MOVER AND SHAKER

When Clayton Powdrill recently was awakened by a temblor, he jumped out of bed and did something unusual.

He got back under the covers, pulled them up, and, as if wishing to continue the dream he is living, fell asleep.

Powdrill’s calm reflects the composure he shows as point guard for the Kennedy High basketball team. A tenacious defender, he leads City Section players from the region in assists.

Both of those skills will be needed when Kennedy plays at Canoga Park at 7:30 Friday night in the first round of the City Section 4-A Division playoffs.

The maturity Powdrill, a senior, shows on the court can be traced to experiences earlier in life, including the Jan. 17, 1994 earthquake that leveled his family’s Chatsworth home. His surroundings caved in like a stack of cards, with the sports trophies he had accumulated sliding off a shelf and onto his head.

Bricks were ejected from the fireplace and Christmas decorations, some from as far as Denmark and Peru, fell from the tree and shattered on the floor.

Powdrill’s life was also in shambles. The Northridge earthquake recorded a 6.7 on the Richter scale and imprinted a different kind of mark on Powdrill, whose life had always been dedicated to putting a ball in a basket. Trouble used to be committing a turnover on a fastbreak or clanking a buzzer-beater off the rim.

But with the ease that Mother Nature turned a basketball backboard in his yard into a twisted scrap of metal, Powdrill was no longer a child.

“I was just going through life so easily,” said Powdrill, who lived at friends’ houses for six weeks after the earthquake and kept most of his possessions in his mom’s car. He never slept in his childhood home again.

Like most kids who grow up fast, Powdrill isn’t perfect.

Last October, he got into an on-campus fistfight with a schoolmate. Kennedy’s policy is simple: You fight, you leave. Powdrill was transferred from Kennedy to Monroe.

“That really upset me because I felt like I was defending myself,” Powdrill said. “I knew the penalty--fight and you’re gone. But I was terrified. I started to fight back.”

The penalty for both students was enforced by Kennedy officials.

“When there’s no adult witnesses in a situation like that, you put yourself in the bad position of taking one student’s word over another,” Kennedy Principal Warren Mason said. “It was a regrettable situation, but it’s a policy of the school.”

After attending Monroe for several months, Powdrill was allowed to transfer back to Kennedy for the start of the new semester in February.

He was immediately selected co-captain of the basketball team, helping the Golden Cougars (12-10) to a 6-1 record after his return and tie for the West Valley League title.

For once, credit is being bounced Powdrill’s way. In youth leagues, he played with Stanford-bound twins Jason and Jarron Collins of Harvard-Westlake, former Chatsworth standout Eddie Miller and former Cleveland star Junior Brignac.

Operating in the shadows of those players, Powdrill never felt the warm glow of the spotlight.

He also had to overcome a size disadvantage. He wasn’t like oldest brother George, a 6-foot-1 guard who was All-Western State Conference at Valley College before walking on at New Mexico.

Powdrill is 5-11 after growing six inches in the last two years.

His quickness, which has always been there, was on display in a recent victory over Cleveland when he had five first-half steals and converted three of them into layups.

Powdrill’s 8.3-assist average was expected, but his 13.5 scoring average has been a surprise. Other than that, he says little has changed.

“I haven’t done anything different since the 10th grade,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve changed that much. I’m still the same athlete.”

But certainly not the same person.