Have Ball, Will Travel
Serbia, Sweden, Belgium . . . Cal State Northridge women’s basketball players hail from many international locales.
For Lynda Amari, a Muslim of Algerian descent raised in France whose career has taken her from South Korea to Ventura, Northridge was a perfect fit.
Her game is as well-rounded as her background.
A burly 6-foot-1 junior forward, Amari leads the Matadors with 41% three-point shooting and 80.4% free-throw shooting. She is second with 161 rebounds and 61 steals.
“Lynda is our most versatile player,” Coach Frozena Jerro said. “A strength of hers is poise in hostile circumstances. You have to have her in the game in tough situations. She won’t get rattled.”
No Matador has played in more countries, before more people, for higher stakes. Amari, 24, is a proven winner.
Ventura won the state junior college championship in her freshman season and lost in the state final last season, a game in which she played sparingly because of a knee injury.
Amari culminated a three-year stint on the French junior national team by competing the World Junior Championships in South Korea in 1993. By then she was already a seasoned traveler.
At age 12, Amari joined a club team in Dijon, France. She went to school, played basketball and lived with teammates. “I grew up really fast,” she said. “My parents totally supported me and traveled to games. But I was on my own.”
It marked a jarring change from her home in Auxerre, about 40 miles south of Paris. Amari is the youngest of six siblings, all but one of whom played basketball.
“I was on the court chasing my sisters when I was 3, and by 4 I was on a team,” she said. “In our town, the name Amari is known for basketball.”
By 15, she again was the baby--the youngest player on the junior national team based in Paris.
“Those were the best years of my life,” she said. “Can you imagine? Fifteen and traveling all over the world, not having to pay for anything.”
The team zig-zagged the globe, playing in Malaysia, China, the Soviet Union and throughout Europe. But never did she visit the U.S.
Amari had surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee in 1992, and even though she returned the following season to the national team, full recovery took longer.
While playing with the national team, she was talking with Tariq Abdul-Wahad (formerly Olivier Saint-Jean), a longtime friend who was playing at San Jose State.
Abdul-Wahad, who is in his second season with the Sacramento Kings, asked Amari what she wanted to do. She replied that coming to the U.S. was her dream, but she wasn’t eligible for a scholarship because she had no high school degree.
Amari thought no more about it until she received a call from Abdul-Wahad months later. He had checked into California junior colleges and recommended Ventura, a perennial state power.
After recovering from more knee problems--arthroscopic surgery on her left knee--she took a flight to Los Angeles and marveled when she saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
“I spoke only a little English,” she said. “I was shy. I understood more than I talked. For the first couple of months, I didn’t play because of my knee.
“We went all the way to the state championship that season. I was happy, but coming from France, I didn’t know what that meant. I thought, ‘What’s a state championship when I’ve been to the World Championships?’ ”
Amari knows all about the prestige of the NCAA tournament. Northridge qualified for the first time after winning the Big Sky Conference regular-season and tournament titles.
The Matadors will play at Colorado State tonight at 9 p.m. in a West Regional game.
Amari, an All-Big Sky choice, is capable of big-time production. She scored 31 points against Pepperdine in December and scored 25 and 28 in back-to-back conference games against Eastern Washington and Portland State in February.
“Lynda has so much experience in games like this,” said teammate Neda Milic, who played on the Serbian junior national team. “She is valuable when something huge is at stake.”
NCAA Women’s Tournament
First round
Tonight, at Colorado State
Cal State Northridge vs. Colorado State
Radio: Live, KCSN (88.5 FM), 9 p.m.
TV: Live, ESPN2, 9:07 p.m.
