These Days, Big Girls Can Pick Up Pace Too : Basketball: Tall, dominating high school centers no longer use a walk-it-up, dump-it-in style of play. Now they push the tempo and run.

There was a time when a high school girls’ basketball coach dreamed of having that one big girl, say anywhere from 6-foot to 6-foot-3, who could make the team a contender.

A player whose only concern was to amble upcourt on offense and set up shop on “The Block,” that low post position on either side of the line that designates the free throw lane.

There she would wait until her teammates lobbed the ball to her for a sure two points, even if it sometimes took two offensive rebounds and three shots to score.

They usually weren’t particularly quick or skilled at much else, but coaches with smaller centers would be envious nonetheless. “You can’t teach height,” they would say.

Well, the times, they are a changin’.

As more girls get better coaching and become involved in year-round programs, the skill level of the center has improved. The walk-it-up, dump-it-in, pound-it-down-your-throat style largely has been replaced by fast-break basketball, and coaches are looking for centers who can keep pace.

And they are out there. Among the tallest are 6-5 Zrinka Kristich--who heads a trio of 6-footers at La Habra--Ocean View’s Jennifer Sullivan (6-2 1/2), Mission Viejo’s Jennifer Rohrig, (6-3), Loara’s Traci Titus (6-2), Los Alamitos’ Allison Arredondo (6-2) and El Toro’s Sara Bone (6-0). Among the smallest of the dominating county centers are Orange’s Nicole Champion (5-10) and Brea-Olinda’s Jinelle Williams (5-9).

“I don’t think I’ve met a coach who wouldn’t like to push the tempo and run,” said Mark Trakh, coach of Brea-Olinda, the top-ranked girls’ team in California. “If you look at the top 10 teams in the county, almost all of them run. I know the top four--Brea, El Toro, Ocean View and La Quinta--run and they run almost identical breaks.”

La Quinta Coach Kevin Kiernan agrees. “You don’t want the slow-plodding team where you walk it up and work for the five-foot shot,” Kiernan said. “Teams want to push it up the floor. It’s more fun to coach and more entertaining, and, athletically speaking, the girls coming up are getting used to running. They’ve been going to camps, playing in summer leagues and moving the ball up the courts.

“I try to keep away from slow centers. I want a center who runs the floor real well and can step outside and hit the shot. If you get a big girl you can teach her the post moves. But if you have a really, really mobile center who can run the floor and hit the outside shot, then you teach her the post moves (and) you’ve got the complete package. Of course, you don’t find too many of those around.”

Three of the top four schools in the county have post players at least 6-0. Ocean View has the largest in Sullivan, who contends with El Toro’s Bone, La Quinta’s Amy Jalewalia and Mission Viejo’s Rohrig for top honors in the county.

None of these senior centers dominate all phases of the game. Each has strengths in different areas, but they all can run the fast break despite their size.

Jalewalia was last year’s state scoring leader with an average of 32 points a game. She most likely will play wing when she attends UCLA this fall, but for La Quinta she plays center--sort of.

“I guess you could call her a point-center,” Kiernan said. “She dribbles down, hands it off, then goes inside and posts up. I hate to use the word center. I hate to pigeonhole any of the players. I like to just call them forwards and centers.” With Kiernan’s more mobile approach to post play, Jalewalia is averaging 33 points, 11 rebounds and four steals a game.

Bone, like Jalewalia, most likely will not play center when she goes to Dartmouth this fall, but she is doing the job for the Chargers this season, averaging 18 points and 10 rebounds a game. Bone is a bit heavier than Jalewalia, but she still is not the complete package.

“She is not really physical,” El Toro Coach Greg Yeck said. “She is more graceful--a finesse player.”

Yeck said his ideal center would dominate and intimidate on defense before thinking about offense. “It would be nice to think a player could dominate to the point that people would hesitate to drive and take it inside,” Yeck said. “We don’t have that luxury with Sara. They are willing to take her on.

“She is not imposing to look at. She is a nice kid, always smiling. There isn’t that fear factor when you look at her. And she just doesn’t come up with the real aggressive block--the kind where you just clean somebody, where you get the crowd oohing and aahing.”

What Bone gives El Toro is good size and quickness. She can pull up and take a three-point shot off the fast break or drift out from the pressure of taller centers to hit the 15-foot shot. “It’s kind of nice to know that the first person to get down the floor sometimes on your fast break is your center,” Yeck said.

For size there is no one better than the 6-2 1/2, 185-pound Sullivan, last year’s Sunset League Most Valuable Player and the center for third-ranked Ocean View.

As a sophomore, she appeared cast in the old hug-the-block mold. “She has come a long way,” Kiernan said. “When we first saw her we thought, ‘She is going to hurt us inside but we can beat her up and down the floor.’ But she has worked on it and her lateral movement is better and she gets up and down the floor.”

