Gifted Lasek has myriad choices

It would be difficult to find a sport that has been transformed as dramatically in recent years as girls' basketball. As high school tournaments get under way this week, this second of a two-part series about school stars past and present illustrates just how much has changed.

WESTHAMPTON -- They take their girls' high school basketball seriously in the small mountain towns that constitute the Hampshire Regional school district, so the sub-zero temperatures of a late January night weren't about to stop anyone from navigating the undulating backroads to take in their beloved Red Raiders' biggest game of the season.

The reason to squeeze into the gym was a given. Central High of Springfield was bringing its big-city swagger and undefeated record into the hilltowns, a month after slapping Hampshire with one of its two defeats, by a 2-point margin. With 6-foot junior Necole Evans, already twice named a Street & Smith's honorable mention All-American, a menacing figure on the Central side, the Red Raiders would need to be at the top of their game to extend their 48-game home winning streak.

As it turned out, they were. Before a packed house that included coaches from Boston College, Clark, and Westfield State, the Red Raiders overcame Evans's 25 points and handed Central its first loss, adding another chapter to a legacy that began long before the team's current players were born.

Five state championship plaques sit in the school's trophy case, the last coming in 2003, when a 13-year-old eighth-grader stepped to the line with 24 seconds left in a tie game and sank a free throw that gave Hampshire its first Division 2 title since 1978.

That foul shot was a glimpse of the athletic potential of Annie Lasek, now a 15-year-old sophomore whose future in sports seems limitless.

Many of the more than 10,000 girls who play high school basketball in Massachusetts participate in more than one sport, but Lasek's preternatural gifts put her in a different category. The depth of Lasek's precocity is almost startling -- she was a starter in three varsity sports before age 14 and an all-Western Mass. first-team selection as an eighth-grader.

In many ways, Lasek is the perfect daughter of Title IX, the kind of female athlete that backers of the legislation were hoping would be spawned after the law was enacted in 1972. Indeed, Lasek's generation is so far removed from the struggles of the past that it is impossible for her to believe that times were ever different.

"Certain things I've heard people talk about seem odd, such as when women say they didn't have the same opportunities [as men]," said Lasek. "I can't even picture it."

But the more athletic opportunities for players with Lasek's skills have grown, their future options in Division 1 college sports have shrunk. As seasons have lengthened and competition has heightened, the chance to play more than one sport at a major school have virtually disappeared.

Thus, for multitalented athletes such as Lasek, early decision doesn't apply only to choice of a school, but also to which sport to pursue.

Simply a wunderkind
It takes a few minutes for Lasek to tick off all the sports she likes to play. Hockey, golf, tennis . . . and her not-so-secret passion, football.

"If I were on a team, I'd be either the quarterback or wide receiver," she said, a set of braces revealed by her shy smile.

"Oh, I could definitely see her at wide receiver," said Jay Fortier, her basketball coach at Hampshire Regional. `I know she could pull that off."

With more than two years of high school remaining, Lasek's accomplishments are prodigious enough:

She made Hampshire's varsity basketball team as a seventh-grader (the school of 873 students is a junior-senior high), then gained a starting position the following year on what would become the state championship team. She earned all-Western Mass. second-team honors as a freshman on the Red Raiders' 2004 state runner-up squad.

She waited until the eighth grade to try out for soccer, then volunteered to play goal, an unfamiliar position, after she learned the team had no one to fill the spot. She responded with shutouts in the Red Raiders' first four victories, then this season was named first-team all-Western Mass. after recording 13 shutouts and allowing only 12 goals while backstopping Hampshire to the Western Mass. Division 2 finals.

She was all-Western Mass. first team in softball as an eighth-grader and as a freshman; her batting average in 2003 was .528 and she had six assists as a center fielder. Last season, she hit .425.

"She's just so athletic, the best natural athlete I've ever coached," said Fortier. "Not a practice goes by that she doesn't catch a pass that can't be caught, or make a pass that can't be made. Some kids are just born with a feel for the game, and she's one of them."

Hampshire enters its Western Mass. MIAA tournament quarterfinal game tomorrow night as the No. 1 seed in its attempt to win a third straight sectional Division 2 title. The Red Raiders went 18-2 during the regular season playing a schedule consisting almost exclusively of Division 1 opponents, with Lasek, a 5-foot-8-inch forward, averaging 11.8 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 4.7 assists.

