Mission Viejo’s Stringam Keeps Diablos Laughing and Winning

John Hattrup, a former Mission Viejo High School girls’ basketball coach, remembers being mad enough, as he put it, to bite through the gymnasium floor.

The occasion was a girls’ basketball tournament game at Torrance High School. And Mission Viejo was losing to Gahr.

A foul was called on Mission Viejo, and Hattrup, steaming mad, was looking for a juicy chunk of hardwood. The players, meanwhile, lined up on the free-throw line.

Tricia Stringam, then a sophomore for the Diablos, awaiting the shots by a Gahr player, leaned in along with everyone else trying for rebounding position. She leaned a little farther than everyone else, though, and before the Gahr player could shoot, dropped face-first into the lane.

Instant hilarity.

“The kid couldn’t shoot the ball because she was laughing so hard,” Hattrup said. “The whole gym was busting up. She lost her balance and was all arms and legs, falling into the lane.

“You had to laugh.”

On another night, more than a year later, Stringam, a junior at the time, moved a little more deftly. It was the Southern Section 3-A championship game at Cal Poly Pomona last March and Stringam had the game of her life. She made 8 of 9 shots from the field and scored 19 points as Mission Viejo won the title, 52-50, against Katella.

“It was something I’ll never forget in my whole life,” Stringam said. “That (Southern Section championship) patch is priceless.”

Stringam, in her senior season, has her feet planted firmly on the ground these days. She has struck a balance between the two sides of court jester and intense competitor that run concurrently within her.

Stringam, a 5-foot 11-inch guard who is rated as one of the best in the Southern Section, has a personality that bubbles like Alka-Seltzer.

On the basketball court, she plays with varying degrees of intensity. All of which seem to be around the speed of light. Yet Stringam doesn’t look as if she’s going that fast. There’s no wasted motion. It’s all smooth, focused effort, a big-time contradiction to her witty side.

“There’s a time to be intense and a time to have fun,” Stringam said. “I don’t know if I know the difference yet.”

That fact is not lost on Hattrup or anyone else whose life she has touched.

“Tricia played Little League baseball,” said her father, Wade Stringam. “She played on a boys’ soccer team. She didn’t want to play Bobby Sox. That’s been Tricia. She’s just that type of girl. She’s very aggressive. She’s been very determined.”

Maybe Tricia gets her spunk from her father.

Wade has lymphoma, cancer of the lymphoid tissues, but despite it he continues to lead an active life style. He attends all of Tricia’s games. He has even become the Diablos’ unofficial cheerleader.

Wade has been watching Tricia play since she was a freshman on the Diablo junior varsity. The crowds at those games, even in the varsity games, were subdued.

So Wade dresses in sweats, carrying a megaphone in one hand and a pompon in the other, exhorting the Mission Viejo fans.

“M-i-s-s-i-o-n. Go Mission,” he yells during timeouts.

“It’s been good therapy for me,” he said. “I look forward to the game. It’s easy to get down, but I always have the games.”

Stringam rarely seems to be down.

“She’d always do or say something that would allow everyone to blow off steam,” said Hattrup. “She’s one of those kids that when she’s quiet, you know something is wrong. A kid like that grows on you. You wish you could write down all the things she does. You say to yourself, ‘What’s Stringam gonna do today that’s gonna kill me?’ ”

If Hattrup could have kept a diary on Stringam’s quips, he’d have passed it on to Steve Asay, the current Mission Viejo coach.

“There are times I get frustrated because she’s got great skills,” Asay said. “In order to develop, you’ve got to have a lot of discipline. Sometimes she tried your patience, but she’s very coachable.”

Hattrup left Mission Viejo--after 10 seasons and two Southern Section titles as coach--because he could not attain a full-time teaching position. He is now an assistant to Coach Mark Trakh at Brea-Olinda.

Hattrup’s decision to leave was no surprise, but that didn’t take the initial sting away from Stringam.

“John said my sophomore year, I’ve got two more years and, Trish, you can send me a postcard,” Stringam said. She didn’t believe it was anything more than an idle joke.

“After last season, he took us all in a room and told us he was leaving,” Stringam said. “I cried.

“It was hard, you know, going from John to someone who has a whole different style of coaching. Steve has a family. He’s a businessman. John’s whole life is basketball. Look at what he did to the program.”

In Hattrup’s 10 seasons, Mission Viejo was 214-55, won 7 South Coast League titles, the 3-A championship last season and the 2-A title in 1982.

Under Asay, a walk-on coach, little has changed. The Diablos (16-5 overall, 3-1 in the league) are contending for yet another league championship. The Diablos have done this with only two seniors (center Tricia Hill is the other) on the team.

“Going into the season, people said, ‘Oh, Tricia’s going to be the whole team,’ ” Stringam said. “(The team) is very balanced.”

Still, Stringam’s statistics do stand out. She averages 18 points, 10 rebounds and 7 steals a game. She will attend the University of Hawaii next fall.

“She’s a good all-around player,” said Stan DeMaggio, Capistrano Valley coach. “She handles the ball very well. She anticipates really well. She knows the game. She knows where to be. That’s important.

“She’s a well-balanced player.”

She is indeed, though it extends beyond DeMaggio’s mention of jump shots and dribbles. Stringam walks a fine line between mirth and seriousness and, like her shots and passes, she does it well.