Family Matters Just as Much as Basketball for Mendiola

There is nothing more important to Giuliana Mendiola than her family.

Except basketball.

There is nothing more important to Giuliana Mendiola than basketball.

Except her family.

For the El Toro senior basketball player and youngest (along with her twin brother Lucciano) of nine children of Alicia and Edgardo Mendiola, life is all basketball and all family.

As the Chargers prepare to play Moreno Valley Valley View tonight in the Southern Section Division I-AA playoffs, Mendiola, a 5-foot-10 guard who has signed to play with Washington next year, has scored 2,935 points in her high school career. Mendiola passed Costa Mesa’s Olivia DiCamilli this season to become Orange County’s leading scorer. She also has gone past Lisa Leslie (2,896 career points at Morningside) to rank No. 2 in the Southern Section behind only Cheryl Miller’s 3,446 at Riverside Poly.

Mendiola’s coach, Vincent Avitabile, says Mendiola is “the best player I’ve ever seen.” He also says that without a doubt, and given the choice between Brea’s Chelsea Trotter (signed with Stanford), Harbor City Narbonne’s Ebony Hofmann (USC) and Chino Don Lugo’s Diana Taurasi (Connecticut), “I would pick Giuliana on my team. That’s how good she is.”

So, OK, you say. What’s her own coach going to say?

But then you ask Ty Watkins, coach at Foothill High. Mendiola scored 55 points against Foothill, including the Chargers’ final 19 points in a 71-62 victory.

“She’s a great player,” Watkins says. “She’s a lot of fun to watch and that’s the hardest thing for a coach to say when he’s talking about a player he has to play against.

“She scored 55 and didn’t miss a shot in the second half. It didn’t matter what we said, what we did, she just took over the game. We tried to double her every time she got the ball; she’d just duck under the double. Or she’d step out to 26, 27 feet and hit the three. Or she’d slip the screen and pass the ball to someone else for an open layup, or she’d shoot an underhand scoop shot.

“Those other great players in the area, they have a little more of a supporting cast. Washington’s getting a little bit of a diamond in the rough, I think.”

That’s the thing. It’s hard to believe that a player who is averaging 34.5 points a game this season, as well as 6.1 assists and 10 rebounds, and who has made 48.8% of her three-point shots (98 of 201) might be unknown, or at least underknown. But Mendiola might be.

“She didn’t go to all the big camps or play on a big-name traveling team,” Avitabile said. “Her family doesn’t have a lot of money and Giuliana doesn’t care about stuff like that. So, no, I don’t think people know her as much as they should.”

It is impossible to talk about Giuliana without talking about that family.

Her mother grew up in Peru and was a basketball player of some note herself.

“My three sisters and I played for the team in Lima,” Alicia says. “We were quite famous and were in the newspapers all the time. We represented Lima in the national championships and were invited to the selection camp for the world championship team. Our coach was Gene MacGregor. You know, the MacGregors that make the basketballs? You know, growing up, basketball was all that was in our heads.”

In 1964, Alicia and her sister, Maria, moved to New York City, where they already had family. In New York, Alicia met Edgardo, an Italian-Peruvian with sporting genes of his own. Edgardo was a semipro soccer player. Alicia and Edgardo married and began having children. Nine of them.

There’s Marietta, 31; Eddie, 30; Giovanni, 29; Piero, 28; Gigi, 25; Fabrizio, 20; Gioconda, 19, and the twins, Giuliana and Lucciano, 18.

“We moved to California,” Alicia says, “because of the weather, you know? You have nine kids, you want nice weather so they can play outside.”

And play they have. Soccer was the sport of choice for the older kids. The family has supported itself through an Italian restaurant named Donatelli’s in Costa Mesa. Edgardo is the chef. All the kids work there. When there wasn’t work, there was play. Soccer and basketball. All the time.

“We were always playing some game, boys and girls together, all the time,” Gioconda says. “And my brothers never cut us girls any slack.”

