AOTW Amanda Angulo

Age 16 | School Holtville | Grade Junior

If one were to put in a call to Central Casting for one basketball phenomenon, please, to go, it’s highly unlikely the agency would trot out Amanda Angulo in response. The Holtville junior is listed at a somewhat generous 5 feet, 4 inches tall and is proportionally slight, but — make no mistake — she can really hoop it.

Captain of the Holtville girls’ team, Angulo is a quiet assassin, eschewing the classic rah-rah posturing of many team leaders, preferring to lead by example.

It’s a solid strategy, seeing as her play is loud enough to speak for two.

Already a meaningful contributor last year as a sophomore — she finished second on the team in scoring — Angulo has thrived in an expanded role, doubling her production from seven to 14 points per game to go along with 6.6 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 4.8 steals.

A natural pestermite, she excels at forcing turnovers at the top of the Holtville press and using her superior ball-handling skills to ensure nobody can turn the table on her team.

Her strong run of play has helped power a young Viking squad — which rosters 50 percent underclassmen and only one senior — to an early 5-0 record, which, according to head coach Murray Anderson, is the school’s fastest start in more than 20 years.

Four of those five wins came at last week’s Maranatha Christian Eagle Classic, which the Vikings emerged from as undisputed champs with nary a scratch on them.

Angulo led the team in scoring in every game except for one — against host Maranatha Christian — where her 12 points came in second to Orian Anderson’s 17.

Yet that outing was probably her best performance of the year as she dominated all other facets of the game, finishing within shouting distance of a quadruple-double by adding eight boards, eight assists and a whopping nine steals to her aforementioned 12 points.

True to form, Angulo hasn’t spent much time reveling in these successes, though she admits that the tournament win was “really exciting for us,” especially considering preseason expectations (“I knew we had it, but I didn’t think we’d go undefeated”).

She is keeping her eyes on the prize looking to make sure the team is ready for the challenges of tomorrow. She said she feels the team has come together pretty well after adding a lot of new faces and expressed hope that they’ll remain competitive all year long.