Tossing Out the Old in Favor of New : Girls’ basketball: Channel Islands’ Hotchkiss changed for better after plaque-throwing incident, on-campus fight.

Channel Islands High guard Shawanda Hotchkiss will be at Buena’s Division I-A championship game--but not as a player. As a reluctant spectator.

Hotchkiss had burned to play in this game against the Bulldogs--a second-round loss to Cerritos dashed her hopes--and her motivation went beyond winning a championship or upsetting Buena, a nearby rival and perennially one of the state’s top teams.

“It’ll be hard watching them play knowing we should have been there,” she said. “It’s a total heartbreaker. That would have been the best thing in my career.”

A Channel Islands-Buena game would have been a public confirmation of her turnaround, a chance to show how much she has matured since the last meeting between the teams.

Hotchkiss received plenty of notoriety that day in December, 1992, when her outburst turned a traditional postgame glad-handing into an “incident.”

Channel Islands had just lost to the Bulldogs in the championship game of Buena’s annual Kiwanis Club holiday tournament. Hotchkiss, then a junior and livid at the defeat, approached a Kiwanis member to receive a runner-up plaque.

Rules of decorum normally apply. Shake the hand, smile--even through tears, if need be--and return quietly to your seat.

The smiling man handed her the plaque.

Hotchkiss flung it against the gym wall.

“Everyone went, ‘Oooooh ,’ ” she says. “I didn’t care. I just walked off.”

Channel Islands’ fate was sealed with a Hotchkiss. Buena Coach Joe Vaughan dropped the Raiders from the tournament this season and refused to play them in summer league.

Says Channel Islands Coach Don Salado: “I don’t blame him.”

Plaquegate received attention in local newspapers for three days. Hotchkiss says she was criticized for several days at school and is still reminded of it.

So does she regret it?

“Honestly? No.”

No?

“People say I should regret it, but I was young and when you’re young you do things like that,” she says. “It will never happen again. I learn from my mistakes.”

After several years that featured lackadaisical effort in school, delinquent behavior and emotional outbursts that she was unable or unwilling to control, Hotchkiss pronounces herself a changed 17-year-old.

“I’ve finally figured out what high school basketball is all about,” she says. “It’s not about just being out there and playing. It’s about going to school, getting grades and--if you want--going to college and doing bigger and brighter things.”

As everyone who knows her is proud to point out, such talk is not mere spin doctoring. It has substance.

On the court, the 5-foot-7 shooting guard was more disciplined this season, more diligent and easier to coach. She averaged a team-best 16 points a game, was named the league’s co-player of the year and led the Raiders (23-4) to the Marmonte League championship and a top 10 state ranking.

She is skilled enough to play at the NCAA Division I level and has attracted interest from USC, among others. But she has not yet scored the requisite 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test in order to be immediately eligible for NCAA athletics. If she doesn’t, she will attend an area junior college.

More striking is Hotchkiss’ quantum leap in her non-basketball life, in which she was formerly a classic underachiever--except when it came to getting in trouble.

The senior with the frank, lively face and dangling braids freely talks about ways she used to spend time: “Fighting, mouthing off, roaming the campus when I wasn’t supposed to be.”

Her sophomore and junior years were her worst, riddled with academic difficulties and discipline problems, including the infamous plaque toss and culminating with an on-campus fight for which she was suspended from school and forced to pay restitution for the other girl’s visit to the doctor.

“That really shocked me,” said her mother, Faye Jackson. “And I think it made her look in the mirror.”

She did and saw her life in a jumble, as fragmented as broken glass. So she began putting the pieces back together.

She joined the track team and excelled in the triple jump. Salado, who coached the boys’ team, watched her respond to the positive attention she received from the coaches.

Salado took over the girls’ team last summer. He was the only one, she says, who didn’t deride her for throwing the plaque. But he did ask her to write a letter of apology to Vaughan. She did.

Says Salado: “I can honestly say I haven’t had one problem with Shawanda. Her complete change has made me respect her a lot.”

Hotchkiss also took school more seriously and improved her grade point average a full point. Assistant principal Wayne Lamas says she hasn’t received detention or been in trouble this year.

“She’s really turned it around,” Lamas says. “You wish every kid sees the light like she did.”

Hotchkiss helps young players during park league practices and games. She also has turned counselor, telling anyone who will listen not to go astray.

“If I had a chance to go back in time, I would erase all that stuff,” she says with a somber but intense look in her brown eyes. “I regret everything I did, and it’s not cool.”

She realizes that keeping her cool is cool.

She was named to the All-Gold Coast tournament team in December, and the announcer called her to midcourt to hand her the award. The crowd applauded as she accepted the trophy. She turned toward Salado with a mischievous look and reared back as if to hurl the trophy.

“No!” yelled Salado, who now laughs at the memory.

The new Hotchkiss burst out laughing. Only kidding.