Palmisano Perfected Shooting Touch at an Early Age

As an 8-year-old, Michelle Palmisano began competing in national free-throw shooting contests--and winning.

At 9, she represented the Lakers in the Pepsi Hot Shot competition for shooting accuracy and placed among the top 10 nationally for five consecutive years.

She received her first recruiting letter--from Stanford--when she was 12.

Now 16, the 5-foot-9 sophomore point guard is the center of attention on the Thousand Oaks High girls’ basketball team.

The top scorer in Ventura County at 29.3 points a game, Palmisano is virtually unstoppable on the court. She scored 42 points against Newbury Park a week ago, ensuring Thousand Oaks (14-11, 7-5 in league play) a third-place finish in the Marmonte League and a Southern Section playoff berth. She had 23 rebounds in the game.

Thousand Oaks will meet host Santa Maria (10-11) in the first round of the Southern Section 5-A Division playoffs tonight.

“I knew that I had to play well because the game (against Newbury Park) meant the CIF playoffs,” said Palmisano, who leads Thousand Oaks with 10.3 rebounds per game and averages 4.7 assists. “I didn’t know I had that many points. I just knew how important the game was and played for the team.”

“She’s a real spark plug,” said her coach, Chuck Brown. “But the thing that makes her success so neat is that she is such an unassuming person. She is so good, but she doesn’t expect special treatment.”

Given her precociousness in basketball, perhaps it is not surprising that Palmisano already holds the school’s career scoring record with 1,102 points, eclipsing Shani Smyth’s mark of 960, set last season. What is curious, however, is that the Ventura native is setting records for Thousand Oaks.

Palmisano is the youngest of seven brothers and sisters, all of whom played high school basketball at either Buena, Santa Clara or St. Bonaventure. The Buena program, according to Palmisano, stresses fundamentals, something she felt she had mastered. St. Bonaventure is a 2-A school, and Palmisano preferred a school in a higher division.

But Michelle felt that Buena, a 5-A program, didn’t offer enough individual attention. So her sister, Dina Poteracke, assistant coach of the Lancers girls’ basketball team and a resident of Thousand Oaks, was appointed her legal guardian so that Michelle could attend school there. Palmisano’s parents also believed that sending their daughter to Buena, which has won seven Southern Section championships and has inarguably the best basketball program in Ventura County, would not be in their daughter’s best interests.

Another sister, Teresa, the leading scorer on the women’s basketball team at Cal, attended Buena throughout her high school career.

“They don’t believe in pushing individual talent,” said Michelle’s father, Joe, of the Buena program. “Teresa was handicapped by the coaching and the administrators there. After being quite a ballplayer and a good student, the athletic department did not give her one award. She got nothing. And she deserved more.

“We want what is best for our children, and that’s why Michelle is at Thousand Oaks.”

Moving a 15-year-old away from her parents would normally be quite a shock. But Palmisano accepted the situation, realizing that it was the only way she could attend Thousand Oaks.

“It was tough at first. I missed my friends,” Palmisano said. “But my family is still really close. My parents come to all my games.”

Michelle started playing basketball when she was 4. She used to shoot around during halftime at Dina’s games and was playing pick-up games with her siblings the following year. Her father was coaching her soon after that, and, by the time she was 8, she was already on her way to a successful basketball career. She has practiced for nearly three hours a day for as long as she can remember.

“Sometimes I would be lazy and didn’t want to practice,” Palmisano said. “But my dad would make me get out there. Now I’m happy that he did.”

Palmisano is looking forward to attending a Division I university.

“I’d like to go to Berkeley or Stanford. I like the Pac-10,” said Palmisano, who carries a 4.0 grade-point average.

But she has one other dream.

“I really want to go to the Olympics,” she said. “I think I am capable of that.”

Her focus now, however is the playoffs. “I think the odds are against us, but I’ll just keep trying to do what I did so far this season,” Palmisano said.