Buckley’s Ariana Lallone . . . Ballerina on the Baseline : By JOHANNES TESSELAAR, Times Staff Writer

When Ariana Lallone began playing basketball this season she received the nickname “Bambi.”

“That’s what she looked like out on the floor,” said Chris Schultz, an assistant coach for the girls basketball team at the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks. “It looked like she was trying to take her first steps.”

Instead of pivoting when she turned to face the basket, Lallone would spin around on her toes.

She would shoot free throws on one foot as her back foot would rise off the floor.

“She looked like a ballet dancer who picked up a basketball,” said Barbara Rodney, Lallone’s coach.

Lallone could be forgiven for looking graceful on the court. For the last nine years, the 16-year-old junior has been a ballet dancer and aspires to perform professionally.

“She’s at the top level in the school,” said Christine Schenk, the director of the Rozann-Zimmerman Ballet Center in Chatsworth, where Lallone has danced for nearly a decade. “She is one of the top dancers and a top-level student. She’s one of the most conscientious in taking all of her classes. She’s terrific.”

Her performance on the basketball court lately has also been drawing rave reviews. “Every day she improves tremendously,” Rodney said.

Lallone’s years of dancing have installed in her a sense of balance that Rodney calls “phenomenal.” That ability, combined with Lallone’s height--which is 5-9 or 5-10, depending on who you ask--have allowed her to dominate the boards.

In 12 games this season, Lallone--described by Schultz as “all arms and all legs”--has grabbed 199 rebounds, or a little more than 16 a game. With six regular season games remaining, she is on her way to breaking the school’s single-season record of 259, set by Donnelle Dye in 1979.

Lallone’s high for one game is 30 rebounds, which equalled the school record of Stephanie Thomas, set in 1983. Lallone left the game in the third quarter because Buckley led Providence by 40 points. The CIF Southern Section record for one game is 41, set by Bishop Diego’s Diane Sebastian in 1977.

She has been one of main reasons why Buckley, 0-10 in the Delphic League and 3-15 overall last season, is 4-2 in league and 8-6 overall going into today’s game with Crossroads.

For the season, Lallone is averaging slightly more than 11 points a game. In the league, however, her numbers are 14 points and 21 rebounds a game.

“She has a great dedication to playing,” Rodney said. “It’s phenomenal the way she picks things up. She has proven to the rest of the team that hard work pays off. She has a lot of innate ability that she didn’t realize she had until she started playing with others.”

It was a desire to play with others that got Lallone onto the floor this year. Before attending Buckley last year, Lallone went to a school in Calabasas. There she swam, ran track and played softball, volleyball and basketball.

Last season, Lallone’s dancing schedule conflicted with the basketball team’s. “It was one or the other,” Lallone said. “Last year was a real important year for dancing, so I had to give up basketball.”

Lallone watched Buckley play just one game last year, but it was enough to convince her she belonged on the court this year. “I knew it would be tough not playing,” she said. “It killed me.”

Lallone approached Rodney last spring and told her she would try out for the 1984-85 team. “All summer long I kept my fingers crossed,” Rodney said. The coach knew a 5-9 center would do wonders for the team.

But then people started making Rodney nervous. What happens if Lallone injures herself, they asked. What if she turns an ankle? What will happen to her dancing?

Lallone isn’t worried.

“I’m the workhorse of the family and I really don’t get injured easily,” she said. (Two days after saying that, she jammed a finger in practice.)

Schenk, who is one of Lallone’s four teachers at the ballet school, has mixed feelings about her pupil competing in basketball.

“I like for the kids to be as normal as possible,” she said. “They have to dedicate so much of their time to dance that I encourage them to have other outlets. But in basketball, there’s so much risk of injury, like an ankle sprain.”

Or a black eye.

During a December game with Windward High, Lallone was hit on the bridge of her nose while coming down with a rebound.

She went directly from the game to her dancing class, changing clothes in her mother’s van and putting her makeup on. It was dark in the car, so Lallone couldn’t see if anything was wrong.