Gioconda was watching Giuliana at practice Wednesday afternoon. Having finished her own high school career last year, Gioconda has postponed college for a year. She will be going to Washington with Giuliana.

“We’ve wanted to play together our whole lives,” Gioconda says. “Sometimes I would feel bad. Schools would be recruiting Giuliana and not me and I’d think I was holding her back.”

“But that was never true,” Giuliana says. “It didn’t matter where we’d go, as long as we go together.”

When they were young, 6 and 7, Gioconda thinks, they both wanted to take the number 13 as their own. Thirteen had been Alicia’s number and the girls had loved to hear their mother talk about basketball.

Alicia had the two sisters play a game of one-on-one. Winner got 13.

“Even though I was a year older, Giuliana was bigger and better,” Gioconda says. “Giuliana won and got 13. But that was OK. We’re sisters. It’s all in the family.”

Giuliana still wears No. 13. Gioconda took 31. If this sounds as if it is the perfect story of family values, you would also need to know that there are some places where the Mendiola family will never be welcomed again.

“Giuliana is the best player I have seen in 14 years of coaching,” says Mary Mulligan, the coach at San Clemente. Giuliana scored 40 against San Clemente this year, and San Clemente plays good defense. “I wouldn’t have said that about Giuliana last year, but she has gotten so much better. As a rebounder. As a passer, she’s a great passer. She’s not exceptionally quick, but she plays smart.

“But her family? They have improved a lot and are not as vicious as they used to be. Unfortunately, they have not been a huge positive for Giuliana’s reputation and they really could have been.”

The Mendiolas all come to El Toro’s games, home and away. That includes all the brothers and sisters, Alicia’s sister Maria--who lives with the family, who does all the videotaping, who even blow-dries Giuliana and Gioconda’s hair every morning--Maria’s son and Alicia and Edgardo’s 10 grandchildren.

They are loud. They are raucous. Are they out of control?

“I don’t think so,” Avitabile says. “It’s just that they are so noticeable at girls’ games. We just haven’t had a lot of that type of support in Orange County at girls’ games.”

In 1998, when Gioconda was a senior and Giuliana a junior, there was an incident at the prestigious Santa Barbara holiday tournament. El Toro was playing Taurasi’s Don Lugo team. Gioconda got knocked hard on a pick and, maybe in retaliation, elbowed Taurasi in the throat. Taurasi’s father came onto the court and a Mendiola family member came from the stands to the edge of the court. Then, after the game, a high school student who had been cheering against El Toro was confronted and later filed assault charges. In addition, El Toro fans, the majority of whom were Mendiola family and friends, were accused of being rude and harassing opposing players in the lobby of a hotel.

After the tournament, El Toro’s athletic director suspended the team from another holiday tournament and Santa Barbara tournament officials said El Toro would not be invited back.

“I don’t understand,” Alicia says. “For a long time, there were no complaints. You go to college games, the cheering is louder, louder. In high school, it’s amazing. We get complaints. Everybody is about freedom here except for us. What about freedom of cheering? We’re not gonna hurt anybody.”

There has been no reported trouble this season. At Foothill High, Watkins says, “the family came and supported their daughter, their sister, and they made it a lot of fun. They got our fans fired up and we thought it was great.”

Family. Basketball. It’s all the same to Giuliana.

She comes home after every game bruised and scratched. She is tugged at, pushed, pulled, bumped, kicked, tripped. She doesn’t lose her temper. She doesn’t stop scoring. Her family hugs and coddles her until she and Gioconda and Fabrizio, who plays basketball at Saddleback College, and Eddie and Giovanni and Lucciano and whoever else is hanging around grab a basketball and go to the driveway.

Then Giuliana is pushed, pulled, bumped, kicked, tripped. She doesn’t lose her temper. She scores.

Family. Basketball. It’s all the same to Giuliana.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com