Former Brea Guard Has Found Her Niche in Luxembourg : Basketball: Seeking fame and fortune in Europe, Schuessler has a little fame and a decent salary with a pro team.

It’s not quite the financial mecca of women’s basketball some countries are, but there’s decent cash to be made.

It’s a notch or two below the best professional leagues in Europe--or for that matter the top collegiate conferences in the United States--but it beats playing for nothing more than pride with a recreational or industrial outfit.

It’s a far cry from the cosmopolitan glamour of Rome or Paris or Madrid, but it’s not Peoria. Or Cleveland.

And for Charlene Schuessler, a simple and unpretentious woman, it’s more than enough.

Schuessler, who was a star at Brea-Olinda High and Columbia, now lives and plays professional basketball in Luxembourg. She arrived there two years ago after going to Europe in search of a chance to earn a few dollars in the game. She found her niche in the tiny country bounded by Belgium, Germany and France.

“I got here kind of by accident,” Schuessler said by phone from her apartment in Luxembourg. “I talked about coming to Europe with a teammate when I was in college, so we came and tried out with teams in Germany and Austria. She caught on with a team in Austria, and I came to Luxembourg. Another friend told me about the teams here.”

Schuessler signed a contract with BC Mess, a team owned by a local health and fitness club. It is one of eight in a Division II league that plays all its games in Luxembourg, the capital city. The 5-foot-5 guard said the caliber of play is comparable to a Division II college league in the United States and the crowds are nothing to write home about. The teams, which are limited to only one American each, play on Saturday nights in a season that runs from September through the end of March.

Schuessler, 23, said keeping detailed statistics is not a priority of the league, but she knows she has scored more than 1,000 points in two seasons and averages about 28 points.

After the league season, the players participate in all-star games and tournaments for club teams throughout Europe. Nobody in the Luxembourg leagues is getting rich from their salaries, but Schuessler said the money is adequate.

“It depends on what division you play and how many years you’ve played,” Schuessler said. “The salaries average $1,000 to $1,500 a month plus they (teams) pay for an apartment and a car. Basically, the living expenses. Compared to Italy, it’s not that much. Those girls (players) are living the high life. They have shoe contracts, penthouse apartments. They get like $80,000 a year.”

To complement her basketball pay, Schuessler manages the offices of the European Formula Drivers Assn., an organization that arranges and sanctions Opel-Lotus Formula automobile races. She said the events, which are two or three steps below Formula One racing, offer great traveling opportunities because they are held in Grand Prix circuits throughout Europe.

“I was lucky to get this job,” Schuessler said. “I put an ad in an English-language newspaper and they (association) called me up about a week later. Everything fit together. That’s one of the reasons I stayed in Luxembourg. For not having any plans when I got here, everything’s worked out real well.”

Things also panned out for Schuessler in her high school and college careers.

Although not a particularly promising freshman at Brea in 1982, she blossomed into one of the school’s all-time great players.

Schuessler holds the Ladycat record for assists with 628, and ranks seventh in the Southern Section in the category. She is also seventh in the section for most assists in one season with 257 in 1985-86, and is fourth in most assists in a game with 26, against Savanna in 1984. She was named all-section in her senior year.

Brea Coach Mark Trakh remembers not being very impressed with Schuessler when he first saw her play.

“I never gave her a second look coming up from junior high. I kind of underestimated her, which taught me a lesson,” Trakh said. “By the middle of her sophomore season, she had won the point guard spot. By the time she was a senior, she had become the second really great point guard we ever had (behind Da Houl, now an assistant coach at Brea). She worked so hard and was very loyal. She was a great student, a great kid and a great leader.”

In Schuessler’s first three seasons at Brea, the Ladycats advanced to the section Division II-A title game twice and the III-A championship game once, losing all three. They finally won the III-A title in 1986, the first championship for the team, with a 54-50 victory over Foothill. Schuessler scored 16 points and had 10 assists.

“She told me before the game, ‘Coach, don’t worry. I’m not going out my senior season a loser.’ The kid had an incredible will to win,” Trakh said.

Amazingly, college recruiters showed little interest in Schuessler, who eventually accepted a grant to study anthropology at Columbia. She joined the Lion basketball program and became a two-time team captain, averaging 10.2 points and 4.6 assists in her four seasons. Her 456 assists are a Columbia record.

“A lot of teams in the area missed the boat by not recruiting her,” Trakh said.

Despite her success at Columbia, Schuessler said her college days entailed more than noisy gyms.

“When I got to college, basketball took a secondary position,” Schuessler said. “School was so intense and the social life was a big part of it . . . I really loved New York a lot. It was four years of adjusting and learning. I had to make a big adjustment when I went from high school to college, and I think that prepared me for coming here.”

Planning the trip to Europe with her friend was easy. Making a go of it once she got there was the trick.

“When we arrived in Munich, we didn’t know how to use the phones. We kept getting busy signals for about five hours,” Schuessler said, laughing. “The German police kicked us out of the airport. We were trying to get in touch with our contacts. We finally called back to the States and asked the operator how to get the call through.”

After unsuccessful attempts to sign with German and Austrian teams, Schuessler struck an agreement with the Luxembourg team. With no accommodations, Schuessler went to live temporarily on a nearby farm with a family that belonged to the BC Mess club. It didn’t take long for her to get a quick lesson on nature.

“I remember one night one of the cows had a calf at 3 in the morning,” Schuessler said. “I didn’t want to get too close, but I watched the whole thing from a distance.”

Because she didn’t speak any of the three primary languages in Luxembourg--French, German and Letzeburgesch--the club assigned a translator to Schuessler the first few months. She negotiated both of her one-year contracts, which Schuessler said are in “broken English,” without an agent. Schuessler said she then started picking up Letzeburgesch mostly at practice because her coach didn’t speak English.

“The translator was a girl on the team who spoke some English,” Schuessler said. “She helped me find my apartment, went shopping with me, took me to the hairdresser. I depended on her quite a bit at first. But English is an international language and a lot of people speak it, so that also helped.”

What didn’t help, however, was the injury she suffered in her first game. While shooting a three-pointer, Schuessler landed on another player’s foot and tore ligaments in her right ankle. She underwent surgery and was out about three months, but came back to help the team finish third in the league. This season, the club dropped to fifth in the standings.

Schuessler said people in Luxembourg are friendly but keep to themselves, so the Americans in the league usually get together Wednesday nights--the only weeknight when the teams don’t practice--for a movie or dinner. She also spends a lot of time on the phone with her parents, Sandy and Dale, who live in Huntington Beach and her sister, Eva, in Rancho Cucamonga.

“I have a huge phone bill calling them,” Schuessler said. “I got to visit them the last two Christmases because the club pays for a return trip home. But I miss them. I’d like to eventually get back home. My sister and her husband have a 1-year-old son I’d like to spend time with.”

She can always take him on fast food runs.

“It’s awful craving a burrito or taco at 12 o’clock at night and not being able to get one,” Schuessler said. “There are no Taco Bells over here.”