Keeping Stats Is a Different Ballgame : High Life / A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

It’s a numbers game.

Rebounds, field goals, assists, turnovers. These are the numbers that keep basketball statisticians busily applying pencil to paper.

At Santa Ana’s Mater Dei High School, home of the county’s top-ranked boys’ basketball team, numbers are even more important.

As in number of statisticians.

Mater Dei’s stat squad is composed of seven students, each responsible for keeping track of a different statistical category during every game. The average high school may have three students trying to stay on top of two or three areas each.

“It’s important to have perfect stats,” said Mater Dei assistant coach Phil Bellomo, who has helped to coordinate the stat squad. “I feel that each girl should concentrate only on her stat.”

And when it comes to taking down these numbers, girls really do dominate. About 95% of the county’s high school basketball statisticians are girls.

Nicolle Brown, Angie Gregory, Kim Hills, Valarie Kraly, Debbie Maddox, Lisa Pack and Laura Sorenson form the seven-member stat squad at Mater Dei.

“This year we were really fortunate to have five of seven girls returning from last season. They don’t make mistakes,” says Coach Bellomo. “We use stats a lot. It’s one thing to use stats, but to use stats and know they’re accurate is very helpful. Not only do we keep stats on our team, but we keep stats on the opponents as well. This helps us for our game plans.”

“We are the backbone of the team,” said Pack, a senior. “Our support, combined with the Mater Dei wave of red (fans in school’s color) in the stands, has helped make them become a No. 1 team.”

In-depth knowledge of the game as well as complete concentration are requirements for statisticians, and experience helps, too.

Hills, the most experienced of the girls, has kept stats for five years. In addition to Mater Dei games, she also works for the city of Orange’s recreational basketball league.

“Statting really gets you into the game,” said Hills, a junior. “You feel as though you are one of the players competing out there on the court.”

A busy schedule keeps the Mater Dei stat girls on the go, from late November through mid-March, should the Monarchs reach the state championships.

Mater Dei plays 26 regular-season games, including tonight’s Angelus League contest against visiting St. Paul.

The hectic schedule included a Dec. 7 trip to the St. Louis Shootout, where the Monarchs defeated East St. Louis Lincoln High School--three-time defending Illinois state champion--62 to 48 before 9,569 fans in Kiel Auditorium.

“Although the seven of us were two-thirds of the Mater Dei cheering section (in St. Louis), our presence was definitely felt,” said Gregory, another senior statistician. “St. Louis really brought us all together. We learned a lot about each other on that trip.”

So what keeps the girls going? There are no college scholarships awaiting the most dedicated and talented statisticians as there are for the basketball players.

“When I started statting my freshman year,” senior Kraly remembered, “I joined as a way to become involved and meet new people. In doing so, I have learned a lot about the game and have formed many new friendships.”

And the dedication to their school and craft often runs deep.

Sorenson, a junior, said she has been a Monarchs fan since she was 8, when her brother was a freshman at the school.

“Attending the games for so many years,” she said, “I have grown to love the Mater Dei basketball tradition.”

Debbie Maddox is a senior at Mater Dei High School, where she is editor of the school newspaper, the Scarlet Scroll, a commissioner on the student council and is involved in the campus youth ministry program.