Pressure Player Sparks Palisades : Valerie Agee Leads Team in Scoring, Assists, Rebounds

Palisades High School basketball star Valerie Agee and her teammates were having a hard time getting started the other day in a game against Hamilton.

Palisades trailed in the early going and didn’t begin playing well till the second quarter. The Dolphins won, 67-30, but things didn’t get easy for them till the second half.

It was also not an easy game for Palisades point guard Agee, a 5-8 senior who usually makes the difficult look easy and does just about everything for her team.

Last year Agee, playing small forward, averaged 23 points and 12 rebounds and topped the team in blocked shots and steals. She was named to The Times All-Westside team as a junior. This year she is averaging 22 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists to lead her team in those categories.

Against Hamilton, however, Agee was not having one of her better days. Her shots, which usually drop as surely and steadily as rainfall in Seattle, simply were not falling.

But Agee is a player , not just a shooter. Since her shots weren’t going in, she began passing more to teammates who had freed themselves for easy shots. Palisades began scoring with regularity and pulled away for a victory that looked easier on the scoreboard than it was.

Ruiz, an assistant last year to then-Coach Kenneth Seidel, a Palisades teacher, said Agee “is a much better player than people give her credit for because she is improving all the time.

“Last year she was a strong small forward, but this year (at forward) she would go 4 1/2 minutes without getting the ball. So I moved her to point guard.”

He has worked with her this year on shooting with her left hand as well as her right and to play with “more of a slashing style.” He said he is also helping her add left-handed and right-handed hook shots to her repertoire.

Her value as a team player, he said, was shown this season in a game that developed early into a runaway. He said she asked him if it was all right to pass more since she was scoring at will. She did so and, while she finished with just 18 points, three teammates scored in double figures.

Agee may even be a better on defense, Ruiz said. He said that if she scored 266 points in 10 games, “I’ll bet that she has also done 266 defensive things like getting rebounds, steals and blocks and giving weakside help on defense.

“But when push comes to shove, she does want the ball and wants to shoot. She is really a pressure player.”

Last year Seidel said Agee was “really a superstar who is at her best when crunch time comes.”

But senior guard Tamara Battle and the rest of the Dolphins have shown this year that Palisades is more than just a one-girl team, that Agee has an able supporting cast.

Ruiz said that when Agee and Battle “are out there on the court doing their thing, they make it tough on people. They can run people down on the fast break and block their shots without committing fouls.”

Agee said the team is much better balanced now. “If ever a team was every going to go anywhere, this is the team. We’ve got a lot of tall people, and we have guards who can handle the ball.”

Ruiz said the team has improved a great deal on defense, where it gives up points grudgingly. “I have to play girls who have never played before, but we are slowly reaping rewards.”

He said that early in the season, Palisades could not compete against such powerful teams as Crenshaw and Dorsey and was routed in those non-conference games. But the Dolphins have improved with each game, he said, and should not only advance to the playoffs but also play well.

Agee hopes to advance to college basketball, and she has received dozens of letters from colleges.

She said she has received a passing score on the Scholastic Achievement Test and would like to go to a college outside of the Los Angeles area, possibly to Louisiana Tech.

She wants to become a physical therapist and that it might be easier for her to study in a small town. “It might be good for me to go away and come back home. Maybe I’ll appreciate (Los Angeles) more.”

Like most of the better high school players, Agee has spent a good portion of her summers in playground leagues and camps. Last summer she played at Victoria Park in Carson with such stars as Lisa Leslie of Morningside School and Linda Watson of Lynwood. Their team represented California and finished second at an international tournament in Arizona.

In fact, she has spent a good part of her life playing the game. “I always liked basketball,” she said, “because it is fast-paced, and I’ve always been a little bit hyper. When I was young I used to play basketball with the guys, but I also played with Barbie dolls.”

“I’ve calmed down some since then.”

Maybe so. But on the basketball court her pace is about as leisurely as a hummingbird’s.