Ashley Reynoso, an incoming junior at Righetti High School, said she sometimes feels like the new kid on the basketball block.
Despite being the starting power forward for the Righetti varsity basketball team, Reynoso is quick to remind us that she’s only been a basketball player for three years.
In eighth grade, she joined her Lakeview Middle School team at the urging of the Lakeview coach and her friends.
“The coach was like, ‘You’re just so tall and athletic, I think you’d be great at it,’” Reynoso remembered. “So I went out for it, and then I just fell in love with it.”
Basketball and Reynoso turned out to be a match made in heaven, and the 5-foot-10 rebounder extraordinaire has made great strides with her game over the past few years.
At the End of the Trail Tournament in Oregon in early July, Reynoso was named to the All-Tournament Team after leading the SLO-based 3Ball Club team to a first place finish.
In six tournament games, Reynoso averaged 11 points, seven rebounds, and two blocks per game, as her team defeated quality teams from Utah, Washington, and Oregon.
“There was a lot of good competition up there, more than what you see down here,” Reynoso said.
While the good competition was reason alone for participating, the End of the Trail was also a college showcase. Reynoso is still too young to be officially recruited by college coaches, but the scouts undoubtedly took notice of her in Oregon. Reynoso said she’s received emails from college coaches here and there.
“I still feel like I’m getting to know the whole process,” she said.
Since Reynoso was a latecomer to basketball, elevating her game to the level of her peers didn’t come easy at first.
“I would always stay after practice and shoot, or I’d go work out at the YMCA or something—just always trying to improve my game,” she said.
Because of that hard work, Reynoso is able to depend on the fundamentals she learned: boxing out for rebounds, getting good position in the paint on offense, and learning to out-work her opponents.
“Defense and rebounding is definitely my specialty on the court,” Reynoso said. “I’m boxing out a lot. I remember in our tournament game, at one point I was boxing two girls out at once—just really using my defensive strengths.”
Righetti basketball had a breakthrough season last year, finishing 22-5 and winning two CIF playoff games. Reynoso said it’s no coincidence that the Warriors’ success coincided with the hiring of Desiree Domingues, a former star at Righetti, as head coach.
“We have an amazing team, and Desiree is an amazing coach. I’m so glad I’ve gotten the opportunity to play for her,” Reynoso said. “I believe that next year we should go pretty far. We’re all looking forward to going back to CIF and everything like that.”
This article appears in Jul 21-28, 2016.