Back on the Run

By Glenn Nelson
HoopGurlz Publisher
Posted Mon, 02/11/2008 - 08:52 Two ankle surgeries have unleashed a storm of three-point shots, penetrations and dishes on the state of Washington.

---

STORY & PHOTOS BY GLENN NELSON

There have been times before this season when Ashley Corral didn't really know who she was. Somtimes she was the player who shot off her right foot. Other times, she was the player who shot off her left. Almost never was Corral the player who shot off both feet, as convention dictates.

"Before, I'd land on the foot that didn't hurt the most that day," said Corral, the star point guard for Prairie High School in Vancouver, Wash.

When Corral is draining threes and throwing seeing-eye passes for Southern Cal next fall and beyond, this season likely will be looked upon as the one in which she found her balance. At times, she has beeen a one-girl wrecking crew for Prairie, and this week earned national player of the week honors from USA Today and MaxPreps.com. Never mind that it required a surgeon's scapel to reveal the balance that unleashed this play from Corral.

A week after dazzling the Washington State 4A tournament with 16.8 points and 3.25 assists against defenses designed to stump her, Corral reported to her orthopedic surgeon for an arthroscopic procedure on her right ankle. What the surgeon found during the surgery was almost shocking.

"Her ligaments were hardly attached," Prairie coach Al Aldridge said. "The doctor said he was surprised she could even walk."

Not only that, the surgeon told Corral and her family that ligaments in both of her ankles likely had been damaged since the ninth grade.

"We knew she was hurt the whole time," Aldridge said. "She just endured it and played through. She's a tough kid."

Tough enough that Corral ended her rehabilitation short to attend USA Basketball's Youth Development Festival, where she was the most sound of the nation's top point guards until taking a spill and turning her left ankle on the last day of competition. No matter. She was in Oregon City, Ore., the next week to play with Prairie in a national high-school tournament, then a week after that was at the Nike Skills Academy, where most of the country's top players were assembled in Beaverton, Ore. Corral played well, but spent much of her free time with bulging ice packs wrapped around both ankles.

Corral limped through the summer, playing for a club team coached by Aldridge, then had the ligaments in her left ankle repaired in August.

The procedures have, in a way, conferred upon Corral's high-school career a kind of before-and-after effect, though the differences are so minute as to not even exist. To wit, she scored a career-high 38 points earlier this season to lead Prairie to an emphatic, 16-point road victory over Skyview, which had been ranked higher, No. 2 to No. 4, in state polls at the time. But it wasn't the first time Corral found the 38-point mark. She did it the first time, on bum wheels, against the same Skyview team last season.

Prairie plays Skyview, to whom it never has lost, for a berth in Washington's state 4A tournament on Tuesday.

"This season, Ashley has been a whole different player," said Aldridge, who collected his 600th career victory earlier this season. "She has better endurance and is a lot stronger. She has more mobility and balance. Her shooting has been much better and she has been penetrating like she used to. As kids will do, she still has days when the ball isn't going in, but overall her shot is really getting dialed in."

Through Prairie's first 20 games, Corral already was ranked first in school history in points, assists, field goals attempted and made and three-pointers attempted and made. Her 14.8 scoring average is the highest ever for a four-year starter. Corral also has made 44.7 percent of her shots, a high-enough mark for a high-school guard, not to mention one who took most of those shots with damaged ankles and lower-back pain caused by the resulting imbalance in her body.

Corral's transformation as a long-distance shooter has been startling. Throughout her career at Prairie, she has been a dazzling ballhandler and passer, able to create passing lanes with penetrator. Yet, those who viewed her on a national stage likely will remember her as a shooter because the ankle surgery in March left her tentative about piercing inside defenses.

"I was a little tense about penetrating in the past because there were so many feet I could land on and turn my ankle again," said Corral, ranked 23rd in the HoopGurlz Hundred for the 2008 class. "I am a lot more confident driving to the basket now. I feel everything finally is starting to go right for me."

Because of her gimpy summer and the fact that Prairie started the season with losses to then-national No. 1 Long Beach Poly and No. 12 Southridge while Corral still was lacking in conditioning, both she and her team have been gliding through her best season ever dramatically under the radar. They since have avenged the loss to Southridge, beaten Post Falls, the top-ranked team in Idaho, and Campbel County, one of Wyoming's best. But because Corral's best play has occurred with the national spotlight switched off, her coach fears she may have missed out on honors such as the McDonald's All-American team.

"It would be a shame," Aldridge said, adding, "Ashley Corral can make up for a lot of deficiencies (on your team). She's a lot for us like Angie Bjorklund was for University. When your stuff breaks down, she can create things, either for herself or her teammates. It's a nice commodity to have as a coach. ... She's allowed us to do things we've never been able to do. And we've given her more creativity and freedom than anyonee in the history of the school. She's just so good at what she does."

Corral remembers watching a basketball game years ago with her mother, who excitedly pointed out the virtues of nearly every player on the television screen. When Corral asked what was the big deal, her mother explained that it was the McDonald's All-American Game, and the players were the best in the country.

"Until then, I thought McDonald's was just about fast food," Corral said. "But ever since, I really have wanted to be an All-American."

Even so, if her surgeries cost her such honors, Corral says winning a state championship will have been worth all the pain and sacrifice. Prairie made the championship game at the end of her sophomore year, but lost to Spokane's Lewis and Clark, which now is the two-time defending titlists. Though the 2006 Prairie team was favored and featured a front line of eventual Division I performers, this year's edition may have a better shot - because of Corral.

"One thing about the first surgery is that people wondered, 'why now?' " Corral said. "Why do it before a very important summer for me? And I had a pretty bad summer. But I got the surgery to get ready for this, for the high-school season. If I don't get to be an All-American, or this or that national award, and I win a state title with my teammates, I wouldn't trade that for anything."

---

Discuss This on Our Message Board:

Click Here

---

Glenn Nelson is the founder and publisher of HoopGurlz.com. He is a member of the McDonald's All-American Selection Committee, Parade All-American Selection Committee, SportsShooter.com (Click for Porfolio), Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Photoshop Professionals, National Press Photographers Association, Online News Association, Society of Professional Journalists and U.S. Basketball Writers Association. Glenn also founded and coached two select girl's basketball teams and previously was the editor-in-chief at Scout.com, a managing editor at Rivals.com, and a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The Seattle Times. His work has appeared in several books and national magazines. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing, 2002). For more on Glenn's World, click here. Glenn can be reached at glenn@hoopgurlz.com.

---