Inexperienced El Camino Real Center Sets Her Sights on USC : Kirby Has High Hopes to Go With Her Height

Her basketball statistics are good, not great. And she needs to improve her inside game.

Even so, Michelle Kirby, 17, has definite plans about where she wants to play college basketball.

“USC,” she says with confidence. She says it as if she has rehearsed the answer a thousand times.

It sounds like pretty heady stuff for a teen-ager at El Camino Real High who averages only 13 points and 14 rebounds a game and, until this season, had never played high school basketball.

She wants to play for the defending NCAA champions--but the coaches at USC have never heard of her.

The impossible dream?

Maybe not.

Kirby does have a few things going for her.

Her statistics are good enough to have led the Conquistadores to a winning season (8-2 in league, 14-3 overall) in the Valley 4-A League. And her team has earned a playoff berth after finishing 1-9 in the league last season.

El Camino Coach Niels Ludlow thinks that, with some work on her play inside the key, she can average 30 points a game. She is only a junior and she will have next season to improve.

But the single most important thing Michelle Kirby has going for her is her height.

At 6-2, she is the tallest player in her league. That doesn’t hurt her chances of fulfilling her dream.

Said Kathi Olivier, an assistant to USC Coach Linda Sharp: “If she is that good, then she sounds like a legitimate prospect.”

Olivier should know. She handles most of the Trojans’ recruiting.

“We get most of our recruits from basketball camps, clinics and the AAU,” Olivier said. “If they’re not in something like that, then we never hear of them. “She’s 6-2? “

Kirby’s mother, Gloria Ward, takes her daughter to USC games as often as possible.

“I take her down to the games and she just loves it there,” Ward said. “She really wants to go there. That’s one of the goals we’re striving for. It’s Michelle’s biggest dream.”

Kirby lives with her mother, who is 5-8. Her father, who died three years ago, was 6-3. Her mother convinced her that being a 6-2 teen-ager is not so bad.

“She has always been self-conscious about her height,” Ward said. “But I have always told her to put her height to the best use.”

Indeed, it was her mother who encouraged her to play basketball at El Camino after she sat out last season due to a disagreement with then-coach Al Overhalt. Previously, her only experience in organized basketball was at Pasteur Junior High in Los Angeles.

Why did she come back? The guidance of her mother, the arrival of a new coach and her natural talent were all factors.

Ludlow, who until this season had coached only in church leagues, persuaded her to go out for the team this season after he recruited her from a physical education class.

Said Kirby: “The coach and I really didn’t get along last season. . . . So, I wasn’t going to play this year either. But my mom said I should go ahead and try it and see if I liked it. I went out for the team and started to like the coach, Mr. Ludlow, and I decided I’d stay on the team.”

Ludlow is Kirby’s friend as well as her mentor.

No matter how many milestones Kirby reaches as a high school athlete, it seems that neither Kirby nor Ludlow will be satisfied.

“I think she can average between 20 and 30 points a game when she is really on,” Ludlow said. “We’ve been working very hard. I take Michelle on a lot of times one-on-one in practice and we’ll spend 15 minutes to half an hour just going through moves--the kind of moves she needs to do, such as pivoting.

“She’s picked up on it real well and she’s starting to turn to the basket. If she’ll just come across the top of they key with her hands up, they (her teammates) will hit her with the pass. If she’s open and does a quick pivot, there is not a girl in the league who can block her.”

Being the Valley 4-A’s tallest player could account for her average of four blocked shots a game--a statistic that has impressed the opposition.

“She’s a real bundle and hard to handle,” Kennedy Coach Craig Raub said. “The timing on her blocked shots is incredible. Hey, you don’t teach somebody to block shots. That’s a natural ability and she’s got it. We gear our entire defense around her when we play El Camino.”

The fact that Kirby draws a crowd on the court does not displease Ludlow because, he said, it gives the team’s forwards and guards room to set up shots from the outside.

On the other hand, Ludlow is concerned with the attention Kirby has drawn off the court.

Ludlow is as cautious with Kirby as a father with a teen-age daughter. He is quick to warn Kirby, as well as her teammates, not to let success go to her head. He even insists on being present when reporters question his players.

“I have tried to keep everything low key,” Ludlow. “I guess now that we’re successful and that Michelle has done so well, that will be hard to do. She’s scoring a lot of points and getting a lot of rebounds and she’s getting her name in the papers all the time.

“It is good if the girls can handle it. It’s really nice to get some recognition after the girls have worked so hard and achieved so much. That’s great. But if they can’t handle it, then it becomes a problem.”

Kirby is well aware of media attention. After a game against Chatsworth earlier this season, a referee told her that she was the best girl player he had seen in 11 years of officiating. Kirby turned and pointed to a reporter.

“Did you hear that? Write that down,” she said. “Put that quote in the paper! He said I was the best.”

Kirby isn’t the best--not yet anyway, according to Ludlow. He says that she still has a lot of improving to do if she wants to play at USC, or any Division I school.

Kirby’s mother would like her daughter to improve as much in the classroom so she is eligible to enroll at USC.

“As soon as she gets home from school she hits the books,” Ward said. “Studying and basketball are about all she has time for.”

John Spiro, El Camino’s assistant athletic director, believes she could be as successful at the former as the latter.

“She’s very intense on the court and in the classroom,” he said. “I have her in one of my classes and she’s a very smart kid. She knows she has to do as well in the classroom as she does on the court if she wants to get a scholarship.”

Michelle Kirby knows more than anyone else what she must do to make her dream come true and she has no doubts that she’ll accomplish just that.

For the time being, however, she still has to finish this season and the next.

“People have to remember one thing,” Spiro said. “We put all this pressure on a kid. We want them to act like adults and have a winning attitude and be very competitive. Everyone expects such great things from a kid like Michelle.

“But, what everyone fails to realize, is that no matter how good she is or how well she plays or what she means to the school and the team, she’s still just a little girl.”