Peninsula Girls Just One Win Away From Perfect Season

It has been nearly three months since the girls’ basketball team of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School learned it had been ranked best in the nation.

Now, just one day shy of the state Division I championship game that could give the undefeated Lady Panthers a mythical national championship, the girls are as sober and poised as professional athletes.

“There’s a lot riding on (the game),” said starting point guard Kristen Mulligan, 17. “Everyone at school is talking about it--students and teachers--but as much as you can, you try not to think about it. This will be, for five seniors, our last high school game and we want to be the best we can be.”

The Lady Panthers, 32-0, face Cupertino Monte Vista, 29-1, Saturday at 8 p.m. in Sacramento’s Arco Arena.

Although high school basketball players do not compete nationally, the Panthers’ maturity, balance and court strategy--as well as its 6-foot-5 center, Jeffra Gausepohl--captured USA Today’s attention from among tens of thousands of basketball teams nationwide. It was the first time since the newspaper began ranking girls basketball that a California team won the top ranking.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime honor,” said Peninsula High’s athletic director, Peter Fawaz. “I’ve been in this business for 25 years and I haven’t seen it yet, and I probably won’t see it again.”

Wendell Yoshida, whose no-nonsense coaching is said to be largely responsible for the girls’ success, agreed.

“This is by far the most talented team we’ve had, the most athletic team we’ve had and the hardest working team we’ve had. They’re all good players and they have good personalities too,” he said.

Yoshida coached several of the girls at Palos Verdes High before it merged this school year with Rolling Hills and Miraleste to form Peninsula.

At the beginning of the season, the girls were ranked tops by Street & Smith’s College/Prep basketball magazine. Since then, four of the team’s five starters have won basketball scholarships to Division I universities.

The team members, who have appeared on NBC’s Nightly News and ESPN, have been playing to capacity crowds in the 1,200-seat gym for months.

The girls frequently have been treated to standing ovations, the most recent at an auction fund-raiser that drew 400 athletic boosters. And fellow students are staging a pep rally at the campus amphitheater today at noon before the girls, accompanied by more than 200 fans, leave for the season’s last game in Sacramento Saturday night.

“They just don’t wilt under any kind of pressure,” said Mark Tennis, editor of Cal-High Sports Magazine. “They’re very mature, solid young ladies. Their maturity and intelligence and the way they play makes it look like they’re women against girls sometimes.”

Gausepohl, a 17-year-old senior, attributed some of the team’s maturity to the close friendships the girls have developed off the court over the past two years.

“Since we’re like a family and we know each other so well, we know how to communicate with each other without having to talk,” Gausepohl said. “We can look at each other and know what the other is thinking.”

Whatever happens at the game, Gausepohl said there is “an excitement thinking about what lies ahead of us. We know since we will all be playing basketball in the future that we will all see each other again and that makes it easier.”