Phillips Shifting Success to Long Beach Poly Too

Carl Buggs, girls’ basketball coach at Long Beach Poly, knew April Phillips from state regional games played against Harbor City Narbonne. Background player. Good. Nothing like Lisa Willis or Indi Johnson, who starred at Narbonne during Phillips’ freshman and sophomore seasons in the South Bay.

Frustrated, Phillips says, by “a mutual respect issue” with the Narbonne program, she transferred to Poly about a week into the 2003-04 season.

“It wasn’t until after she got here and we saw her on the court that it hit me with exactly what we had,” said Buggs, who has been at Poly for 11 years and has been the girls’ coach for six. “It was like, ‘Wow.’ We had never had a player here, since I’ve been here, that dynamic.”

That dynamic senior is a big reason Poly opens the season as the No. 1 team in the Southland in The Times’ rankings. There’s Phillips, two other returning starters in Ashley Shorts and Candace Nichols, and six others who played a lot. The Jackrabbits went nine deep before adding freshman Jasmine Dixon, a 5-foot-10 guard/forward, who will start.

Dixon may one day deliver the same “wow” factor, but for now, it’s Phillips’ team.

Phillips disputes that notion. “When we walk into a gym,” she said, “they’re playing Long Beach Poly, they’re not playing an individual.”

Nevertheless, opponents know who Poly’s go-to player is in the half court. A 6-foot forward who can play guard, Phillips has signed with Georgia Tech.

“You have to see her on a regular basis to see how dynamic she is and can be,” Buggs said. “She’s an excellent ballhandler, good passer, has good vision, she can shoot from the outside and hit the three, she can post up inside, and she can take you to the hole. And, she can defend. She has all the tools.

“She’s not a real rah-rah type, but she’s always quick to help out teammates. She’s coachable, listens well and I think it’s important to her to go out on top.”

Phillips agreed. She will do anything it takes, even if it means sacrificing her game. “I don’t want to graduate without a championship,” she said.

Phillips won two City titles at Narbonne, but those don’t even register with her.

“Over at Narbonne, winning a City Championship was like winning league,” she says. “That was expected. We didn’t get a ring for winning City.”

Narbonne didn’t win a state title because Lynwood did that. And Lynwood beat Poly last season for the Southern Section Division I-AA championship.

“I don’t want to graduate without a ring, whether it’s [Southern Section] or state,” Phillips said.

New enrollment figures guarantee that winning the section title will be as difficult as ever. In The Times’ preseason and season-ending top 25 rankings last season, only four Division I-AA teams were included; this year, there are five in the top 10 alone, nine in the top 25 and another on the bubble.

Even if the title doesn’t come, it’s easy to sense she will get over it.

“I want to build a rapport with my teammates,” said Phillips, who recently copyrighted a book of poetry. “I want to know that when I go off to college, that we established something, that we established friendships and relationships as a team. I’m a basketball player, but I don’t want basketball to consume my life.”