Sullivan gives Ocean View offensive versatility. With her, the Seahawks are one of the few teams that have the option of walking the ball up and using a power strategy to score.

“One of the big things with her is she is a prime-timer,” Ocean View Coach Ollie Martin said. “When the game is on the line, she comes up with the big block or big basket or makes some sort of key play at key times.”

Sullivan doesn’t have the offensive versatility, mobility or shooting touch of Bone, but she uses her body well. She is tough to get around once she seals out a player on the block.

But can she fast break? Yes.

“She can get the rebound, outlet the ball and still be down on the fast break,” Martin said. “Very few girls her size can do that. She can do it the whole game.”

Sullivan is perhaps most valuable as a shot blocker. “Defensively she changes the way you play,” Kiernan said. “You can’t just take the ball inside.”

Sullivan’s progression from fast-break trailer to occasional fast-break leader was no accident. Like many Orange County centers, she has made the effort to find competition her size in the off-season.

Sullivan attended three basketball camps the summer between her sophomore and junior years and three more--the invitation-only Blue Star Camp in Indiana, and camps at Nevada Las Vegas and UC Santa Barbara--last summer. She has a shooting coach and trains in special strength shoes designed to help improve her jumping ability.

The camps and practice have paid off. Sullivan averages 18 points, 14 rebounds and five blocked shots a game.

“Against players my size I tend to fake more,” Sullivan said. “I do different things more when there is someone there in my face. It’s good. I become quicker when I turn because I don’t have as much time.”

Sullivan also has learned what colleges want from their centers--mobility.

“Most recruiters are more impressed if you can go down and be a part of the fast break rather than just come down at the end of the break or just get down for that matter,” she said.

Sullivan, who is sifting through recruiting letters from UCLA, Louisville, Loyola Marymount and more, has not decided on a college.

Rohrig, however, has made a decision. She won’t play her college basketball anywhere. She has opted instead to play volleyball at Duke.

Many county coaches point to Rohrig as the top county center despite their belief that she never realized her potential in the sport. She leads the county in rebounding with 19 and averages 19 points a game.

“Rohrig could be by far the best center in the county but the kid is into volleyball,” said Yeck, whose Chargers have taken a back seat to Mission Viejo and Rohrig in the South Coast League the past three years.

“I have seen Sullivan, Rohrig and Titus, and of those three, the one who could be most dominant is Rohrig. She has that 6-3 frame, and when she puts those arms up she plays like she is 6-8. She had our kids changing shots and missing all kinds of shots because they knew she was around there.

“When she is on, she is devastating. I think (she moves) better than Sullivan. She gets up and down real well, it just depends whether she is on.”

Rohrig, Sullivan, Bone and Jalewalia graduate this year, but there is a core of tall and talented centers who are serious about their off-season work and ready for life in the fast-break lanes.

Woodbridge’s Deanna Harry (6-2) is only a junior, but Coach Eric Bangs says she is an excellent defender. Her presence inside allows his guards to gamble for steals out front.

University’s Tara Wolff (6-0), a sophomore, already has shown an aptitude for floating outside for the 12-foot shot, and she is right at home filling a lane on the fast break.

But for the most talent in one spot, look to the Highlanders. La Habra has Leslie Ferguson (6-0) and sisters Ana (6-1) and Zrinka (6-5) Kristich. All three play in the Amateur Athletic Union in the off-season. Ferguson, who leads La Habra with 15 points and 10 rebounds a game, will graduate this year, but Ana is a junior. Zrinka, a sophomore, already has impressed many.

Trakh calls La Habra “the nightmare team” because nobody can match up well with the trio. Of Zrinka, he said, “She is potentially the best kid to come out of Orange County. She is very well-schooled at the post. She is 6-5 but she moves really fluidly and she knows what she is doing.”

Said Kiernan, “Once they get the ball in to Ferguson or the sisters, it’s pretty much over. They just volleyball it in. It’s a tip drill for them.”

That doesn’t mean the Highlanders are thumping the ball inside throughout every game. La Habra Coach John Koehler prefers to run the ball.

“Everybody knows we are emphasizing the big girls underneath, they just don’t realize we are still flying down the court. Ana and Leslie can run, and on occasion Zrinka has gotten out ahead of everybody and gotten the easy layup.”

But the centers most likely to get downcourt ahead of everybody on the fast break are Los Alamitos sophomore Allison Arredondo and Loara junior Traci Titus. Both have coordination, speed and size.

“The thing about the kids from Los Alamitos and Loara is they are probably the best athletes on their teams,” Loara Coach Gary Blate said. “They are the fastest on their teams and the most physical. Usually 6-2 girls aren’t able to do that.

“They are the kind of kids you have to use the word, ‘potential’ with all the time and you have to wait to see how far they are going to come along to meet that potential.”