A Move to the Heart Land : Ventura Guard Anderson Came West and Found New Direction and a Family

Tori Anderson calls it the best move she was ever forced to make.

But this one had little to do with basketball, the game she loves and plays exceedingly well at Ventura College.

This one was about life and matters of the heart. It was about personal growth and hope, not about becoming a standout guard on the state’s top-ranked junior college women’s team.

Five years ago, Anderson left her native New Orleans to live with an aunt and uncle in Vista, just north of San Diego. She was sent there by her family to get a new start, to escape the mean streets that might devour her.

She hasn’t looked back.

“I’m really glad my aunt and uncle let me come to live with them,” Anderson said.

The arrangement, although stormy, at first, transformed Anderson. It gave her direction, stability, motivation. For the first time, she was compelled to follow the right path.

Not that Anderson, 19, was on the verge of self-destruction. But she was headed there and her priorities needed redefining.

“I wasn’t doing well in school,” Anderson said. “My [grade-point average] my freshman year in high school was 1.83. All I wanted to do was play basketball. I didn’t get into too much trouble but I didn’t do what I was supposed to.”

Anderson, by her own admission, was rebellious and unmanageable. She lived with her maternal grandparents virtually since birth, and saw her mother, Leona, only occasionally. Her father was a blurred memory.

“My mom was kind of like not in the picture,” Anderson said. “We have more of a friendship relationship, not like a mother and daughter. We talk during holidays and every now and then.

“The first time I talked to my father in a long time was when he called me last year. But it was like talking to a stranger. . . . I don’t have any feelings for my dad.”

By her early teens, Anderson became too much to handle for her grandparents. That’s when they arranged for Anderson to visit her uncle and aunt, Shannon and Odessa Eskinde, for what she believed would be only a few weeks. The family had other plans.

“Going back was never an option,” said Odessa Eskinde, the sister of Anderson’s mother. “My mom couldn’t keep up with her. . . . When I got Tori, she was used to basically living on her own. She was 14 and drinking a lot.”

The first few months were rough. Eskinde, then 22, laid down the law for Anderson who, naturally, had other ideas. “We bumped heads a lot,” Anderson said. “Me and my aunt went through a lot.”

Once the troubles at home were eliminated, or at least controlled, Anderson concentrated on basketball at Rancho Buena Vista High, where she became an All-Palomar League and second-team All-San Diego County point guard her senior season in 1993-94. She hoped to attend Loyola Marymount but didn’t have the grades and opted instead for Ventura.

Last season, Anderson averaged 10.5 points and is averaging 13.0 points this season for the Pirates (16-0) in Coach Ned Mircetic’s three-guard scheme. Her steady rise as a player, Mircetic says, corresponds to her personal metamorphosis.

*

‘She’s made a lot of progress in the last two years,” Mircetic said. “The clear impression I have on her is that she works very hard to do well. . . . She wants a better and brighter future for herself.

“This is a real positive life cycle she’s in, with basketball and school. This is a very good time and place for her.”

Last week Anderson asked the Eskindes, who now live in Aliso Viejo and attend Ventura’s games on weekends, to adopt her and they agreed. The only obstacle is Anderson’s mother, who always has been opposed to that possibility. But Anderson isn’t concerned.

“They are my mom and dad,” Anderson said.

That, Anderson said, was another move she just had to make.