Her Name Is Equaled by Game

She’s the girl whose name precedes her reputation, but is as memorable for her basketball skill as she is for the vowels and consonants.

Huntington Beach’s Phouangmaly Pravongviengkham is a mouthful and a handful. And when she steps on the floor Saturday for the Costa Mesa Kiwanis Club’s Orange County all-star basketball game, she is liable to open some eyes the way she has the last couple of weeks.

“Of all the point guards we have in there, she might be the most natural one, the purest,” said Laguna Hills’ Lynn Taylor, who is coaching the South against the North at Orange Coast College at 5 p.m. “I like her game. In terms of timing, I think she’s the best distributor of the ball on the team.”

Mind you, this is a team with Ocean View’s Jennifer Tuiolosega, who is going to University of San Diego, Costa Mesa’s Koo Kim (Air Force) and Taylor’s own Tamara Inoue (California).

Taylor had not seen Pravongviengkham until she showed up at the mandatory all-star practices. He had heard and read about her, and the name stuck in his mind for obvious reasons.

Her full name is pronounced Pwong-MUH-lee Pruh-vawn-vee-en-kum, or as her older brother Sone says, “just the way it’s spelled.” It wreaked havoc at Dwyer Middle School, which had last names printed on the back of basketball jerseys. The shrunken letters started on her left waist, went up to her shoulders and ended on her right waist. Pravongviengkham, 17, says she learned to spell her name by the time she was 4. She tells her friends to call her “Pong.”

Her parents arrived in the United States by way of Thailand and the Philippines in 1981 after fleeing Communist-led Laos, where she was born.

Pravongviengkham has developed into quite a player since. A 5-foot-5 point guard, she made the varsity as a freshman. After averaging 12.5 points as a junior, she averaged 17.7 points and five assists as a senior for the Oilers. She shot 35.9% from beyond the three-point arc, 42% from the field and 68.2% from the free-throw line.

Huntington Beach ended the season 16-11, playing in the tough Sunset League; the Oilers even appeared in the county’s top 10, rising as high as No. 8.

At her healthiest, Pravongviengkham was one of the county’s best players. Before she sprained her ankle and missed four games and parts of two others, she was averaging 19.8 points and six assists. A slashing player who excels at driving to the basket and pulling up for the 12- to 15-footer, she is among the county’s quickest players.

“When she’s on,” Kim said, “you can’t guard her.”

Pravongviengkham was Huntington Beach’s leader by example. She’s very quiet. In fact, Coach Bill Thomson said it was tough to get a read on her because she said so little.

“Before she got hurt, she was the heart and soul of the team offensively,” Thomson said. “Pong is like a crutch; when the shot clock got down to five seconds, she could make something happen. I bet in that game Saturday night, in terms of pure basketball talent, there’s no one there with any more than her. I honestly believe that. And I know who’s playing.”

Thomson and Pravongviengkham didn’t always see eye to eye, especially during her junior year. He wanted her to distribute the ball more often, play her best defense for a full game instead of in spurts, and be more disciplined in her shooting.

“Because I asked her to play within the confines of the team, it was a rude awakening for her,” Thomson said. “But to her credit, she came back this year and was making an effort to do that. She made great strides in that direction. She was playing fabulous until she got hurt.”

The all-star practices have provided quite a learning experience for Pravongviengkham, who probably will attend a community college next year, probably Irvine Valley.

“I pick up stuff here and there that I didn’t learn, basic stuff, like when to bounce the ball to the player, when to drive, when they’re going to take a good shot,” she said. “I think it will improve my game a lot.”

Said Taylor:”I was interested in having her on the team simply because of her reputation. There’s always a surprise in these games, and she’s been the surprise for us. I had heard of her for two or three years, but I didn’t realize how good she was.”