FIREPOWER AT LA QUINTA : Campbell Came With a Reputation, and Surpassed It

Scott Campbell’s reputation reached La Quinta High School long before he ever set his Size-12 feet on campus.

Campbell hailed from Broomfield, Colo., a mere snowball’s throw from Denver, where he was star of the undefeated Broomfield High School freshman basketball team.

This kid could shoot, rebound, he could even dunk. Or so La Quinta Coach Jim Perry was told.

“You hear this kind of thing a lot, some all-world kid is moving into your area,” Perry said. “Some pan out, some don’t.”

In other words, Perry wasn’t exactly reserving a spot on the varsity.

When Campbell arrived in November of his sophomore year, Perry told him there would be a tryout session for kids who had not been a part of the Aztec program the previous season.

“The first night Scott came to the gym, my assistants and I were watching him shoot,” Perry said. “I jokingly said to him, ‘I understand you can dunk.’ He smiled, bent over to pick up a basketball, jumped straight up and did a two-hand reverse dunk.

“I turned to my assistant and said, ‘Tryout’s over.’ ”

For three seasons, Campbell has been impressing Perry, while depressing opposing coaches.

His shooting range extends beyond the two-hand reverse-jam, about 20 feet beyond. Basically, Campbell is a jump shot just waiting to happen--and it usually happens.

Campbell is a natural shooter, but he still works to perfect his craft. In Broomfield, when it was too cold to ski, he would go shoot at the gym, which was 2 minutes by foot--or snowshoe--from his house.

“I could tell from the first time I saw Scott that he was a shooter,” Perry said. “There’s an air about good shooters, you can tell. It’s not arrogance, but a confidence.”

Campbell has been confident to the tune of 30 points per game this season, which is the main reason the Aztecs are Garden Grove League champions.

At one point during the season, he scored 30 or more points in eight consecutive games. Included in that streak was a 53-point performance against Bolsa Grande, which broke Johnny Rogers’ school record of 52.

But it’s not just that Campbell scores, it’s the ease with which he does it.

Campbell will drift upcourt, almost casually. The next second, he’ll roll his 6-foot-4 frame off a screen for a 15-foot jumper.

“The best you can do is try to fight through the screen and hope he doesn’t make the shot,” Rancho Alamitos Coach Terry Munson said.

It’s so effortless, yet so effective, that sometimes even Campbell doesn’t realize how many points he has.

At halftime of the Bolsa Grande game, Campbell was listening to Perry address the team when assistant coach Kevin Kiernan sat down next to Campbell.

“Coach was talking and Kevin whispered to me, ‘You have 34 points,’ ” said Campbell, who averaged 14 points per game as a sophomore and 18 as a junior. “I was shocked. I thought maybe I had 15 points.”

Campbell broke Rogers’ record with 5 minutes left in the game and then took the rest of the night off. Had he stuck around, Campbell had a chance to break Art Worthy’s Orange County record of 58 points, set in 1910.

However, records weren’t what Campbell was shooting for that night, according to Perry. He said the performance was out of necessity, as the Aztecs were missing starting guards James Johnson and Scott Linck with injuries.

“After the game, people kept asking me, ‘Do you think Scott can do that again?’ ” Perry said. “I told them no, not unless we had other players who were sick or hurt again. Scott has done what he’s had to do all year to make us as good as we can be. On that particular night, 53 points was something he had to do.”

Perry is accustomed to seeing Campbell do whatever is necessary, even providing a little extra effort on defense.

Although Campbell describes himself as an average defender, he dominated a 4-minute stretch against Rancho Alamitos this season with his defense.

He made four consecutive steals during that stretch, including one that required Campbell to leap out of bounds and toss the ball over his shoulder to Linck, who scored on a layup.

“Everybody, especially the fans, could see he was in total control,” Munson said. “It looked like a man playing with boys.

“I’m certainly glad he’s leaving after this season. But I wish he would have come to Rancho instead of La Quinta.”

Campbell landed at La Quinta because of some family research and a little luck.

Larry Campbell, Scott’s stepfather, was transferred from Colorado to Southern California by McDonnell Douglas in the fall of 1986.

Campbell’s mother, Sandy, contacted principals, athletic directors and/or basketball coaches at Bolsa Grande, Garden Grove, La Quinta, Rancho Alamitos and Santiago, all located in the general area where the family wanted to live.

The Campbells have four children, but only Scott was interested in basketball.

So, whatever school district the Campbells moved into would have to include a high school with a good basketball program.

“I wanted to make sure that my kids had the best opportunity,” said Sandy Campbell, who besides Scott has a daughter and two stepsons. “La Quinta seemed to be the best school for all of them. And, after talking to Jim Perry and checking out his program, I knew he would be absolutely wonderful for Scott.”

The Campbells leased a home in the La Quinta district and planned to move there in October.

But a week before the move, a family friend who lived in the area called and said there was a problem with the house. Another family had moved in, claiming they had leased it.

“The people that owned the house . . . rented it to three different families and then took off with the money. We’ve never found them,” Sandy Campbell said.

So, Scott spent his first two weeks in California living in a motel room across from Disneyland while his parents searched for a house.

“It was great being in California, but there was no place to play basketball,” Campbell said. “I was itching to play again.”

After his parents bought a home in Westminster--within La Quinta’s boundaries--Campbell enrolled in November.

On his first day of school, he went to see Perry at lunch.

“I thought, maybe I would be on the junior varsity my first year,” Campbell said.

That, of course, was before the quickest tryout in school history.

CAMPBELL BY GAME

Date Opponent Pts Dec. 2 Saddleback 22 Dec. 3 Los Alamitos 27 Dec. 5 University 29 Dec. 12 Torrance 39 Dec. 14 Katella 26 Dec. 16 Estancia 32 Dec. 28 Dodson (Ariz.) 35 Dec. 29 Corona del Sol (Ariz.) 39 Dec. 30 Canyon del Oro (Ariz.) 30 Jan. 4 Rancho Alamitos 42 Jan. 6 Kennedy 36 Jan. 9 Bolsa Grande 53 Jan. 11 Santiago 31 Jan. 13 Los Amigos 27 Jan. 18 Garden Grove 8 Jan. 20 Pacifica 37 Jan. 25 Rancho Alamitos 27 Jan. 27 Kennedy 25 Jan. 30 Bolsa Grande 14 Feb. 3 Los Amigos 26 Feb. 6 Santiago 27 Feb. 8 Garden Grove 29 Feb. 10 Pacifica 5