Road to Pepperdine Runs Through Orange County

Clare Walker and Angie White laugh about the day nearly four years ago when they stood shoulder to shoulder, posing for a photo to accompany their making The Times Orange County All-County team.

“We talk about it a lot,” said Walker. “ If you had told me four years ago that we would be on the same team. . . . “

Back then, Walker played at Huntington Beach and White was at Capistrano Valley. Walker had just been signed by former Pepperdine coach Ron Fortner. White was headed to Nevada Las Vegas.

Fortner resigned. Brea Olinda Coach Mark Trakh made the jump from the high school ranks to a Division I college program. White eventually left UNLV for Pepperdine. Jody Anton, a star at Brea Olinda, finished a successful career at USC and became an assistant to Trakh up the Pacific Coast Highway.

Now, Pepperdine has a distinct Orange County influence. Trakh has had winning seasons in two of his first three seasons. White is the starting point guard. Walker is the first reserve. And Anton just landed the most highly recruited athlete in Pepperdine history.

Things could hardly be better.

The Waves are 6-4 with two losses by a scant two points.

“We’ve got it going off the court,” Trakh said. “We’ve got great administrative support, a great team GPA, we’ve recruited sound academic kids.”

And there are signs Trakh has it going on the court, too.

The program was 15-13 last season despite a rash of key injuries. “It could have been a breakthrough year,” Trakh said, “but this year we should be able to get it through.”

Walker, who averaged 21.1 points and 12.7 rebounds at Huntington Beach in leading the Oilers to a 24-5 season her senior year, is coming off a sophomore season in which her 48 three-point baskets (36.6%) set a school record.

It was her first season in which she wasn’t frustrated by injuries; she had ACL surgery on both her knees in high school. After a redshirt season at Pepperdine, she had arthroscopic surgery on her knee in the middle of her first season in uniform. She played 17 games and averaged 8.2 points and 5.1 rebounds.

Through three games this season, she shot 65% from the field, 60% from the three-point line. She has cooled to 39% from the field and 44% from the arc, but is still averaging 7.8 points and 3.8 rebounds in 19 minutes.

“[The three-point record] was nice because it put me in the guard category,” said Walker, who is a 5-foot-9 junior. “In high school, I was more a post/forward/guard and didn’t have a set position. Last year was the year I finally got my act together and my confidence together. It was nice to see something come out of it.”

She averaged 9.2 points and 5.1 rebounds last season.

Walker, who will be the only player on next year’s team that wasn’t recruited by Trakh, admits it hasn’t always been easy for her. She and Trakh initially didn’t understand each other, she said.

“It took a while for me to understand a lot of Coach Trakh’s team concepts,” she said. “Once I got those, I was able to relax and play. But until then, it was frustrating. Until Coach and I got an understanding of each other, we both struggled and were frustrated. Now, it’s nearly perfect.

“I don’t want to say we didn’t get along, but there was a lot of stuff I needed to learn. What’s great about Coach Trakh is he had high expectations of me, and when I didn’t reach them, he was frustrated, which was great, because he thinks I can be an integral part of the team and an important part of our winning. Which I hope isn’t interpreted as us not getting along.”

You would never know it by Trakh, who says: “She has played up to expectations.”

If Trakh raves about Walker, he goes batty over White, who led Capistrano Valley to the Southern Section Division I-AA title game, averaging 19.2 points and 9.2 assists.

“I always knew she would be this good,” Trakh said. “Angie’s playing great.”

She is averaging 13.4 points, 4.9 assists and 3.8 rebounds for the Waves. She used her redshirt season last year at Pepperdine after transferring from UNLV. While a sophomore with the Lady Rebels, White averaged 11.5 points, 3.9 assists and 1.8 steals, helping UNLV to an 11-15 record. She shot 41.5% from behind the three-point arc.

But her relationship with the coaching staff was strained. And that wasn’t all.

“With the talent that was coming in, and the way things were going, I knew Coach [Jim] Bolla wasn’t going to be coaching very much longer. . . . I knew I wasn’t going to be very happy and we weren’t going to be very good.”

Bolla was replaced before this season.

White, who already knew Walker and Sara Pierce, and who would have seriously considered Pepperdine had Trakh been the coach there when she signed with UNLV, was a redshirt last season.

White stepped in at point guard, a position she had played little since high school. “I was mostly a [shooting guard] at Vegas,” White said. “[And] not playing competitively for 20 months made me very nervous. I didn’t know how I was going to perform.”

Her success has surprised her. She has tried to transfer her attitude in high school to the college level.

“I try to be a leader for the team and do all the things I did in high school--I think I got away from that at UNLV,” White said. “I want to be that person that takes control. I knew that Coach Trakh was going to give me that opportunity to be the kind of point guard he had had in Nicole Erickson and [former Brea Olinda and Pepperdine player] Aimee McDaniel, where they get to run the show.”

White recalled a conversation she had with Walker before their first game to ease White’s jitters. Together, they set their sights on some high standards.

“Our goal,” White said, “was to make a little noise so the Orange County people would hear us.”

Anton started two seasons at nationally-ranked USC, and as a first-year assistant, is reunited with Trakh. She played at Brea Olinda while Trakh compiled a 356-42 record for the Ladycats, and was part of three of Trakh’s four state championship teams.

Despite being bothered by injuries as a senior, Anton averaged seven points, 4.2 rebounds and 1.7 assists; as a junior, she started 27 games and averaged 8.2 points, four rebounds and three assists.

Now, her assists come in a different form. They show up on letters of intent. The most notable is Seattle Federal Way High’s Nesha Thomas, who chose Pepperdine over the major programs.

Trakh gives the credit to Anton.

“We brought in 11 All-Americans on campus,” Anton said. “To land one, for us, is really great, and hopefully that will open the doors for us in the years down the road. For us to be a program that’s highly touted--we want to go to the NCAAs and become nationally ranked--we have to go at it step by step. By getting Nesha Thomas, that’s the first step.”

And a first step for Anton, who hopes to become a head coach at a Division I program.

“It’s a huge honor for me to be involved on staff here,” she said. “I’m very fortunate because there aren’t too many positions where you come right out of college and land a full-time coaching job.”

Thomas represents a breakthrough for Trakh’s program. In the past, Trakh said, Pepperdine was among the final two among some blue-chippers, only to lose out to the bigger “name” program.

“We get one [Thomas] this year,” Trakh said, “and maybe next year we get two.”

Last year, Trakh lost Jean Clark (now a senior at Chino) to Connecticut, and the year before, Chino’s Rasheeda Clark (not related) to Colorado. The Waves are thiiiis close, he says.

But he admits he has made mistakes, too. He didn’t exploit his Orange County ties and pursue Fountain Valley’s Nicole Strange (Oregon) the way he should have. That was the major one, Trakh said. And a player he coveted, Woodbridge’s Melanie Pearson (UCLA), was hardly interested.

“We want to reach the point where a player like that will be as interested in us as we are in them,” Trakh said.

The Orange County pipeline to Pepperdine that Trakh was supposed to have when he was hired hasn’t flowed quite the way he hoped. If it had, maybe Marina’s Shandy Robbins, Pearson and Strange would be there, too.

But he’s happy with what he has--for now.

“These two Orange County kids are tough players,” Trakh said. “They’re fun to coach, too.

“It’s players like them that make being 6-4 bearable.”