Her intangibles are off the charts
At 5-foot-3, this point guard knows there’s always a way to beat taller players
This past summer, Les Hamaguchi remembers watching the Canadian national team during their run to the bronze medal at the FIBA Americas Under-16 Championships in Mexico.
“I found the Internet stream on my computer,” recounted the longtime head coach of the senior girls basketball team at Richmond’s Steveston-london Secondary.
“And there she was, this kid a foot shorter than almost everyone else, just controlling everything. I caught myself laughing.”
Hamaguchi was watching his own star player in action, a player who has starred on his senior varsity team since she was in Grade 8.
“If things get tough, it doesn’t affect me because at the end of the day I play because I love the game.”
— Steveston-london guard Anmol Mattu
Despite standing 5-foot-3, Grade 11 point guard Anmol Mattu is one of the most electrifying players in the province, a package so brimming with skill and positive basketball karma that despite her lack of stature, it’s no stretch to say that she towers over her competition.
“If things get tough, it doesn’t affect me because at the end of the day I play because I love the game,” said Mattu, who leads host StevestonLondon into the back-door round at the Lower Mainland Triple A championships tonight (5 p.m.) against North Vancouver’s Carson Graham Eagles.
“Yes, sometimes the girls are towering over me because I am short. But there’s always ways to beat people.”
Hamaguchi has coached for decades and he’s never been around as complete a player as Mattu. And the scoring dervish, who is averaging close to 30 points per game this season for the Sharks, has also made a big impression on her other hoop mentors, such as DRIVE Basketball’s Pasha Bains, and senior national team coaches Allison and Mike Mcneill.
And what anyone who’s spent any amount of time around her will tell you is that her biggest strengths are self-belief and an unflappable nature.
“Let’s face it,” said Hamaguchi, “when you’re that size, you have to be off the charts with your intangibles, and that is just where she happens to excel.”
Ask Mattu, 16, where she gets her grit and she’ll explain that she comes by it honestly.
“Right from the start, I have had an aggressive approach to playing basketball,” said Mattu, who also excels in the classroom with a near-perfect 3.9 GPA.
“When I was really young, I grew up playing against all of my male cousins, and you have to have that drive and aggression or you can’t score as easily against the boys.”
A sponge for learning, Mattu credits Allison Mcneill for helping add new dimensions to her game this past offseason through Mcneill’s work with Basketball B.C.’S Centre For Performance (CP) training group.
“Over the summer, the main thing that I improved was my mid-range game,” Mattu said, explaining how she discovered that her dribble penetration moves could get her into prime scoring positions without the danger of being blocked inside.
“Everyone was like an average of 6-foot-3 on the national team and it was difficult to go all the way and score against the big trees. So Allison has always been about me getting quicker into my shot. I do have a quick first step, so I have to hit the pull-up shot.”
Yet despite her passionate addiction to the game, Hamaguchi is quick to point out that Mattu is wellgrounded, carrying her point guard’s vision into all of the other things that make up her busy life.
“I have been doing this now for 35 years,” Hamaguchi said of coaching high-school basketball, “and I don’t know that I have ever coached a player that worked this hard on their game. But as clichéd as this sounds, she is a nicer kid than she is a player, and she is an unreal player. Her maturity level is well beyond anything you’d expect from someone her age.”
Working hard to maintain her high academic standing, Mattu nonetheless shoots for at least an hour on every non-game-day morning, then does another 90 minutes of work after her team’s two-hour practices are finished.
“I have this routine where I mark six spots [around the three-point arc] and I have to hit 10 from each spot before I can leave,” she said. “Then I have to make a certain amount of pull-ups. That kind of stuff. It is something that tells me that I can’t get frustrated, that I can’t ever give up on myself.”
As Hamaguchi explained, her intangibles are off the charts.
And for someone standing just 5-foot-3, that’s fitting, because Anmol Mattu will always be measured by the things you can’t measure.