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Guard Duty Ashley Takata picked up the nickname of "Toast" from her teammates for her propensity to get burned on defense. But the Kalani guard has left many more players scraping off the charred edges in her three seasons with the Falcon girls basketball team.
Ashley Takata leads a Kalani
team expected to contendBy Jason Kaneshiro
jkaneshiro@starbulletin.comThe 5-foot-6 point guard led Kalani to the Oahu Interscholastic Association playoffs last season by averaging 30.8 points per game in a remarkable five-game span and enters this season as one of the top returnees in the OIA East.
But as Takata's scoring average has ballooned, her ego has not, allowing her to laugh off ribbing from her teammates.
"She's really down to earth," Kalani coach Mike Zane said. "Although she's scoring all these points, she doesn't hold herself above her teammates. They look up to her, but they know she's one of them. ... That's what makes her so fun to work with."
Takata's scoring at the end of last season has carried over into this year's preseason schedule. She scored 19 points in Kalani's 58-42 win over Kaiser in the championship game of the Lady Falcon Invitational last Saturday.
She also hit for 27 points in wins over Moanalua and Aiea in the Punahou Wahine Classic two weeks ago.
Kalani continues its preparation for the OIA East season by playing in the Radford Girls Basketball Classic this weekend. The Falcons open the regular season March 19 with a game at Kaimuki.
Takata was an OIA East first-team selection as a freshman in 1999 and a second-team pick as a sophomore. Last year she was named to the division's first team and was a Star-Bulletin All-State second-team selection.
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Takata's hot streak at the end of last season helped Kalani sneak into the OIA playoffs at 6-4. But with four senior starters returning, the Falcons find themselves in the spotlight this spring."A lot of the other coaches are saying that we're supposed to be the best in the East," Kalani center Jodi Segawa said. "But it's all just talk until we actually play. We haven't proven ourselves yet."
Takata and Segawa began their basketball careers in the famed Kalakaua Athletic Club program. Kalakaua has produced many of the state's best players through the years and holds its Sunday clinics at Kalani's gym.
Takata played in tournaments in Oregon and Las Vegas with the Kalakaua team last summer and worked on ridding herself of her moniker by focusing on her defensive skills.
She will also have to adjust to facing defenses designed to stop her this season.
"We're getting her to realize she's probably not going to get those 30-point games," Zane said. "She's going to have to do a lot more of the other things.
"We expect her to be double-teamed or teams to play tight man on her and deny her the ball entirely."
Takata will run the Falcon offense as the team's point guard, and the defensive attention devoted to her could translate into more points for Segawa, senior forwards Chenty Bonifacio and Lauren Cheng and freshman shooting guard Tamari Miyashiro.
"She's a really good passer and she knows how to get the ball to the open player and that opens up the whole game for everybody else," Segawa said.
"We'll put the ball in her hands and let her direct what's going on," Zane said. "Sometimes she likes to overplay and do things more on her own. That's when we get on her and she realizes if she spreads the game out to her teammates more can be created."
Takata began her scoring binge last season after a strike by the state's teachers shut down public schools for two weeks. She averaged 11.3 points in Kalani's three losses before the strike, but the break helped Takata find her shooting touch.
"We were supposed to be practicing (during the strike), but all we did was play around," Takata said. "We didn't practice at all. It took a little stress off of us and helped us relax."
When the schools reopened, so did Takata's offensive game. She turned in a 13-point performance in a loss to Roosevelt and scored 14 against Moanalua as the Falcons picked up their first win.
Takata then led Kalani on a five-game winning streak over a nine-day span by scoring 30 points against Kahuku, 27 against Kaiser, 32 against Kailua, 38 against Farrington and 27 against Kaimuki. Thirty of her points in the Farrington game came in the second half.
The season ended in the first round of the OIA playoffs with a loss to eventual state champion Aiea, which has beaten the Falcons in the playoffs each of the last three years.
The disappointment of the loss now serves as motivation for the Falcons, and Takata's attitude helps keep the Falcons loose entering a season of heightened expectations.
"She's happy-go-lucky," Segawa said. "She doesn't let a lot of stuff bother her."
"She's one of the better players in the state," Zane added. "And yet she enjoys just being a kid."
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