WISE BEYOND YEARS

The red-and-white championship banners hanging from the rafters in Albright-Van Woy Gymnasium are reminders to all who enter that Inglewood Morningside High is a basketball school.

The retired jersey numbers of Byron Scott (11) and Elden Campbell (14) hang above one side of the court, and those of Lisa Leslie (33) and Tina Thompson (14) hang above the other.

It will be three hours until the girls’ varsity game tips off, but one of the best players at the school has already taken her usual place alongside the girls’ frosh/soph team. Her team.

Twila Stokes is ready to get to work -- as coach.

The 17-year-old hadn’t planned it this way. She focused on studies, worked hard on basketball, did her best at everything she could. But along the way, she expressed a maturity, a knowledge, an insight for the game that stuck with her varsity coach, Frank Scott.

So when Scott got in a bind before the season began and found himself in need of a coach, he took an unprecedented step of turning to one of his varsity players.

“Are you up for the challenge?” he asked Stokes.

It was the right call. On Tuesday against Beverly Hills, Stokes’ team won for the sixth time in 10 games. In two previous seasons under adult guidance, the frosh/soph team had not won a game.

“She’s going to be a great coach someday,” said Scott, who recalled that he had to force Stokes out of the gym the first day she ran a practice. “She spends time with the kids on and off the court. She’s patient, never gets angry.”

Stokes works out with the varsity squad until 3:15 p.m. and, after her teammates head home, she stays behind another 1 1/2 hours to run her own practice, bark out her own directions, mete out her own punishments.

That’s not all she does. She’s the senior class treasurer, tutors two students two nights a week, is involved in peer mentoring and mediation programs, and carries a 3.1 grade-point average.

Classmates have taken to calling her “Coach Carter.” She is not getting paid nor is she getting any course credits for the extra work.

When it comes to her team and those first days on the job, Stokes’ eyes alight and she breaks into that “you-have-no-idea-what-I’ve-been-through” look.

“It’s been really hard,” she says of coaching underclassmen. “They had so many attitudes. They always want to express their opinion. Certain games I had to bench players because they were doing stuff, like eating on the bench. I told them not to eat on the bench and they did it anyway.”

Welcome to high school athletics, freshman-style.

“If it was me, I might have let them go,” Scott said of some of the eight freshmen Stokes took under her wing. “Maybe being near their age helps, but when she talks, they listen.”

It is evident at halftime in a game Friday against Hawthorne. Morningside bolted to an 11-2 lead, and Stokes is embarrassed that it’s 18-17 after two quarters. One of her players, Norshay Ehirim, has issues with a Hawthorne player, but Stokes is calm. Others also feel like a couple of the opposing girls are too physical.

“If you’ve got a problem with anything that’s going on, tell the referee,” Stokes explains in her big-sister way. “If they hit you and you hit back, the referee’s going to see you. He’s not going to see the other girl.”

In the fourth quarter, Ehirim makes her way over to the referee and Stokes’ advice works. Despite what Stokes tells her team was “a horrible ending” -- the little Monarchs didn’t make a field goal over the last three minutes -- they hold on for a 44-40 victory.

On her way to Scott’s office afterward, a voice comes from behind the Hawthorne bench. “Nice job, Coach.” It’s Greg Mollgard, 43, the losing coach from Hawthorne.

“At this level, schools sometimes just get people to fill the spot,” Mollgard said, alluding to the notion that some coaches are simply baby-sitters. “You can tell she knows the game. She’s composed, knowledgeable, an excellent coach. It’s neat that she can do both, play and coach, and have the respect of the younger girls. Sometimes that’s hard.”

There have been defining moments -- when Stokes confronted a referee about a call and, after the game, he admitted he had misinterpreted a rule; when she addressed a Beverly Hills coach after some boys threw rocks at her players outside the gym, and when she laid down the law after players showed up late for practice.

“We felt that because she was a student coach, we could be late,” Ehirim recalled. “We had to run the track, and then run lines in the gym. She really let us know that when she says something, she means it. That’s when we realized she wasn’t playing with us.”

But the season has been a remarkable success. “I haven’t had one cruel parent this season,” Stokes said. “And only one time has anyone said, ‘What are you doing, you’re not the coach.’ ”

The reality is that Stokes is the coach. When she sees players on campus, she’s on them about getting to class. When they don’t go right to the basket after grabbing a rebound, she rolls her eyes in frustration. When a boy in the top row of the bleachers derisively yells, “Let’s go USC,” she fires a look that could knock down a fighter jet.

And, she admits, on Jan. 21, she crossed over into coaching adulthood. She went from being more concerned about improving their basketball skills, which was her focus at the beginning of the season, to improving their life skills. The rock-throwing incident at Beverly Hills created a row among players, and Stokes told her 14-year-olds, “You have to be better than them.”

Her greatest attribute, Ehirim said, is that “she truly respects us.”

Said Scott: “Twila’s only obstacle is her age. The district wouldn’t allow [me to hire her]. But she’s very mature -- she’s 17 and you’d think she’s 27 sometimes.”

Because of her age, a certificated school district employee must accompany the team. In this case, it’s volleyball Coach Loriann McKinnon, who knows nothing about basketball.

Shortly after coaching her team to victory over Hawthorne, Stokes slipped out of her sleeveless turtleneck and into something more comfortable, her No. 24 jersey, and put into practice what she had preached. She delivered 18 points and 19 rebounds in a 65-31 varsity victory.

She didn’t stop there. She coached her team to a 42-30 victory over Beverly Hills on Tuesday and followed with 19 points and 18 rebounds in a 67-48 varsity win.

The frosh/soph season ended Tuesday, but Stokes scored 17 points and had 15 rebounds in helping Morningside (21-6) defeat Inglewood, 62-52, in an Ocean League finale Thursday. Senior guard Saida Johnson had 26 points and six assists in the victory that earned the Monarchs a share of the league title with Santa Monica at 9-1. The Southern Section playoffs begin next week.

She has averaged 14.8 points and a section-best 15.4 rebounds. Nearly 5-foot-11, she is quick, long-armed and strong when defending and rebounding.

Stokes would one day like to be a judge, but, she says, “you have to be a lawyer first and I don’t want to be a lawyer.” Her second choice is teacher. She is the rare athlete who wants to major in mathematics.

“Any four-year university will do,” she said, “because I’ll be the first one in the family.”

The daughter of Beverly Smith and Thomas Stokes, Twila has an older stepbrother, an older brother and sister and a younger sister.

But there’s nothing solid on the scholarship front. In fact, there are none, though Scott, who from 1991 to ’97 was as an assistant at USC, knows most colleges could benefit from her presence.

And even though she played in the shadows of Lori Rayford and Natasha Thomas during last year’s Division III-AA championship season, Stokes has made an impression unlike any player the last two decades.

When Scott hears the question -- Of all the great players he has coached since 1980, how many would he have entrusted with his basketball program? -- he answers in a heartbeat.

“To be honest, zero,” he said, “except for No. 24.”