Easterly’s Time-Consuming Work Habits Paying Off

Gym rats come in all shapes and sizes. They are the guys and gals who scurry from gym to gym looking for a good game of pickup basketball. And if a good game isn’t available, a bad game will do, just as long as they can shoot some hoops.

Joni Easterly is a gym rat. She has honed her skills on indoor and outdoor courts all around the county. That is just one reason why Easterly, a Katella High School senior guard, is the county’s dominant girls’ basketball player.

“I’m always at the gym,” Easterly said. “I’m always playing with the guys and it just helps you get better.”

Being a female gym rat has its special problems on male-dominated courts. Girls can’t get in a game until they earn the guys’ respect, but they can’t earn that respect unless they get into some games. But Easterly has persevered.

“You just have to earn their respect, because you’re a girl,” Easterly said. “But once you earn their respect, they’re fine. I don’t get any guff anymore because they know what I can do.”

Easterly, The Times’ athlete of the week, did it all last week. She was named the most valuable player of the Brea-Olinda tournament, averaging 25 points in 4 games. In the semifinals against Gahr, her 15-foot baseline jumper with 2 seconds remaining in regulation tied the score, 43-43.

“It felt good once it left my hand. You can tell, you know?” Easterly said. Katella won the game in overtime, 46-45, to advance to the final, where the Knights (7-1) lost to Brea-Olinda, 47-42.

It’s a wonder Easterly could get the shot off. She had four people on her. Katella Coach Barb Bausch didn’t set up any special play. She just wanted the ball in Easterly’s shooting hand.

“You give her the job, and she will get it done,” Bausch said.

“That is the type of player she is. She is that one player a coach wishes she will have once in a life time.”

Easterly’s moves have improved over the past 3 years from playing against friend and Katella graduate Tommy Villanueva, now a guard at Rancho Santiago College.

But Easterly credited former Katella Coach Mickey McAulay for teaching her the fundamentals of the game. McAulay, now an assistant at Cal Poly Pomona, remembers Easterly as “very driven.

“I thought she had the potential to be a Division I player. I felt it would depend on what happened to her mentally. If she could maintain her positive work ethic and good attitude, she could play Division I,” McAulay said.

Easterly’s drive has held up. In November, she signed a letter of intent to attend USC.

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