One for the books

Angie Bjorklund sat uncomfortably – makeup applied, hair being curled – as she awaited her turn before yet another camera. This time it was for a promotional documentary about yet another honor.

Such is life for one of the nation’s premier high school female basketball players. It wasn’t something she anticipated even as the youngster who dreamed one day of playing for storied University of Tennessee.

“It’s kind of fun,” Bjorklund said about all the fuss that occurred in a room away from the gymnasium at University High where she is in the final stages of her own storied four-year career.

“Basketball is the main part.”

When asked to reflect upon her accomplishments and, if she looked in a mirror did she realize that staring back might be the finest female basketball player to come from the Greater Spokane League, Bjorklund’s answer was typical.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I look so far ahead more than behind. I’m looking at, ‘Dang! I have to work hard because (current Tennessee star) Candace Parker’s pretty dang good.’ And Sidney Spencer is going to be tough to replace and hopefully I’ll be able to do that.”

Her chances are good. When Bjorklund’s career at U-Hi is complete she will have rewritten every Greater Spokane League scoring record, except single-season marks by Adam Morrison, while becoming the league’s first 2,000-point scorer.

She has already been a two-time Parade All-American, a Gatorade Washington Player of the Year (with a couple of other player of the year honors as well), was invited to participate in a USA Basketball age-group team tryout (injury prevented it), and been a member of three successive U-Hi state basketball qualifiers with a chance this weekend of making it four.

And yes, she realized her dream. Bjorklund signed this winter to play for Pat Summitt’s Tennessee Volunteers after committing as a junior.

She had narrowed it to teams with the best programs in the nation, like Connecticut and Duke, but stuck with her original choice.

“My dad (Jim) is a Realtor and he made this analogy,” Bjorklund said. “It is like when he goes around and shows people houses when they already have one house they really want to buy. They always compare them to that. That kind of put this in perspective for me.”

Bjorklund was ticketed for greatness during her formative years because people recognized in her a passion for the game, potential and willingness to do what it took to attain it.

She arrived at U-Hi and had an immediate impact, finishing second in scoring to her sister Jami, now starting at Gonzaga University.

“You think, as a freshman like any other,” said Bjorklund, “that you’ll sit back and observe. You never know what to expect.”

The Titans reached state. The next two years they finished sixth and third and Angie led the GSL in scoring average, even as she struggled a bit with injuries.

First it was her back, then there were leg fractures that many attributed to overwork. Summitt told her last summer when the injury recurred, “Remember, less is more.”

This year, Bjorklund said she’s been injury-free and the results are evident. She is averaging 26 points per game.

But those who know her say that scoring is the least of her attributes.

Ron Adams, her summer Spokane Stars coach, has unabashedly proclaimed her the best female high school player in the country and sticks by his opinion.

“What separates her is that she has no weakness, offensively and defensively in her game,” he said, ticking off her ability to shoot long range, change speeds, attack the basket, play outstanding on-ball defense and know when to help away. Plus she can rebound.

“And her best attribute is passing.”

Her coach at U-Hi, Mark Stinson, sees additional things.

“The nice thing about Angie is she makes other players better,” he said. “It’s not just her scoring that propels us.”

He also says she understands what he calls the big picture. She is a student of the game. When she sat five games last year with the leg injury, he would test her, asking questions about what other teams were doing, or if a teammate needed emotional support.

“There’s a difference between her and other kids,” he said. “She’ll come to me and say, ‘Coach, here’s a play we have to put in.’ Or, ‘Coach, did you see what this girl did? She has this fadeaway.’ That’s why I think she’ll be a great coach, because she learns from other people and other teams.”

That is why Bjorklund, who said her high school experience was more than she could have hoped for – citing relationships made, especially to the teammates who have covered for her absent-mindedness – also loved testing herself summers against the best players in the country.

“It’s improved my game a lot, and in the back of your head it’s fun to see where you compare and how you compete against them,” Bjorklund said.

The recruiting process boggled the mind of both athlete and coach.

“At first it was fun. All your hard work is starting to pay off,” said Bjorklund. “After a while it gets kind of old and you want it to get over.”

Stinson was inundated by recruiters Bjorklund’s junior year. He estimates he was contacted by 80 to 100 colleges, including “a junior college coach who obviously didn’t know what was going on.” He fielded an estimated 10 calls a day.

Stinson had seen it before with his sister, Jennifer, the state’s all-time Washington basketball scoring leader from Davenport who went on to play volleyball and a year of basketball at Washington State and now is a volleyball coach at Pullman High.

But that was as a brother, not a coach.

“I’ve been coaching 15-plus years and it’s a difficult job with a lot of details,” he said. “When you get the extra attention with an Angie, it takes getting used to.”

Summitt said she first heard about Bjorklund from Spokane’s NBC Camps director Fred Crowell, who worked with her at clinics.

“He told me there’s a really talented athlete who could play for you and who loves Tennessee,” Summitt said.

Tennessee coaches watched her play and were impressed.

“You were talking about someone who had obviously been in a gym,” said Summitt. “We liked her offensive package.”

The recruiting process began for the shy young athlete, although she joked that Angie dragged it out with her visits to Connecticut and Duke.

“I’ll get her back,” she said.

Like Adams, Summitt considers Bjorklund the best 1-2-3 combination perimeter player in the country. She said she can play immediately at Tennessee. And she reiterated that Bjorklund is at times too unselfish.

“Sometimes we coaches have to tell a player ‘It’s your time,’ ” Summitt said. “Angie doesn’t want to be sitting with me. She’s too talented to be sitting with me.”

And so it will come to pass that when her high school career concludes, Bjorklund will leave Spokane as one of the most acclaimed of an amazing group of GSL basketball women’s talent – past and present.

“I wanted to play for a big basketball program, even if that did mean going far away,” she said. “When I was little, Tennessee was always the dominant school when I was watching college basketball on TV. I was such a fan I had roots at an early age. It’s hard to turn away from that.”

Coaches like Stinson and Adams, who has worked with all of this area’s best players for a quarter century and more, agree that they will not see the likes at her position for a long, long time.