McDaniel Is Making Waves : Women’s basketball: Former Brea-Olinda High standout returns to county when Pepperdine opens its season Tuesday night at UC Irvine.

Aimee McDaniel, the crackerjack point guard on the Pepperdine women’s basketball team, couldn’t help but laugh when recalling the childhood games and pains that essentially created her on-court persona.

“I was a total tomboy and very competitive,” she said. “I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but I lived in an apartment building, so I would play tackle football with the boys in the complex. Eventually, I started beating them up. One time, a kid rammed my face into a fence and bloodied my nose, so I hit him and kind of knocked him out.”

Knowing that neither the NFL nor professional boxing would be a career alternative, McDaniel chose to channel her energies into basketball. It was a wise decision that proved less harmful for those around her, although McDaniel’s fieriness never subsided; she simply kept it within reasonable parameters.

McDaniel, a 5-foot-6 junior from Brea-Olinda High, will get those competitive juices flowing again when the Waves open the season against UC Irvine in a nonconference game at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Bren Center.

The game marks the beginning of a season McDaniel hopes will overshadow a sophomore campaign she says was far from satisfactory, at least from a personal standpoint.

“I’m very excited (about the new season),” said McDaniel, a business administration major. “Last year, I didn’t have a very productive season. It wasn’t up to my expectations. This year, the team is looking real good and I’m really ready to go.”

After being named West Coast Conference freshman of the year two seasons ago, McDaniel’s production dipped in some areas, partly because of a painful herniated disk in her lower back that flared up occasionally.

She played 275 fewer minutes than the previous season and her scoring average fell from 12.4 to 9.4. Her assists decreased from a team-leading 116 in 1990-91 to 64 last season, and her steals dropped from 54 to 41.

Still, McDaniel helped the Waves to a fourth-place finish in the eight-team WCC--only one game behind tri-champions Santa Clara, San Francisco and Portland.

McDaniel led the team with 40% shooting from three-point range and 81.7% from the free-throw line, and scored in double figures 12 times. Her season-high 23 points in an 83-73 upset of nationally ranked Louisiana State at the Showboat Classic in Las Vegas last December were two points shy of her college single-game high.

But McDaniel, always the competitor, wants much more. And Pepperdine Coach Ron Fortner already sees the determination in her eyes.

“She’s more focused than she’s ever been,” said Fortner, now in his 10th season with the Waves. “She’s playing exceptionally well (in practices and scrimmages). We are expecting great things from her.”

McDaniel didn’t know what to expect from basketball when she entered Brea Junior High and got involved in the Polcats program run by the Brea Police Dept. She soon discovered, and her coaches quickly realized, that McDaniel was a natural. The promise she had shown on those early teams reached new dimensions under Mark Trakh, the highly successful girls’ basketball coach at Brea-Olinda High.

“Coach Trakh thought I should play for the Ladycats,” McDaniel said. “He took me under his wing. He taught me about 90% of what I know about basketball. I guess the other 10% is dumb luck.”

Whatever the ratio, the results were awesome.

At Brea, McDaniel led the Ladycats to four consecutive Orange League titles, two Southern Section Division 3-A championships and the State Division III crown in 1988-89. She averaged 16.4 points and four assists her senior season, and was named The Times Orange County player of the year. Her 1,796 career points and 605 assists are school records, and she ranks third on the all-time Southern Section three-pointer list with 137.

Trakh, a keen judge of talent, remains impressed with McDaniel.

“You’re dealing with a kid whose competitiveness separated her from everyone else,” said Trakh, who last season coached the Ladycats to their third State title. “She’s one of the greatest players to ever come out of Orange County. She is one of the greatest passers I’ve seen. She used to throw full-court passes with the flick of a wrist.”

Said Fortner: “Aimee’s main contribution is her competitiveness. She’s not the best athlete on the floor, and she’s not the fastest. The best part of her game is her mental toughness. The more she’s challenged, the better she seems to play.”

McDaniel will challenge anyone who gets between her and a basket, regardless of the other player’s size or reputation.

“I remember we played (Inglewood) Morningside in the semis of the 1989 Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions. That’s when Morningside had Lisa Leslie (now at USC) and they were ranked No. 1 in the country by USA Today,” Trakh said. “Aimee had 22 points against Leslie. Aimee took it right to her. Lisa knocked Aimee on her butt a couple of times, but Aimee just got up and kept driving to the basket.”

The Ladycats upset Morningside, 59-48, and McDaniel’s legend grew. And so did her mail stacks. By her senior season, she was getting recruiting letters from places she couldn’t even find on a map. But when she visited Malibu, the other courtships were about to end. McDaniel had found nirvana.

“For me, education was first and foremost,” McDaniel said. “That attracted me to Pepperdine and also the friendship that I felt from the players. It was a basketball team I knew I could work myself into and contribute. I also wanted to stay in Southern California, so that was a big part of it.”

McDaniel’s desire to succeed in basketball, and the inability to perform like she wanted last season, gnawed at her. But with the new season about to unfold, McDaniel hopes to handle whatever happens without putting so much pressure on herself.

“That’s a downside to me, to a point,” McDaniel said. “Sometimes, I carry it overboard. I do get down on myself very, very hard. I’m my worst critic. I want that perfect game.”

Some might consider McDaniel’s competitiveness obsessive, but her mother, Janice McDaniel, who raised Aimee as a single parent, sees it differently.

“Aimee is not a perfectionist, but she doesn’t settle for less than 100% from herself and expects it from others,” she said. “Raising such a strong-willed child wasn’t easy.”

Especially when semiconscious neighborhood boys stagger to your door to complain.