Performing the Dance Without the Flash : Magnolia’s Reluctant Star Is on Record-Setting Scoring Pace

Picture girls basketball’s leading scorer. She has a presence that everyone feels when she walks into the gymnasium. She exudes confidence from her high tops to her jump shot. On the court, she’s as flashy as neon lights.

She lists summer junior development teams in her dossier and is fully adjusted to life in the gym. Opposing players are intimidated by her long before the opening tip-off, and she does nothing to dissuade them.

Meet Michelle Carter, this season’s version of a high school basketball star. Carter, a 6-2 junior center at Anaheim’s Magnolia High School, is having the kind of season that would perpetuate the flash-on-the-court image.

But she’s doing everything to skew it.

Carter, the Southern Section’s leading scorer with a 38.7 average, carries herself quietly on and off the court. She never played organized ball until she entered high school.

Hardly a trace of showmanship can be found in her walk. When informed that she scored 50 points in a recent game--two points shy of the Orange County girls single-game record set in 1978 by Sonora’s Rene Edwards--she said, “Really, that many?”

Perhaps some day soon she’ll start believing. After all, she has been held to fewer than 30 points only twice this season. And she’s scored 50 twice. She is on her way to breaking USC star Cheryl Miller’s single-season record of 37.5 points per game (1980-81 at Riverside Poly), but not by choice.

Carter is all Magnolia (4-6) has on offense. As the Sentinels’ oldest and tallest player, she is expected to lead by scoring. Magnolia starts two freshmen, two sophomores and Carter, a junior.

“She passes an awful lot,” teammate Rena Rossoll said. “It’s not like she takes 70 shots to score 50 points--she’s not a ball hog.”

Though Carter enjoys passing to teammates, she usually winds up taking the shot. And with good reason. No other Sentinel has scored more than 12 points in a game.

“They are really supportive,” Carter said of her teammates. “They say, ‘Gee 50 points--I haven’t scored that many points in all my games.’ ”

Rossoll said: “I feel sorry for her sometimes. She’s the whole team. Without her we’d score in the teens.”

The fact is, most of the players haven’t played basketball before this year, Coach John Prickett said.

So, the offense has been left to Carter, who has her situation in perspective. Though she is the Southern Section’s leading scorer, she realizes she is not its best player. At some better basketball schools she would have been a role player instead of a star.

Her father, Jim, thought of moving the family into the Brea-Olinda school district so Michelle, 16, would have a chance to play on one of the county’s finest teams. But then teen-age perspective took over. She wanted to stay at Magnolia to play on a mediocre team with her friends.

“I know at the beginning of the year she thought about playing at a better school with better players, but she’s happy,” sophomore guard Wendy Toguchi said. “She’s patient with us. She could get mad, but she’s really patient.”

Perhaps her patience comes from experience. She has been a starter since her freshman season and was named to the all-Orange League team last season after averaging 18 points a game.

Though not playing in such summer programs as the USA Development League or the Run and Gun League, Carter developed her skills by practicing against older boys in grade school. But she made larger strides by working hard when she joined Magnolia’s team.

During the summer and on weekends the rest of the year, she can be found shooting baskets against her father at 6 a.m.. After a Magnolia practice, she shoots free throws in the family backyard.

So, it’s not surprising Carter has become a scoring machine--even if she doesn’t act like one.