Cautiously Optimistic

These days, all is footloose and fancy free for Kelsey Ball.

In “those days,” as she refers to them, some that were dark and

discouraging and not in the too distant past, the Huntington Beach High

senior painstakingly had to learn one lesson, in particular, over and

over again: how to put her best foot forward.

You see, Kelsey Ball, for all her natural athletic ability, was bitten

by the injury bug. Hard. In fact, over and over, again. Same ankle. Same

setback. Yet she never gave in, nor up. Her tenacity has brought her back

to full health in this, the last of her four years of playing girls’

varsity basketball for the Oilers.

And that same tenacity is one key reason she has been able to secure a

full athletic scholarship to Pepperdine University next fall.

“If you were to tell me at the beginning of my freshman year that I

would go through all of this and still be able to come through it all

with a scholarship, I wouldn’t believe you,” Ball said.

To be interested in basketball in the first place is interesting

enough in the case of Ball, who played soccer since age 4 and kept up

with the sport at Dwyer Middle School. It was somewhere around sixth

grade, she said, that a few coaches noticed her out on the soccer field

and talked to her about going out for basketball.

It was hard to ignore Ball, a fullback, she was the tallest girl out

there.

Today, she is 6-foot-1 and plays forward/guard for coach Ryan

Bettancourt’s Oilers.

One of those coaches who encouraged Ball to give hoops a try was

Shannon Jackosky, who coached the California Academy in womens club

basketball. She was immediately impressed with Ball’s willingness to

learn the game.

“She was so astute and was such a diligent learner,” Jackowsky

recalled.

Prior to the beginning of her freshman season at Huntington Beach

High, Ball broke her right thumb. She rallied back to average 14 points

and earn the team’s MVP award. In her sophomore year, she seriously

injured her right ankle. Coming down off a rebound, she landed on the

foot of one player and rolled the ankle.

“I felt it instantaneously and it was the first big injury in my life

where I said to myself, ‘Uh-oh, what was that?,”’ she said.

Ball, one of Huntington’s scoring leaders, was sidelined for three

weeks.

It was also during the summer leading up to that sophomore year that

Ball attended a basketball camp at Pepperdine University in Malibu. She

caught the attention of Waves Coach Mark Trakh, who had previously built

a powerhouse girls’ basketball program at Brea-Olinda High.

“We were extremely impressed with her abilities and told her then that

we were seriously interested in her, and we meant it -- and then she got

injured,” Trakh said.

Ball came back from that ankle injury to play in the Marina

Tournament, where she re-injured it again in a first-round game.

But her reserve endured. She went full steam ahead during the summer

and into the fall of her junior year before the unthinkable happened: she

injured the ankle yet again, during a team scrimmage and just one day

before the first game of the season.

“I thought, ‘Not again!’ I had worked so hard to come back. I was kind

of stunned,” she said.

She didn’t return to the lineup until late last January, wearing

plenty of tape and a leg brace. She was eased back into the lineup but

didn’t play a whole lot.

An extremely important piece of encouragement Ball received during her

down time came from Pepperdine assistant women’s basketball coach, Jody

Wynn, who sent a letter to Ball urging the then-junior to keep her head

up and that Pepperdine was behind her recovery.

“That meant a lot to me. I still have it,” Ball said of the letter.

That letter also was of importance to Pepperdine -- and sincere, Trakh

said.

“We showed our loyalty in our pursuit of her and figured come crunch

time on the recruiting trail, we knew she’d keep us in mind. We’re

extremely happy to have her,” he said.

With the first full week of the 2002 Sunset League season underway,

the injury-free 17-year-old, who for the past three years has won the

Principal’s Award for carrying the team’s highest GPA -- right now, it

stands at 4.6 -- is averaging a team high in points (16) and rebounds (7).

“I’m convinced that she’s going to have a healthy season,” Bettencourt

said. “Kelsey has meant quite a bit to this program. As a coach you don’t

get a player of her caliber too often.”