The Center of Attention : Basketball: Ingrid Dixson has averaged 25.1 points and 18.6 rebounds to carry West Covina to a perfect 12-0 record in the Sierra League.

Even before she played a minute of varsity basketball in high school, Ingrid Dixson was receiving letters of inquiry from college recruiters.

But it wasn’t until Dixson started playing for the varsity team as a 10th-grader at Edgewood High in West Covina that she got an inkling of the potential she possessed as a basketball player.

“When I first started playing at Edgewood as a sophomore,” she said, “I made all-tournament of one tournament and MVP of another, and it was kind of a shock to me because I didn’t realize I had that kind of talent, but I knew I could be better.”

At 6-foot-3 and 180 pounds, Dixson’s potential appears to be approaching its fruition as a senior at West Covina High--which merged with Edgewood after her sophomore year.

Not that Dixson didn’t make a good impression before this season. In fact, she averaged 13 points ajd 12 rebounds and earned All-Valle Vista League honors as a sophomore before averaging 17.5 points and 11.3 rebounds and receiving All-CIF Southern Section Division I recognition last season.

Only this season, the 17-year-old Dixson has truly emerged as a center of attention.

She has easily been the most dominant inside player in the San Gabriel Valley. Dixson has averaged a valley-leading 25.1 points and 18.6 rebounds to carry West Covina to a perfect 12-0 record in the Sierra League and 17-4 overall.

“She just seems to be head and shoulders above most of the players around here, literally and figuratively,” West Covina Coach Bill Torricelli said. “She’s just way ahead of the game.”

Torricelli said Dixson’s skill starts with a superior knowledge of the sport.

“The thing that probably helps her the most is that she really understands the game,” he said. “She has already learned the things that take most people a lot longer to learn.”

That is not to take anything away from her natural abilities.

“She just has good instincts for the game,” Torricelli said. “A lot of 6-3 girls have size but they don’t know what to do with it. But it’s amazing to see all the things about her that just seem so natural. It seems natural but you know it also comes from hard work.”

Since the end of last season, Dixson says she has worked hard to improve her all-around game.

“Offensive- and defensive-wise I think I’ve improved and my scoring and rebounding averages went up, too,” Dixson said. “I worked on my outside game and I’ve tried driving from the top of the key more.”

Dixson said that improving her outside shooting ability was a prime objective before the season.

“I’ve played more than just the inside position,” she said. “My basic position is in the key but I have more ability than that. Teams like to double-team me inside so sometimes I’ll go outside and if they don’t come out on me I’ll just take the open shot.”

With her increased offensive production, she has also faced more double- and triple-teams from defenses than ever before this season.

“It was an adjustment because last year the whole team was about equal in scoring,” Dixson said. “This year I’m more of the person the other teams want to stop, so I’m double-teamed a lot.”

All the attention from opposing defenses has had a positive side, though.

“In a way it made me work harder because I’ve had to fight to get the ball when I’m on the inside,” Dixson said.

Dixson says it is a good learning experience because she expects to face the same problem when she plays in college next season.

“There’s a lot more competition there,” she said. “I’ve been to a couple of college games this year and it’s a lot tougher than high school to get your position inside. When you come in from high school, you play with a lot more experienced players. It’s such a big adjustment. Women’s basketball in college is so different than high school.”

Torricelli, for one, doesn’t think the adjustment from high school to college will be that difficult for Dixson.

“From what I’ve seen in college, she’s the kind who can step right in as a freshman without much trouble--the Tracy Murray type,” the coach said, referring to the former Glendora High star who is starting for the UCLA men as a freshman.

That is one big reason why Dixson has been one of the most heavily recruited seniors in Southern California.

Before last season, Dixson said it was mostly a trickle of interest from college scouts. The attention started to increase during the summer league season.

“I’ve gotten so much attention, I can’t even say how much,” she said. “I started getting a lot of attention after I went to the BCI tournament (in Arizona last summer) and a tournament at UC Santa Barbara. I know that’s where a lot of scouts saw me.”

Dixson has been recruited by many of the top programs in the nation, including Long Beach State, Tennessee, UCLA, UC Berkeley and Arizona State.

She has taken her only recruiting trip to Berkeley and says: “I’m leaning toward UC Berkeley right now but I’m still looking at my options.”

Her coach said the attention picked up recently after colleges confirmed that Dixson’s grades were in order and that she had scored higher than 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

“It was a little slow for a while,” Torricelli said. “But as soon as they got her grades and test scores, interest started to pick up with her again. She’s really getting a lot of calls now.”

So far, she says, the recruiting process has transpired with minimal distractions.

“During the contact period, when the coaches wanted to call to arrange home visits, that’s when I received the most phone calls,” Dixson said. “I’ve received a lot of phone calls all along. But even then it really wasn’t distracting.

“If I was doing my homework I could take a few minutes off to talk to them and set up a home visit or just to talk, if that’s what they wanted. They’ve never bugged me to the point that I didn’t want to talk to them anymore.”

Her father, Jimmie, has also been there to help her screen potential colleges.

“He helps me sort it all out,” Dixson said. “He has certain questions that he wants to ask the coaches and he keeps up on the schools that I think I might want to go to.”

Dixson said she would like to stay in California for college, although she has not ruled out schools from outside of the state.

But for now, she has placed her recruiting dilemma on the back burner. For the moment, her biggest concern is that her team clinch the Sierra League title and do well in the playoffs. West Covina can win the league title with a win over Los Altos at 5:30 p.m Friday in Hacienda Heights.

That would mark the third straight year that Dixson’s team has won or shared a league title in her high school career.

Dixson realizes the difficult part will be advancing far in the playoffs. As a sophomore at Edgewood, her team lost to St. Bernard in the second round of the 2-A Division playoffs and last season West Covina was eliminated by Hart in 5-A Division quarterfinals.

“Our goal is to be in the finals of the CIF (5-A),” she said. “The farthest we’ve gone since I’ve been here is the quarterfinals and we want to go farther. If the team works hard at it I feel we can reach that goal.”

If the Bulldogs do make it, don’t be surprised if Dixson is the center of attention.