Fighting her way out of a dark time

The spring 2004 evaluation had not gone well. Allison Jaskowiak worked out for an hour for USC’s new coach, and barely made a basket. Mark Trakh walked away shaking his head. He called the sophomore from Missouri into his office.

Trakh told Jaskowiak that he would honor her scholarship, and that if she wanted to transfer he wouldn’t stand in her way. He told her she would never play at USC, but “we won’t try to run you off.”

She was angry and sad, and sat there soaking it in. She never said it was unfair. She stood up, teary-eyed, and said “OK.” She hugged him and walked out.

He didn’t hear from her for two weeks.

“I wish I had known what she had gone through before I called the kid in,” Trakh said. “I’m so happy she proved me wrong.”

As a recent arrival from the St. Louis suburbs, Jaskowiak had no friends at USC, no support system. She sprained an ankle her freshman year, and her basketball career under then-coach Chris Gobrecht was going nowhere.

“Basketball was the one thing I knew, and I wasn’t even playing,” recalled Jaskowiak, whose grandfather Charlie “Chuck” Share was the first player selected in the 1950 NBA draft.

She went to a greeting card shop on Oct. 10, 2003, after practice to buy some chocolate. She returned to the dorm suite she shared with seven roommates and ate the candy. All of it.

“I shouldn’t have eaten this much candy,” she remembered thinking to herself. “If I just do this once, it won’t hurt me.”

After running track in high school to get from 165 to 155 pounds, she was in the best shape of her life. Still, she went to the bathroom and forced herself to throw up. The purging had begun.

“After I did it once, any time I would eat more than I should, it became an easy option,” Jaskowiak said. “I could satisfy my hunger and not have the calorie intake.”

She developed bulimia, an eating disorder often caused by stress, depression or low self-esteem.

“I’d say one in three college female athletes are actively in what I call ‘disordered eating,’ either they’re starving themselves to be a certain weight, or they’re bingeing and purging, and it’s starting in high school,” said Gregory Jantz, a certified eating disorder specialist in Seattle. “Eating disorders are on the rise. We had a lot of attention to it in the 1980s, and we’re in another phase, and it’s including even younger females.”

In Jaskowiak’s case, she induced vomiting. Almost 5 feet 11 inches tall, she lost nearly 20 pounds in 2 1/2 months.

Teammates, used to seeing her at 155 pounds, asked how she could eat so much and stay so skinny. They did not know she had been 165 pounds in high school.

She had dropped to 138. Body fat was almost non-existent.

“I’ve always been self-conscious about my stomach,” she said. “I didn’t see how skinny I had gotten. When I look back on the pictures, I can’t believe I wouldn’t notice that. It’s a disorder that just messes up your thinking.”

In December of that first year, Gobrecht called her in. Jaskowiak denied having a disorder, but her coach knew better.

Gobrecht arranged for her to see a doctor, nutritionist and counselor -- who required individual and group therapy -- and wouldn’t let Jaskowiak practice until she got her weight up to 150.

“It really was a full-time job to get better,” Jaskowiak said. “It made getting healthy a priority. I’m very lucky to have had a female coach who had experience with this before. I was also lucky to not be a contributor on the team.”

She had become adept at keeping secrets, but came forward to her teammates, who made her feel more welcome than ever. Two who lived with her were shocked by the revelation.

By the end of the season, she had appeared in three games for a total of six minutes.

She also met a USC baseball pitcher named Ian Kennedy. On a lark, she went on a date with him on Valentine’s day.

There were occasional relapses, but she says she has not purged since March 2004.

After their initial chat, Trakh saw Jaskowiak and point guard Jamie Hagiya running sprints every day with the football team. He knew that Jaskowiak lived in the weight room. Impressive, he thought: “She’s not going to play and she’s working her butt off.”

The sit-down with Trakh had motivated her, not to prove him wrong, but “to prove to myself that I could do this.”

“My strength is my work ethic and my perseverance and my heart, and those are hard to see in a few workouts,” said the scrappy guard-forward whose contributions tend toward scrambling for a loose ball, getting the tough rebound, frustrating the opposition, keeping her teammates focused.

Trakh discovered Jaskowiak was a defensive standout who often gave away 4 to 5 inches and 30 to 40 pounds to blue-chip opponents. He played her in 29 games his first season.

She had proved him wrong.

She was elected a team captain and started 23 games as a junior, 21 as a senior in 2006-07.

Even though she played only six minutes as a freshman because of the bulimia, USC’s compliance officer told Trakh there was no way Jaskowiak would be granted a fifth year of eligibility in 2007-08. Trakh persisted. The Pacific 10 Conference voted unanimously in favor of her. The NCAA agreed.

“The documentation from all the doctors and therapists helped,” Jaskowiak said.

Her statistics this season seem modest, 3.8 points and 3.8 rebounds, but are outweighed by her heart and leadership, her teammates and coaches say.

“If there’s one thing I try to carry with me, it’s to try to have a positive attitude, be energetic and make the most of every day,” Jaskowiak said.

“We’ve had more talented kids, but they’ve never been able to beat her out because she gives 100% every second of every minute of every practice,” Trakh said. “You can’t get her out of the lineup because she’s so tough.”

On Thursday, she was named Pac-10 Defensive Team honorable mention.

Kennedy proposed in January 2007 and they were married on Oct. 6. When they made the date, the couple never imagined his meteoric rise from Class A to the majors -- and a spot on the playoff roster -- in one season. Rehabilitation on his back provided him the opportunity to keep his appointment during the American League Championship Series.

Kennedy was instrumental in his girlfriend’s recovery. He had taken her back to church and his family in Huntington Beach had given her a home base. They dated for six weeks before she told him about her illness.

“He helped me rediscover who I was,” she said.

Kennedy is projected to be the Yankees’ fifth starter.

“She’ll do whatever it takes to get it done,” he said. “She knew what she was doing wasn’t right and got rid of it. She balanced basketball and school, and on top of that tried to deal with me.”

Jaskowiak, 23, has majored in English and minored in business. She is working on her master’s degree in sports administration, and would like to one day be a college athletic director. She is still sensitive when people talk about food or feeling too fat. She is no expert, but she wants to help.

Today, USC faces UCLA in San Jose in the Pac-10 tournament. Jaskowiak will start at forward.

Said her coach, long after telling her she could never play for him: “It’s like a fairy tale.”

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martin.henderson@latimes.com

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TODAY

WOMEN

PACIFIC-10 CONFERENCE TOURNAMENT

No. 4 USC (17-12, 10-8) vs. No. 5 UCLA (15-14, 10-8), San Jose, 7:15 p.m. -- This is the first time these rivals have played in the conference tournament. Fourth-seeded USC has a seven-game winning streak against fifth-seeded UCLA, including victories of 64-56 and 49-36. The latter was the lowest-scoring output in UCLA history. UCLA’s Lindsey Pluimer (14.5 points, 6.5 rebounds) was named Thursday to the All-Pac-10 Conference first team and named conference scholar-athlete of the year. USC has lost three in a row by a combined 11 points. The Trojans are without center Nadia Parker (knee), their leading scorer (12.4) and rebounder (6.7). Controlling the boards could be the difference. The loser has no chance for an NCAA tournament berth.

-- Martin Henderson

OTHER GAMES

* No. 3 Arizona St. vs. No. 6 Washington, 11 a.m.

* No. 2 California vs. No. 7 Oregon, 1:15 p.m.

* No. 1 Stanford vs. No. 8 Oregon State, 5 p.m.