“When I got to class I thought, ‘Gosh, the makeup is all over my face,’ ” Lallone said. She rubbed her face and noticed that the spot didn’t go away.

She was scheduled to perform in a Christmas performance. Schenk didn’t like the idea of a ballerina with the face of a boxer.

“I thought, ‘Great, I’ve got a sugarplum fairy with a black eye,’ ” Schenk said.

The combination of ballet, school and basketball has left Lallone with little time for anything else.

An average day for Lallone:

--Up at 6:15 a.m.

--Out of her Woodland Hills house by 7 a.m.

--In class at Buckley from 7:40 a.m to 3 p.m.

--Basketball practice from 3 to 5 p.m.

--Ballet classes from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

--Home by 9 p.m., more homework, a shower, dinner and bed.

On Saturday, it’s four more hours of dancing at Rozann-Zimmerman and on Sunday, she takes jazz dancing lessons in West Los Angeles.

“How she manages to keep all these things going is really beyond me,” Rodney said. Indeed, Lallone creates her own version of Supergirl.

She goes right from basketball practice to her dance classes. “I change clothes right in the car,” she said with a laugh. “I get under the blanket and put my tights on, use a spray bottle to wet my hair, put on a little makeup and jump into ballet class.”

Barbara Lallone, Ariana’s mother, said her van is “sort of like a rolling telephone booth.” Her 1983 car, Barbara said, has 46,000 miles on it.

Ariana, the fourth of five Lallone children (the rest are boys), said she is comfortable with the pace.

“I doesn’t affect me at all,” she said. “People look at me and say, ‘Oh my gosh, you’ve got no social life. What do you do? You don’t go out on Friday nights, I can’t believe that.’

“I’ve lived my whole life like this and I’m not about to change because I’m 16 years old and supposed to be with it. It’s more important for me to dance.”

Asked her mother, “What is a social life? Dance classes give her as much pleasure and happiness as many other young women get from going to a party. It has affected dating, but that will come. It doesn’t bother her.”

Said Ariana: “I have never, ever gone through a period where I’ve wanted to quit (dancing) or hated it. From the day I started until today, I have loved it.”

Her goal is to dance professionally with a ballet company. After her senior year, the B+/A- student said she plans either to pursue that goal or to attend Pepperdine University, UC Irvine or UCLA.

Last year, Lallone auditioned to perform with a ballet company in Boston. She was accepted and danced for six weeks during the summer with girls aged 14 to 18 and boys aged 15 to 21 from around the country.

“That was the first time I had ever been away from home. It was the best,” Lallone said. “I had an absolutely fantastic time.”

Last weekend, Lallone auditioned for the same Boston company, a Pennsylvania company and the Joffrey Ballet Co. The auditions caused her to miss a game Saturday.

She made the Boston and Pennsylvania companies, but Joffrey told her she was too tall.

Schenk said Lallone could “definitely” make it as a professional ballet dancer. “We’ve had guest teachers come in and say she’s exquisite.”

Lallone’s height could create a problem for her. The average ballerina is 5-5. When asked how tall she was, the 118-pound dancer replied, “5-9.” Schultz, however, said she was measured at just under 5-10.

“I was wearing socks that day,” Lallone said.

Said Schenk: “Her height is somewhat of a problem because most of the male dancers today are shorter. There are not as many tall males, so there’s nobody to partner her with.

“All she can do is stay as trim as possible and work hard. And be as good as she can be. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the end of the world. It seems somewhat discouraging but then there are kids who are short or don’t have nice feet.

“Everything else about her is proportionate. She has nice feet, good extension and a nice jump. Height is not the only factor.”

If her size hurts her on the dance floor, it can’t hurt her on the basketball floor.

“She could go on to play basketball at a small college, I’m sure,” said Schultz, who spends 15 minutes before and after practice working one-on-one with Lallone. “I’ve spoken to a few coaches and they’re interested. But the fact is, she’s so dedicated to dancing that it’s real hard for her or anybody else to take it seriously.

“You see a lot of girls we play against who are just as tall as her or taller, who take it seriously. Then you see someone like Ariana, who’s come out her first year and just been outstanding.”