Ladycat Falls, but Brea Still Charging

There isn’t a player on the Brea Olinda girls’ basketball team who didn’t feel her stomach turn, who didn’t fight back tears, who didn’t want to howl in pain over the unfairness of it.

When Brea junior center Chelsea Trotter fell during a game last Thursday night, curled up in pain and clutching her right knee, her good knee, where, it turned out, there was a torn anterior cruciate ligament just like in the left knee, there seemed a good chance the Ladycats’ season would be over early.

After all Trotter is one of the best high school girls’ players in the state. She is 6 feet 3 with the skills of a guard. She leads the Ladycats in scoring and rebounding. She is, as forward Kate Ides says, “the focus of our offense and the middle of our defense.”

Brea may have won 141 straight Orange League games and 11 Southern Section titles and six state titles, but when you lose the best player in the county in the middle of a semifinal game in the Southern California Division II playoffs, you would expect the team might lose.

Indeed, after Trotter left the game against La Puente Bishop Amat, the Ladycats lost all but nine points of a 21-point lead. But they won. And last Saturday, even though the Ladycats said they heard Fresno Edison players speaking with some suddenly acquired confidence because of Trotter’s absence, Brea won, 69-65.

Which means the Ladycats, for the seventh time in the 1990s, will play in the state title game. Tonight at 6:15, Brea will face Pleasanton Amador Valley at Sacramento’s Arco Arena.

And you know what?

The Ladycats expect to win.

Tradition equals discipline, says Brea Olinda Coach Jeff Sink.

Which is why the Ladycats had to cry all their tears over Trotter in the locker room last Thursday night. And then be done with feeling sorry for themselves.

At practice Wednesday, after a sloppy pass that had no zing, Sink said in a quiet voice that still could send chills up the spine: “I’m not going to scream about this one. But don’t do it again. Put some pop on those passes.” And there wasn’t another pass in the next hour that didn’t snap, crackle and pop. Discipline.

Tradition equals expectations, says Ladycat forward Lindsey Davidson.

Davidson, a senior who is full of wisecracks and giggles, has accepted a basketball scholarship to George Washington.

In other words, on many high school basketball teams, Davidson would be a star. Here, she is an understudy to Trotter. And to tradition.

“I could have played in other high school programs and got lots more publicity,” Davidson said. “But I came here to win. And that’s what’s expected. Just because Chelsea can’t play, that doesn’t mean we can expect anything but winning [tonight]. It’s what we’re all capable of. We’re not just a one-person team.”

Tradition equals pressure, says guard Jeri Costello.

Costello has signed to play basketball next season for Long Beach State.

“You have to accept the pressure to play here,” Costello says. “You don’t want your name in the book as the one who broke this streak or that streak. If we lost last Thursday, it wouldn’t say five years from now that Chelsea got hurt. It would just say that we lost. You don’t want your name in that book that breaks a streak, and you feel that every day.”

Tradition also equals excellence.

That’s what Kate Ides thinks. Ides, 6-2, is the tallest player left for the Ladycats. She’s going to play basketball for Harvard next season. That’s three NCAA Division I seniors on this team.

Guard Jackie Lord says Ides would be a star on any other team in Orange County, that she would be the toast of the area, cover girl in all the papers. Ides doesn’t think she has missed anything.

She preferred, she said, to challenge herself by playing her best for the best. She prefers that challenge in academics, which is proven by her acceptance to Harvard. She prefers that challenge with her basketball.

If you were to say that Harvard is hardly a basketball power, Ides would point out that Harvard is the only No. 16 seeded team, men’s or women’s, to beat a No. 1 seeded team in the NCAA tournament. Harvard did that to Stanford last year. So there.

Sink started Wednesday’s practice by saying that “we’re better than Amador.” The statement was matter of fact, and because the coach made it sound as if it were fact and not opinion, his players believe this.

Lord says things like, “Kate [Ides] is an awesome player,” that 5-2 guard Jeri Armendariz “has amazing heart and plays fearlessly,” that Davidson “is the best passer I’ve ever met,” and that Costello “just won’t let us lose.”

Then Lord admits there was some facing of reality that needed to be done. “Saturday against Edison, sometimes I’d be going, ‘Where’s Chelsea?’ and looking for her on the court because that’s what our offense is. It revolves around Chelsea.”

Jill Trader, a junior who took Trotter’s spot in the starting lineup, said that, yes, “I was scared Saturday. But I looked around and realized I had to have a dominant attitude, a kick-butt attitude. I couldn’t look at it like I was replacing Michael Jordan or something, even if that is what I felt like.”

In that first start, Trader had 17 points and seven rebounds.

So the Ladycats will fly off to Sacramento. They will all be holding the stuffed Ladycat animals made by a teacher and given to the team after Wednesday’s practice. When they hold those cuddly homemade ‘Cats, they will be holding in their hands all the pressures and expectations, all the tradition, that comes with being the best.

And that’s OK with the Ladycats.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: [email protected]