Skilled 6-foot junior leads Campolindo
Campolindo-Moraga girls basketball coach Art Thoms III chuckled Tuesday while recalling the first time he was introduced to Haley Van Dyke, the team’s star post.
Van Dyke was dropped off for practice with the Lafayette Lightning AAU eighth-grade team, a team started by Thoms six years earlier.
“The mom was sort of apologetic because Haley had just started playing competitively,” Thoms said. “She was a little concerned her daughter might not be able to keep up.”
Within five minutes, Thoms — son of the former Raiders defensive tackle — assured mom her daughter would be “juuuust fine. I think we can work with this,” he said smiling.
A former swimmer, volleyball and soccer player, Van Dyke was a quick and humble study.
The 6-footer has emerged as one of the top juniors in California, leading the Cougars (27-6) to their first state championship game in 20 years. They play Rosary Academy-Fullerton (29-5) for the Division 3 crown 2 p.m. Friday at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
Van Dyke averages 23.9 points, 15.4 rebounds, 4.9 steals, 3.5 blocks and 3.6 assists per games and is coming off a NorCal title game-record 46-point performance in a 78-56 win over St. Mary’sBerkeley on Saturday.
“It just sort of happened,” Van Dyke said about her career-high outburst. “All of us were focused on winning and getting to state. Everyone did their job. I was getting open and my teammates got me the ball.”
Typical reaction, said teammates.
“That’s so Haley, she’s so modest,” said junior guard Grace McGuire. “She had no idea how many points she had.”
Added junior guard Jessi O’Reilly: “We’re calling it the quiet 46.”
That’s because all of it was in the framework of a system based on roles, sharing the ball — “no one cares who scores,” Thoms said — and blocking out.
“She gets about 40 percent of our rebounds,” Thoms said of Van Dyke. “She’s such a great athlete. Her anticipation to where the ball is going is incredible. There’s parts of her game you just can’t teach.”
Her mom, Sue, was an all-around athlete at Las Lomas-Walnut Creek and her dad, Mike, played high school basketball in Missouri.
“She just wants the ball more than any one else,” McGuire said.
Van Dyke’s rapid rise in basketball circles — Oregon and Washington are showing interest — has caught her off guard. “I definitely wasn’t thinking about college basketball when I started in the eighth grade,” she said. “It’s just kind of weird.”
Ashley Thoms (the coach’s daughter and the team’s second-leading scorer at 15 per game), O’Reilly and Van Dyke made the varsity team as freshmen and took some lumps in a 14-14 season.
They were 25-6 and earned a NorCal bid last season, but endured a pair of humbling defeats to nationally-ranked — and arch-rival — MiramonteOrinda, including a stinging 102-38 loss that the Cougars didn’t forget.
When Campolindo broke Miramonte’s 67-game league winning streak in a 49-44 victory on Feb. 3 — “We’ll call it a very sweet win and leave it at that,” Thoms said — the Cougars knew their seasonlong goal to make the state finals was legitimate.
“I think some looked at girls basketball on our campus as a joke,” Ashley Thoms said. “Especially after giving up 100 in a game. Now, I think, we have respect.”
The respect might be new, but the inspiration has been there for some time. Scott Lunger, one of coach Thoms’ best friends and his former partner in the Hayward Police Department, was shot and killed on duty in July 2015.
A wooden plaque engraved with Lunger’s name and badge number (106) hang above the locker-room door. All the players touch it before games and practice.
“He was one of the hardest working men you’d ever know,” said Thoms. “He was passionate about his craft. We try to carry that passion with us in everything we do.”