Orange County Girls’ All-Star Basketball Game : South’s Running Breaks Down Taller North

The South team did what it had to do to win the girls’ Orange County All-Star basketball game Saturday night in UC Irvine’s Bren Center.

That is to say, the South won by running a potent fast break. The South, shorter along the front line, controlled the tempo and defeated the North, 63-55.

“We wanted them to run with us,” said Greg Yeck of El Toro, the South coach.

Yeck said he was worried that the North would burn the South with its superior height. The North had five players 6 feet tall or taller; the South had three.

But that never happened as the North was kept on the run and out of a half-court, dump-it-inside type offense.

Tricia Stringam of Mission Viejo was the South’s prime mover. Stringam, a 5-11 point guard who will attend the University of Hawaii, had a team-high 11 points. She was named the game’s most valuable player.

“Our set offense wasn’t as good as we would have liked it to be,” Stringam said, “but our break came through.”

Stringam made an immediate impact, scoring 6 of the South’s first 10 points and helped her team gain a quick lead it would never lose.

Interestingly, Vernie Ford, the North coach, said her plan was to run, too.

“We wanted to run with them in the first half, but we couldn’t get going,” said Ford, who coaches at Fullerton. “Our defense shaped up in the second half and we started running.”

Early in the second half, however, it appeared as if the North would get blown out.

The North trailed, 35-23, at halftime. Stringam’s steal and subsequent layup, however, with 10:17 left to play gave the South a 52-34 lead, its largest of the game.

The North began chipping away from that point, and when Sabryna Welch of Fullerton hit a jumper with 4:14 remaining, the South’s lead was down to just eight points, 59-51.

Robin Seabrook of La Habra and Karin Davidson of Esperanza led the North rally in the second half. Seabrook, who is going to USC, and Davidson, headed for Nevada Reno, each had 12 points.

“We played a whale of a second half,” Ford said. “We played a marvelous second half. I just wish we could have played that way in the first half.”

When Heather Schoeny of Capistrano Valley worked herself free for a layup, the South’s lead was back to 10 points with 4:04 left. Her basket also ended a 7-0 run by the North. The teams played even the rest of the way with the South holding on for the victory, its seventh in the 11-year history of the game.

Schoeny and Elaine Youngs of El Toro came a long way to play in Saturday’s game. The two flew back on a red-eye flight from an international volleyball tournament at Notre Dame University and arrived home at 5 a.m. Saturday.

Their team, the Cal Juniors, played in the championship match of the week-long tournament against South Korea Saturday night. But they played without Schoeny and Youngs and lost.

“I wasn’t really that tired,” Youngs said. “I slept on the plane.”

Schoeny, who broke a bone in her foot during a volleyball match Wednesday, scored six points. Youngs had eight points and revved up the South break whenever it slowed down.

“We had a problem of not getting the ball up the wing (on the break),” Yeck said. “We were kind of bringing the ball up slowly. We got Elaine in there because we knew she could run it up the sidelines.”