She has played every position ("She has the best post moves of anyone on the team," Fortier said), and college coaches have taken notice; Lasek has received about a half-dozen recruiting letters, the first arriving when she was an eighth-grader.

Creating opportunity
A quarter-century ago, Hampshire's first female star, who remains one of the state's greatest high school basketball players, had to mail her own resume in search of a scholarship.

"It was really something to get a letter from a college coach back then," said Naomi Graves, who led Hampshire to four consecutive state titles from 1975-78 and got just one letter, from the neighboring University of Massachusetts.

"Initially, you went to [the colleges]," said Graves. "There was no videotape to send, just audio tape from radio broadcasts, so you'd put that together with some clippings and mail them to the coaches."

Graves was the first girl to reach 2,000 points in Massachusetts history; still, the congratulatory certificate from an area newspaper citing the achievement sits in the Hampshire trophy case, congratulating Graves on "his" 2,173 points.

Today, Graves is in her 14th season coaching Springfield College; then, the skinny forward with before-her-time inside moves and a sweet jump shot wound up at the University of Rhode Island (she remains second on the school's all-time scoring list with 1,862 points) only because her physical education teacher was an alumnus and thought Graves might like to check out the campus.

"Hopefully as a player in the '70s and '80s, we paved the way for the players today," said Graves. "Title IX changed the world. Women now have the opportunities that men have had for years."

If Lasek could switch eras with Graves, her athletic life would be much simpler and far less frenetic. There was no high school soccer for girls in the 1970s; now, when soccer season ends, basketball starts. Softball practice begins a day after basketball finishes.

"When she came off the field after losing a really tough overtime game in the Western Mass. soccer finals, I thought she'd be devastated," said Fortier. "Instead, she looked at me and said, `It's basketball season.' "

Choice predicament
A generation ago, playing multiple sports in high school wouldn't have been an issue. With few scholarships available, concentrating on only one was hardly necessary. But now the rules have changed.

"She's at the point where she'd like to put basketball No. 1," said Lasek's mother, Maureen Groden. "It is hard to know if she is going to be able to play softball this spring. She'd like to, but she needs to talk with the softball coach as there will be conflicts. Of course, schoolwork comes before all this . . . so we don't know yet. It's a difficult decision."

"I wouldn't have wanted that situation [specialization] for myself," said Sue Peters, who played in the first women's pro basketball league in 1980-81 yet still participated in two sports (basketball and softball) at the University of Massachusetts during the late 1970s.

"It's important for kids to play for the intrinsic reward of sports," said Peters. "Athletes forced to specialize at such a young age, they're missing out on the camaraderie. I would not have stayed at UMass if I couldn't have played two sports.

"But the truth of the matter is, the competition is so fierce that they have to devote themselves to one sport."

It's also simply not enough to be a star in high school to ensure collegiate overtures. Participation in a summer league, usually AAU, is regarded as a must for players seeking exposure and the pot-of-gold scholarship offers. Right after the high school season ends, Lasek will be playing her first year of AAU, joining the Western Mass. Cheetahs and some of the area's best high school players.

AAU ball, which had been in existence for decades, began to explode in the mid-1990s, when various camps designed to expose/introduce high school players to college coaches grew unwieldy in size and made proper evaluation difficult; thus, AAU teams multiplied.

"Coaches preferred to watch teams play 5 on 5 rather than try and see dozens of kids in a camp," said Mike Flynn, who in 1981 founded and still runs Blue Star Basketball in suburban Philadelphia, one of the preminent evaluators of girl high school players. "There are a series of events and camps that girls should go to, but AAU ball is valuable as well."

"It definitely gets you exposure to more colleges," said Fortier. "AAU is a big commitment. But I have mixed feelings about it. [Lasek's] so talented, but you just hope the specializing won't affect her softball. It's a great opportunity and she has to make sure she's doing the right thing. But she has wonderful parents who support her."

Still, Lasek's love of basketball -- "it's just so exciting and fast-paced" -- has been so great that she already has deemed it her vehicle toward earning an athletic scholarship. The next challenge for her family will be making sure she saves enough time to herself to enjoy her teenage years.

"There are more opportunities today and so many other rewards as well," said Peters. "The downside is that kids can't be kids for as long as they used to be."