Abby Ward can have a frozen, even frantic look on her face when she is madly trying to navigate a press applied by La Jolla High’s basketball opponents in the full court. Meanwhile, at the CIF diving finals last spring – her first trip to the championship in her novice year of jumping off the board – she wore a serene and smiling expression in the heat of competition.
How could that be?
“It was my first year in diving,” explains the senior, relaxing on the family sofa before fall classes resume, yards away from the backyard pool where three friends and she cooked up the idea to try out for diving just before the season. “There were no expectations. And, I did it with friends.”
Classmates Molly Saraspe, who with Ward qualified for the CIF finals at Mesa College, Kate Miller, and Vanessa Itkowich, conspired with Abby – the four all juniors at the time – to try something none of them had done and to add something to their college applications. “It was just a joke at first,” relates Ward. “And there were no tryouts,” so none of the quartet of friends was going to get cut from the team.
Lo and behold, Saraspe and Ward did a creditable job at CIF, and Ward, at least, plans to go out for diving again to finish her senior year next spring. “Oh, yeah,” she says when asked, without hesitation.
There’s another recent activity that went well and that is close to the 17-year-old’s heart. Supported by a loving family, including her mother Marybeth and father Bryan and four siblings, she recently returned from a mission trip to Peru with 18 fellow youth and five adults to minister to needy children in the capital city of Lima. The poverty was real, but more impactful, Abby says, was the fact the youth from the U.S. could truly connect with the kids over the two weeks of the trip.
“I loved going,” she says convincingly. “We played with the kids all day, then were going to their school and teaching them English. There were five people (both youth and adults) in our group who spoke Spanish, so we felt like we could really communicate with the kids.
“What was fulfilling was how grateful they were. Feeling that your trip was worth it. We finished a community center, and worked on a medical clinic. We were told that these would benefit 15,000 people.”
Perspective. This word and concept come up multiple times in conversation with Abby as she reflects on her past year, and looks forward to her last year in school before college (which she hopes will be at BYU, though UCSB and Cal Poly SLO are on her list, too.) The connection she made with the children in Lima meant something deeper to her.
Gaining perspective has also had to do with how she has planned out her senior year. She took two Advanced Placement classes her junior year, which is not onerous. But the work involved still demands a large chunk of time, and with family, faith, sports, and friends to juggle, she’s not going to repeat a similar schedule this year.
Ward isn’t slacking off. She holds four-year college clearly in her sights for next year, with a November application deadline for BYU. Instead, she views the alteration in class schedule as getting more balance. “Hopefully, I’ll have an easier schedule,” she says, “with (time for) friends, do sports.”
“When students take five AP classes, they end up stressed out” and not enjoying their high school experience, she says. “This year I’ll only have five periods. I’ll be able to come home (she drives herself), and when I’m in sports, I’ll have time before practice after school.”
“We as a family enjoy sports,” says Marybeth, Abby’s mother. Nolan, who is 14, is going to try out for the Viking boys golf team in the spring. As if on cue, Mom is carrying a basketball and another ball as she passes through during the interview.
When informed after the interview that her player is an excellent ambassador for her program, for the school, and for young people in general, La Jolla High girls basketball coach Darice Carnaje replies by email, “That is great to hear. I’m a lucky coach to have her on the team.”
Ward, though not an elite athlete, is a hard worker who is pretty essential to Carnaje’s offense and defense to be on the floor, along with fellow guard Rebecca Saul. The two are scrappers who maximize their contributions to the team by sharing bringing the ball up court against the press on offense, and playing feisty defense at the other end of the parquet.
The 5 foot 4 inch tall student athlete would seem to be the dream team member a coach would want to have on her squad. Ward says she stays pretty focused in practice – “I try to take what I learn in practice and apply it in the game” – and though her good friend Miller is a teammate, she isn’t inclined to joke around with her during Carnaje’s well-organized practices.
Carnaje’s team in her first year moving over from more than a decade at Our Lady of Peace achieved more than it had a right to expect before the season, in view of the roster and the inexperience of the girls who populated that roster. Repeatedly, in games against superior opponents and even at later points in what appeared to be lost games, players on the bench were still shouting encouragement to their teammates and standing up to slap them on the back.
It seemed more than a coach-mandated “you better be picking one another up” kind of thing. Another reason the mutual support among team members was convincing was that Carnaje models the same positive stance: standing throughout the game, enthusiastically clapping and shouting instructions to her players on the floor, while in the huddle affirming the good and focusing on what needs to be done rather than running a player down for making a mistake.
Ward would seem to be a prime receptacle for this positivity. In a lengthy, hour-and-a-half interview, she shows herself to be respectful, engaged, but not attempting to impress or to try to be someone she is not. The dynamic in interviews of high school student athletes with a sexegenarian reporter they only know from seeing him take photos at the games can vary quite a bit. Abby shows herself to be humble, real, and unassuming as far as relating what it’s like to be a rising senior from what seems to be, from all indications, a happily grounded family.
Regarding her serious expression during basketball games, she says she’s trying to concentrate on the task at hand. “Like against the press–where you need to be, then where to go to recover” when opponents advance the ball.
She helped her teammates make the transition in coaches a year ago. That seems to have gone well, and this fall the basketball team and other indoor teams will be able to practice in the newly refurbished gym, which has been having its leaky roof of past years repaired and the exterior being patched and repainted as part of the general upgrade in facilities in the La Jolla High sports complex.
Ward took a willing attitude into learning diving for the first time last spring. She and her friends trained at Coggan Pool on campus under Coach Janelle Sherako without harnesses or ropes, so they had to take verbal instructions and try to carry them out from the beginning on the diving board.
“I learned a double front flip” in her first season, Ward recalls proudly. “We did it without video. Coach Janelle told me to stay in a ball.”
She remembers “a lot of back flops” in training during her first try at the sport. “Sometimes our coach would bring wetsuits, which helped with the sting in hitting the water.” Ward is honest: “It was hard to learn new dives.”
“All four of us friends were at different skill levels,” she says, so they worked on different dives. Looking ahead to next spring, she says, “Hopefully, I’ll get more difficult dives so that I can get better placement for CIF finals.”
Though not considering herself a major risk-taker for her willingness to try diving for the first time – basketball started in a similar way in ninth grade, with friends – she does allow, “I’m, for sure, willing to try new things.”
“I think it was easier (in diving) doing it with three other people,” she says. “We had each other watching each other’s backs. You’re always going to have failure in sports, so it’s not a big deal.”