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New Role But Same Result

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Not long ago, Raquel Alotis was wearing a basketball jersey instead of a coach’s whistle. It doesn’t take much prodding for her to revisit the past.

Eight years ago, the Chatsworth High girls’ basketball coach was a senior at Peninsula High, playing for legendary coach Wendell Yoshida on one of the best teams in state history.

Peninsula finished 33-0 in 1991-92, winning the state Division I title. USA Today ranked Peninsula No. 1 in the nation.

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A sweet-shooting guard, Alotis averaged 10.5 points and made a team-best 38% of her three-point shots that season despite battling mononucleosis.

Alotis, who went to UC Santa Barbara, was among six Peninsula players who received Division I scholarships.

Alotis, 25, credits her days playing for Yoshida in helping her turn around the Chatsworth program. Some of those days were fun, some were not. But they all had a common theme--winning.

“Several times I’d come home crying,” Alotis said. “I wanted to transfer. My dad would say, ‘Tuck in your shirt, pick up your lip, let’s go.’ It was good for me. It made me stronger. It got me to work hard. It was effective.”

Said Yoshida, in his 20th year of coaching: “She had some tough times, I know. The program is very demanding. We push our kids to the limit. It’s a lot tougher mentally than physically. I’ve always said that the mental is to physical as four is to one. But she was a tough person and a tough player.”

This season Alotis has guided Chatsworth to an 18-4 record, including 9-0 in the West Valley League. Last year, the Chancellors were 16-12 in Alotis’ first season, a marked improvement for what had been an ailing program.

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The North Valley League champion in 1996, Chatsworth bottomed out the season before Alotis’ arrival, finishing 5-17, 1-9 in league play.

Yoshida, who has guided teams at defunct Palos Verdes and Peninsula to 13 consecutive league titles, chuckled when told of Alotis’ success.

“She’s got a better record than we do,” he said. Peninsula is 15-10 and had a streak of 94 consecutive league victories snapped earlier this season.

“She was always a student of the game,” he said. “She studied it. She had a good feeling and understanding of it. That’s probably why she’s a coach.”

Alotis played on back-to-back state champions in high school, starting for Palos Verdes’ Division III championship team in 1990-91 before the school was closed and consolidated into Peninsula the following school year. Those two teams, with essentially the same players, had a combined record of 65-2.

Alotis’ college career paled by comparison. She played only two seasons at Santa Barbara.

“I lost the love,” she said. “It became a job. It was no longer fun.”

She remained at Santa Barbara as a student, earning a degree in history with a minor in physical education.

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Upon graduation, she moved to Northridge and lived in a guest house, unsure of her future. She started as a daily substitute at Chatsworth, sometimes teaching in the classroom, sometimes teaching physical education. The latter got her noticed.

Alotis would walk into a P.E. class with attendance sheet in hand, sizing up faces she had never seen, and would manage to teach the kids a thing or two about the pick-and-roll.

Chatsworth athletic department personnel liked what they saw, though it was still a risk, calculated or not, to hire Alotis as girls’ basketball coach.

“It was a shot in the dark,” said Bud Dow, chairman of the P.E. department and a member of the committee that hired Alotis. “She had good enthusiasm, so we took a shot.”

A shot, it turns out, that has been heard around the City Section.

“Here’s someone who’s young and energetic and with it,” said Coach Rich Allen of North Hollywood, who won his 300th career game last week. “It’s scary. Her players are driven. They’re focused. They’re fundamentally sound.

“They go out and play Southern Section teams in tournaments. They do all the things we did to build a program. I’m a fan . . . unless we play them in the playoffs.”

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Sophomore forward Liz Sun, like Alotis, was a newcomer to Chatsworth last year. She has invested trust in Alotis since day one.

“Most of my coaches, I’ll question what they tell me during a game until I try it myself,” said Sun, who is averaging 16.1 points and 8.3 rebounds. “But for her, I’ll do it without asking. I have complete faith in her. She’s taught me a lot, not just on the court, but off of it.”

With one game left in the regular season, Alotis is still teaching fundamentals. She insists on her players’ denying the ball on defense and throwing crisp passes.

At times, she sounds like Yoshida.

“It’s a democracy,” she said. “Whatever I say, goes.”

But she acknowledges personal weaknesses, clicking them off like a grocery list.

“I have to attend clinics,” she said. “I need more drills. I need to get better in coaching the post players. I need to continue to learn and grow.”

In the end, it will probably be just like her days as a player. She will win a lot more than she loses.

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