THE TALES OF TWO PLAYERS : English Is USD’s Tower of Power

Unsure of how tall his 14-year-old daughter would grow and how she would react to the likes of “Jolly Green Giant” jokes, Joe English, 6-foot-6 and a former basketball player at the University of Utah, tried some home-grown psychology.

It was a brief exploration of science that eventually went full circle.

Christi English, a senior center and leading scorer on the University of San Diego women’s basketball team, was 5-5 as a high school freshman, and her father, her high school coach, thought she would grow to 5-11.

“I told her . . . she’d get to do things like stand out in airports,” he said. “Anything to make her feel good about it.”

On a routine visit to the doctor, father and daughter heard the news that she wasn’t going to tower over classmates. Christi, the doctor said, had reached her full height.

“She cried and cried,” English said, “because she was going to be a midget forever.”

In defiance, Christi English grew nine inches over the next four years. Not that anyone actually kept count. It wasn’t until her senior year, at Chaparral (Scottsdale, Ariz.) High’s basketball awards, that Joe English noticed she had a three-inch height advantage over the player he always considered the tallest.

At USD, English, 22, is two inches shorter than 6-5 sophomore center Chris Enger, but she is looked up to, literally and figuratively, by the rest of the team.

“Because she’s older, all the players look up to her,” Coach Kathy Marpe said. “She’s one of the captains this year, and she really is a team leader. She listens well, and she tries to counsel the younger players.”

Because English and Lynda Jones, her teammate and best friend of four years and roommate of two, are the team’s “relics,” they take on a matronly role for the younger players.

“The freshmen call us ‘Mom,’ ” Christi said with a laugh. “I see myself in them. I see how frustrated they get (when they’re not doing well). I want to communicate to them it gets better, but it has to start with them.”

English said it has been a combination of the natural maturation process, experience and her own self-motivation that have enabled her to guide her own destiny on the court.

“I finally told myself I didn’t need to have others boost me up to play well,” she said. “I have control now. It takes time. It’s just too bad they can’t learn that their first year.”

Never was this new sense of control more evident than in the Toreras’ game Jan. 19 against San Francisco. In a game played in front of her father, English had no points, no rebounds and one turnover in the first half.

“It was terrible,” she said. “It was one of my worst games. But I just made up my mind at halftime to take control and just do it.”

She finished with 15 points. Joe English said he contemplated coming down from the stands and telling Christi that he was going to leave the gym so she wouldn’t think about his being there.

“It was crazy,” she said. “Here I played under my dad for two years. It was ridiculous to think I couldn’t play in front of him now.”

Christi and Joe share what they describe as a warm and loving relationship. But as his daughter’s high school coach, there were extra trials, tribulations and sometimes tears.

Both were acutely aware of the dangers of nepotism, and Joe went to extremes to keep the inevitable criticism at bay.

“I was very sensitive about it,” he said. “I didn’t want people to say I had played favorites. So I yelled at her a lot.”

Still, there was talk he was devoting too much time to Christi.

“They accused me of giving her extra attention because I was on her so much, even if it was critical,” he said. “And coaching friends were saying to lighten up. I was damned either way.”

Joe English bent so far in trying not to favor Christi that he was the only one of 50 coaches who didn’t make her the unanimous choice for all-district captain.

“She still gives me a bad time about that,” he said.

When Joe had been particularly hard on her, he would try to put a smile on her face on the drives home from practice by tickling her.

“I’m not one of those parents who oversaw what she ate or made her practice in the back yard all hours,” he said. “I didn’t push her as much as I pulled her in. I just wanted her to be perfect and the best, and it was all done in love.”

The transition from high school to college was difficult in a basketball sense only. Like most girls, going from star to scrub was a harsh reality.

“Most girls on this team were the stars on their high school teams,” said English, a fifth-year senior who graduated last May with a communications degree. “In high school, you do everything. But here, everyone has a role.”

Her role has expanded over the years through a strong work ethic and natural talent.

“Her role is that of a leading scorer,” Marpe said. “But she is also the most experienced and one of the best rebounders.”

Marpe said toward the middle of last year English made the push to come into her own. She doesn’t hesitate to use English in any situation.

“She’s really stepped up her game, and started doing the things she needed to do,” Marpe said. “She’s gotten really aggressive on the boards, where she used to get blocked out. And scoring wise, she’s more consistent. She’s our go-to player. We keep giving her the ball. Even if people are hanging all over her, she can handle it.”

It was simply English believing in herself completely, Marpe said.

“It was a matter of her mind telling her body what she could do,” Marpe said. “She’s very coachable, but she’s one of those players that doesn’t buy right into what you’re telling them. You need to prove it for her to believe it.”

Jones, a junior, said part of English’s gradual rise in production and confidence is because this is her last year to make her mark.

“She’s going out and just playing, with no fears of what the coaches want,” she said. “She’s not thinking about next season because this is it.”

English might have a gentle touch with teammates, but she treat opponents with toughness and little mercy.

“She’s very physical and aggressive,” Marpe said. “Because of her size and musculature, she’s not afraid of contact.”

And she’s not afraid to shoot, especially from the inside. Her scoring has improved from her two-point average as a freshman to her current 14.5 through 19 games. She is averaging 7.8 rebounds and shooting 54.4% from the field, both improvements from her 6.5 rebounding average and 43.8% shooting mark from last season.

Also this year, she has scored in double figures and rebounds five times, led the team in scoring nine times and in rebounds 10 times and is currently No. 4 in career rebounds (517), No. 5 in career free throws (144) and No. 9 in career scoring (747).

English shrugs off her accomplishments by saying her success is a mere extension of the talents of her teammates.

“We have awesome guards that get the ball to me,” she said. “It’s not that one person’s a star. There’s always someone who’s playing well.”

But Jones said she has earned her right to bask in the limelight.

“This year, right from the start, Christi established herself as the dominant player and a scoring threat,” Jones said. “Right now is a really good time for her. She’s playing well and just going out and doing her job, playing the way she wants.”

When English came to USD, Marpe said her fundamentals were good, but she needed tougher competition.

Enter the summers of 1988 and 1990. For three months during both summers, English played in a women’s league in Memphis where the players were older, quicker, more experienced and less forgiving.

“I was the only white on the team,” she said. “I stuck out, but they never made me feel weird about it. Everyone was fast and could jump. I had to improve just to play with them.”

Much of her progress after the first summer in Tennessee--where her mother lives--was negated when she tore all the ligaments in her right ankle during practice early in the 1988-89 season and had to redshirt.

But she had made such strides in her game that she returned to Memphis in the summer of 1990.

“The level there was so much higher, a lot of the girls played in Europe or played on professional league teams,” said English, who hopes to play professionally in Europe before settling into a lifetime career that will center around sports. “I’ve done (sports) so long and love it. I can’t just up and walk away from something I’ve done all my life.”