FOREIGN AGENT : North Hollywood’s Rocha Encounters Difficulty Mastering English but Her Play Speaks Volumes

Rich Allen, North Hollywood High girls’ basketball coach, quickly draws a play during a timeout in a crucial game against archrival Reseda. He shouts instructions, uses arm motions for emphasis and offers words of encouragement before the minute timeout had expired.

“OK, are there any questions?” he asked.

His top player, Claudia Rocha, looked puzzled.

She understands the X’s and O’s diagrammed on a clipboard by her coach. It’s the rest of the letters in the alphabet that give her trouble.

“I know only a few words he’s saying,” Rocha said.

Rocha had no trouble understanding her coaches last season when she played for a high school and a national team in Mexico. It wasn’t until she moved to North Hollywood with her mother and sisters last summer that she needed an interpreter to understand the meaning of traveling.

Rocha speaks very little English. Her coach and teammates struggle to understand her. But they have had little trouble understanding that Rocha’s scoring and rebounding have translated into another championship season.

North Hollywood, a finalist in the City 3-A Division the past two seasons, finished as co-champion in the Mid-Valley League after upsetting Reseda last week. The Huskies, 16-4 overall and 9-1 in league play, won a coin flip against Reseda to become the league’s top-seeded team. They will play host to Dorsey on Friday at 5:30 p.m. in the first round of the 4-A Division playoffs.

Rocha, a 5-11 junior, didn’t start out as the team’s best player, but she finished with the best statistics. She leads the team in scoring (16.8 points a game) and rebounding (10.1). She set a school record for field-goal percentage, making 142 of 252 shots (56%) and has scored 18 or more points in her past eight games.

And she has become the school’s most popular Mexican import.

“I’m surprised that so many people know me,” Rocha said through an interpreter. “People come up to me at school and they say, ‘Hi, you must be Claudia.’ I didn’t know anyone other than a few close friends until I joined the team.”

Allen discovered Rocha shooting at North Hollywood Park two summers ago when she was visiting her father, who lives in North Hollywood. Allen invited her to try out for the team when she enrolled at the school last fall.

But Allen needed to find a way to communicate with his new star; he knows only a few Spanish phrases.

“I would give her a schedule and she would give me a puzzled look,” Allen said. “She always asks, ‘What uniform? Aqui?’

“My biggest problem was figuring out how she was going to learn our offense,” he added. “I would sit down with her and diagram plays. She would point and try to understand what I was saying. I later found that it was better to walk her through the plays in practice.”

Allen’s unorthodox method of coaching helped Rocha sidestep a language barrier and move into the starting lineup.

“People think that because you don’t speak the language, you’re dumb,” he added. “Claudia is very intelligent and has been able to pick up things incredibly fast.”

The arrival of Rocha also created an opportunity for a bilingual player to make the varsity team. Senior reserve guard Cathy Romero, who is fluent in English and Spanish, has contributed more points by keeping Rocha’s head in the game. She explains plays in Spanish, translates Allen’s instructions to Rocha during timeouts, and yells encouragement from the bench.

“I have to really concentrate when the coach is talking,” Romero said. “I have to translate what he is saying and learn the plays myself at the same time. I worry that I might be missing something.”

Romero found her role as an interpreter difficult to accept at first.

“I felt cheated because this was my only chance to play basketball. But Claudia is more of a player than I am. I’m helping out the team more by doing this,” she said.

Rocha shows her gratitude by cheering her teammates when she sits on the bench.

“She tries to say things to us on the court,” Romero said. “She’ll shriek ‘Dale bien, Dale bien’ and then some other rambling words at the players and they give her dirty looks. I tell them, ‘Oh, that’s Claudia cheering.’ ”

While Rocha may yell ‘do it right, do it right’ to her teammates, she was treated like she did something wrong after North Hollywood’s upset of Alemany, a perennial Valley-area power, in its season opener.

While most of the Huskies jumped up and down in celebration, Rocha quietly collected her gear and headed to the locker room. Rocha’s teammates were outraged by her blase attitude.

“Claudia didn’t know that was an important game,” Allen said. “The team thought she didn’t care. Now, she asks me before every game if our opponents are good or bad.”

When she first began playing, Rocha said that she didn’t know any English except for the word ‘coach’ and would use sentences like “Coach, banos, “ which means she needs to go to the restroom.

Rocha has learned to speak three- or four-word sentences from her English as a Second Language class at school. But Rocha said that Allen tutors her in practice and deserves credit for helping with her progress.

“I was afraid to make a mistake,” Rocha said through Romero. “Coach would say, ‘Claudia, you know how to say that in English.’ ”

What words can she say?

“I’m cold. Do you want a cookie? I have to go to work now,” she said without an interpreter.

While Rocha may be shy about speaking English, she rarely gets nervous during a basketball game. She started playing in elementary school in her hometown of Saltillo in the Mexican state of Coahuila.

“My first coach taught us to play and not get nervous,” Rocha said. “He always made it fun to play. He wouldn’t keep score and would stop the game if we got physical.”

Rocha, however, finds some things in the United States that don’t make sense in any language.

“School is free and food is free, but they make us borrow our uniforms. Why can’t we keep them?” Rocha asked. “I find that to be strange. We keep our uniforms and shoes in Mexico.

“The games are also more physical here and they spend more time on conditioning. They teach us to shoot more in Mexico.”

Rocha developed a few unusual habits by American standards and Allen considered trying to correct them. She plays defense by pressing her hand against her opponents’ back, which is accepted behavior in the NBA and in international play but not at the high school level. Allen constantly reminds Rocha not to hand check her opponents and she frequently gets called for fouls.

Rocha also has a peculiar way of shooting free throws. She stands with one foot behind the other and not square to the basket. She shoots the ball from the same level as her chin and flicks the ball with her wrist.

“My immediate reaction was to change her stance,” Allen said. “And then I saw the ball go in the basket. I wanted for her to miss one, but they kept going in one after another.”

Rocha’s free-throw shooting ability has been the most startling part of her game. At one point, she was shooting 89% from the line but has since cooled to 70% (47 for 67). Still, she has only missed two consecutive free throws four times in 20 games.

Rocha doesn’t have the flash or the dazzling moves of teammates Michelle Cabaldon, a senior guard, or Jacinda Sweet, a sophomore guard. She prefers to jog up and down the court. But when she gets the ball in her hands, she has one of the fastest first steps in the area.

Allen learned how to say rapido when he wants Rocha to run fast. “I thought she was lazy, but she just paces herself,” he said. “There is no wasted motion. When she has to run quickly, boy, can she move.”

Most of Rocha’s shots are taken within eight feet of the basket and they are rarely off target. Rocha set a school record for most points in a game with 30 against Poly.

Unfortunately for Rocha, her athletic eligibility will run out before she learns how to speak complete sentences in English. She turns 19 in May and will be ineligible to play next season.

Rocha, however, isn’t concerned that her high school career will end. She said she has been offered a basketball scholarship at the Autonomous University of Coahuila in Saltillo.