Girls’ Player of the Week : She Didn’t Have Time for the Pain

Many people doubted that Heather Schoeny, a standout basketball and volleyball player at Capistrano Valley High School, would ever make it through four years of high school sports. Her chronic knee and ankle injuries, doctors said, would prematurely end her career.

They were wrong, of course. Schoeny, The Times’ player of the week, scored a season-high 27 points and had 8 rebounds to lead the Cougars to a 62-27 victory over University Saturday in a Southern Section 3-A first-round basketball game. This season, she averages 18 points and 9 rebounds a game.

Perhaps those who originally doubted Schoeny didn’t understand her commitment.

“Heather never ceased to amaze me,” said Alyson Schoeny, her mother. “I mean, if there wasn’t enough pressure on herself, she’d create more. If there was one report to do, she’d do two. If there was a . . . “

Alyson Schoeny stopped herself, then said: “Oh, this is gross, isn’t it? I must sound like Mrs. Brady on “The Brady Bunch”. But really, I’m so proud of her. Ever since she was a little kid, her commitment has been remarkable.”

Remarkable to the point that Schoeny was 6 the last time she quit before finishing. She enrolled in the Cathy Rigby Gymnastics Academy at Mission Viejo as a first-grader. But because she was extraordinarily tall--almost 5-feet--for her age, she quit days later.

“Heather was taller than Cathy Rigby (who is 4-11 3/4),” Alyson said. “She was looking her right in the eye.”

So Schoeny switched to softball and soccer, excelling in each. It wasn’t until eight years later, when she reached high school, that she played team basketball and volleyball.

Two sports in which, originally, she did not excel.

“She was a gangly ninth-grader when we first got her,” said Stan DeMaggio, Capistrano Valley basketball coach. “I saw some potential, she could jump, but really she had no idea of what to do with the ball.”

But DeMaggio says it was Schoeny’s tenacity and dedication--she spends up to four hours a day, excluding practice, working on her skills--that made her a winner. He lists never quitting as her greatest strength.

And her injuries as her only weakness. Along with at least one ankle sprain a season, Schoney, a senior, has continually had problems with the ligaments and cartilage in both knees. The ligaments do not align--or track--correctly along the cartilage, creating a painful grinding sensation along the knee caps.

“Basically, the doctors say I have no more cartilage in my knees,” said Schoeny, who goes to a physical therapist five days a week and wears braces on both knees at night to relieve the pain. “The cartilage has slowly ground itself away.”

It is for this reason that doctors and physical therapists told her if she insisted on playing sports, to play just one. They’ll soon have their wish, as Schoeny, an All-Southern Section volleyball selection, has accepted a scholarship to play volleyball at the University of the Pacific in the fall. Schoney says she’ll limit her basketball to pick-up games in the off-season.

“People were always telling me that if I played (both sports) I would ruin myself or my chances of getting a scholarship,” Schoney said. “But I wanted to show them I could overcome it if I tried hard enough.”

Heather Schoeny

Capistrano Valley High

Position: Forward.

Height, Class: 5-9, Sr.

Last Week: Schoeny scored a season-high 27 points and had 8 rebounds to lead the Cougars to a 62-27 victory over University Saturday in a Southern Section 3-A first-round basketball game.

Season: Schoeny averages 18 points and 9 rebounds.