Lofty Potential Came Up Short for 6-9 Waikle

Connie Waikle seemed destined to be a college basketball star.

The former Villa Park High School standout had intelligence, a great attitude and talent, said Jim Irby, her coach at Villa Park.

Most noticeably, she had something coaches often joke that they can’t teach: height. By the time Waikle graduated in 1983, she was 6-feet-9. With such height, Irby believed Waikle could be a force at the Division I level. It never happened.

An assortment of injuries, along with adjustments to four colleges in five years, slowed the progress of a player Irby called the best girls’ center he has seen in 15 years as a coach in Orange County.

“Things didn’t work out like I thought they would,” said Waikle, 24, now a telemarketer for a company in Irvine.

After averaging 22.5 points and 12 rebounds a game, and setting a school record for most points in a season (632) as a senior at Villa Park, Waikle went to the University of Hawaii. Before her college career began, she tore ligaments in her left ankle during a weightlifting workout and missed all of preseason practice. She averaged only 3.1 points a game and, when her coach took another job, she transferred to Cal State Long Beach.

The injury was a sign of things to come.

“My body just wore out,” said Waikle, who lives in Mission Viejo.

She redshirted at Long Beach during the 1984-85 season, became unhappy with the program and transferred to Saddleback College. Injury-free, she scored 29.4 points a game and was the state’s leading women’s community college scorer at Saddleback.

Waikle then transferred to San Diego State, confident of earning a starting spot for the 1986-87 season, but injuries hit again. An early-season knee injury kept Waikle out of two games and limited her effectiveness all season. She averaged 4.1 points a game.

Optimism arrived along with the start of her senior year, but so did another injury. This time, a stress fracture in her left foot in mid-December caused her to miss six weeks. By the time the season ended, Waikle was scoring 2.6 points a game. She said the sport “wasn’t much fun for me.”

“I’m glad I experienced it,” she said. “I just had some bad breaks. It would have helped if I would have stayed in one place. I didn’t know what I wanted.”

Talk of her high school career brings smiles, however. She remembers helping Villa Park to the Century League championship in 1983, a season in which she set school records for rebounds in a season (337) and field goal percentage (54.5).

Succeeding wasn’t always easy. At a time when Waikle wanted to be “one in the crowd,” her size brought jokes from opposing fans.

“It made me work harder,” she said. “When people yelled things, I liked to put it in their face. It didn’t bother me on the court, (but) socially it did. They called me every name in the book. They still do, but I’m able to accept it now.”

Officials were also none too eager to protect a player who towered over opponents, said Irby. “She came out of every game with bruises on her legs, hips and back, red scrapes on her arms,” said Irby, now an assistant girls’ coach at El Toro and assistant men’s coach at Christ College Irvine. “They beat her up.”

Yet Waikle survived, Irby said, and excelled.

Irby had to think for only a moment before deciding where Waikle ranks among other high school centers.

“Connie was the best,” he said. “A kid like that comes along once in a lifetime at the high school level, even at the college level.”