her easygoing personality or change her fundamental humility.

Ally Zywicki met Stewart in seventh grade, when both girls played AAU basketball. When Stewart wins national awards, Zywicki learns about them through media reports.

"With best friends, you generally share things like that," Zywicki said. "But not once would she say, 'Hey, I won this.' I'd have to read about it and then say, 'Hey Bre, did you want to share this with me?'"

"I still act the same as I did when I was in high school. I don't want to change because I have success on my side right now," Stewart said. "I could be really popular to people the next couple years, but maybe then they'll forget my name. I'm not worrying about it, the whole 'famous' thing. I'm taking everything in stride. "

She still plops down on the couch at the family's North Syracuse home and flips on the TV, still rummages through cupboards looking for food, still asks her parents to take her shopping. She still works out with her high school trainer. Last week, she dribbled around her block.

After two national titles, two MVP awards, two meetings with President Barack Obama and a night of dazzling red-carpet ESPY glamour, Stewart is "in the exact position I want to be in." She is grateful that people consider her important enough to ask for autographs and sympathetic to the shy girls too nervous to approach.

But sometimes, her parents wish she could savor her success without the ceaseless scrutiny. Sometimes, it would be nice to shop for shoes without dozens of witnesses marking the moment.