Healthy Yoshioka Joins an Elite Crowd : Preps: El Toro senior, the county leader in assists, is being mentioned with the area’s top point guards.

Oh, the intangibles of athletic performance. Who knows why a basketball player’s game goes up a level? It could be that the athlete has grown more confident, gotten healthier or switched from Twinkies to Ding Dongs.

In Karie Yoshioka’s case, it’s a bit of all three, though granted, the switch from Twinkies to Ding Dongs and her emergence this season as one of Orange County’s top point guards could be coincidental.

Yoshioka, a senior, is one of the reasons El Toro High School is 15-5 overall, 4-1 in the South Coast League and ranked second in the county behind national power Brea-Olinda.

Yoshioka has been El Toro’s floor leader this season. She led the county in assists (7.7 per game) and was averaging 16.2 points and 4.1 steals after 18 games. She has been one of the county’s most accurate shooters, hitting 50% from three-point range and 58.2% overall.

Coaches compare her with Brea-Olinda senior Aimee McDaniel, the consensus premier point guard in the county, a high school All-American and The Times’ player of the year as a sophomore.

Not bad company, especially considering Yoshioka is only 5-feet-3, 110 pounds; she missed a great deal of her junior season with injury and illness, and she didn’t even play organized basketball until her freshman year at El Toro.

“I think she can do everything Aimee does,” El Toro Coach Greg Yeck said. “What Aimee has over Karie is experience. Aimee had experience at an earlier level and has been in big ballgames and in the big program where they have been playing the best.”

Brea-Olinda Coach Mark Trakh wouldn’t trade McDaniel for Yoshioka, but he said Yoshioka is in the same class with McDaniel and her backcourt mate, Tammy Blackburn.

“People just don’t realize that Karie Yoshioka is a Division I college player,” Yeck said. “I’ve got a kid here who can set up and knock down the three-pointer and knock it down as well as anybody. Her vision is phenomenal as far as seeing the court.”

Yoshioka is not nearly as well known as either of the Brea-Olinda guards partly because El Toro’s program is not as prominent, because she was injured her junior year and because, until recently, she did not assert herself.

“Karie was a slow build,” Yeck said. “To tell the truth, I don’t think Karie really believed in her abilities until this year. She had a little voice inside that kept saying you’re good, but not that good and it was holding her back.”

Yoshioka realized part of her responsibility this season is to help Sara Bone (18 points a game) with the scoring load. Still, Yeck has to persuade Yoshioka to shoot more, especially three-point shots. She didn’t shoot any as a sophomore, but this season she was 21 of 42 through 18 games.

Yoshioka prefers to drive and set up her teammates.

“I am not the kind of person who just comes up and shoots the three because I have other shots I would rather shoot,” Yoshioka said. “That is not one of my main shots. I like the drives, drive to the jump shot. I think I have such a high percentage because of my shot selection. If there is somebody right there, I won’t shoot.”

Yeck said he has always believed in Yoshioka’s ability. Others had only her injury-plagued patchwork junior year to judge.

“Everybody we have played (this season), their attitude has been, ‘Where did she come from? I vaguely remember her being a good point guard before but not this good,’ ” Yeck said. “They think some miracle thing happened over the summer, but she just got healthy.”

Yoshioka injured an ankle by colliding with another player in the last summer league game before the start of her junior season. She re-sprained the ankle in the first game of the season and had to have her ankle immobilized in a heavy boot.

“I hated last year,” Yoshioka said. “It was so frustrating. I would sit on the sidelines and I wanted to to go on the court and all, but I could only cheer.”

She missed the first two weeks of play before returning at 3/4 speed. She was just getting back to normal when she got the flu and was out of action until midway through the first half of South Coast League play.

Without Yoshioka, the Chargers had trouble handling the ball. They finished 18-10 and 9-1, losing the league title to Mission Viejo. She averaged 10.2 points and 5.6 assists.

Yoshioka played junior varsity as a freshman. Her sophomore season, Yeck promoted her to the varsity bench seven games into the season. She began outperforming the varsity guards and worked her way into the starting lineup.

Yoshioka recalls being terrified to be in the company of her idols--Andrea Young (now playing at Rice) and Elaine Youngs (playing basketball and volleyball for UCLA). The team was ranked No. 1 in the county preseason polls.

“It was by far my best team, the greatest team we ever had,” Yeck said. “Still it is a year that makes me sick to my stomach when I think what could have been.”

Young and Youngs were sidelined almost the entire season with injury. El Toro finished 24-6 overall and 7-3 in the league, good enough for third place, and advanced to the Southern Section 3-A semifinals.

“The only way I can look back on that season and feel really good about it is it meant that Sara Bone and Yoshioka had to come in and start as sophomores,” Yeck said. “And now look where we are. In the long run we have to look at the good that came out of their having to be put on the floor in a crash course. They are now two of the better players in the county.”

After the disappointments of her sophomore and junior seasons, Yoshioka decided that things would be different her senior year.

“This season I was chosen as captain with (seniors) Sara Bone and Danielle Silva, and we decided this is our last chance and we don’t want to ruin it by having any problems interfere,” Yoshioka said.

“This year I was making sure, because last year was a total bummer for me.”

Making sure means getting her ankles taped, among other things. “It is just the motherly things, like I make sure and take a jacket and everything and don’t get cold and watch what I eat. I make sure I don’t eat as much junk food. Twinkies were my trademark. I love Twinkies. I haven’t had one in quite a long time. Since summer.

“I just don’t eat them as much. I used to eat Twinkies before the game sometimes. It was a sugar high. But, after the team gave me a box of Twinkies at the end of the season and I ate the whole box, I decided to go for the Ding Dongs, but not as much.”

The extra care and attention and Ding Dongs have paid off.