Dominique English has got game, and Gulf girls basketball may soar because of it
This article appeared in the Tampa Tribune on July 26, 2003.
Photo caption: Gulf point guard Dominiqe English prepares to shoot against Ridgewood during a summer league game Thursday. Tribune photo by Fred Bellet.
By ANDY STAPLES
NEW PORT RICHEY -- At a boys summer league basketball game a month ago, a parent leans in close and lowers his voice near a whisper.
He's about to tell a secret.
You have to see this new girls point guard at Gulf High, he says. She hasn't even taken a high school class and she already helped Gulf beat Ridgewood in a summer tournament game.
Gulf?
Gulf, which went 2-42 the past two seasons? Beat Ridgewood, which throttled every team in the county last year?
In subsequent weeks, others mention the girl. Their voices drop as they provide eyewitness accounts. A picture starts to form.
She and her dad moved to Holiday last year from suburban Atlanta. She tore up Amateur Athletic Union players as an eighth-grader. Everyone knew she was zoned to attend Gulf, but many privately doubted she would.
Weeks of whispers lead to the River Ridge gym Thursday night, where 51 seconds remain in the first quarter. Gulf leads Ridgewood, 19-0.
Put down that phone. Don't bother calling the newspaper. That score is correct. Ridgewood played without senior guards Crystal Ayers and Jen Barrett, but Gulf's first win against the Rams came against the full squad.
The whispers suggest an urban legend, but her game is real. She is 14. A pile of dreadlocks sits atop her head. She has a 3.75 grade-point average. Her eyes flicker when she sees an open teammate, but they offer defenders no clue as to where or when she will unleash the ball. She looks to pass first, shoot second.
She has a name. It's Dominique English. She was not named after the famous basketball player, Dominique Wilkins. In one summer she has crafted her own highlight reel.
She wears Gulf green. Rodney White says his daughter has been approached by coaches from outside the county, but the family has spurned them.
White and English also were approached by one coach from inside the county. It happened during spring break after a game at the Long Center in Clearwater.
A muscular 27-year-old with wide eyes walked up to White and English and said, "Hi, I'm Mike Quarto, the new girls basketball coach at Gulf High School."
Quarto told father and daughter he wanted to turn around a program that had plunged beyond laughable to just plain sad. White and English had done their own scouting. The Gulf games they saw last year did not inspire confidence.
"They weren't that good," English said. "I didn't know what to think. I didn't want to go."
But this man before them at the Long Center said this year would be different. He'd taken a year off from coaching basketball to get a master's degree in educational leadership. He planned to pour himself into the job. He would not bolt the way the previous three coaches did, after no more than two seasons.
Quarto wanted English to know that.
Quarto had another ally.
Tiara Cook suffered through a two-win freshman season at Gulf. A 6-footer, she could dominate the glass. But no one could get her the ball.
"We just need one more player," she told herself last year.
Cook already knew English. The two played on the same AAU team.
Quarto's energy and Cook's wingspan swayed English. She joined the Buccaneers this summer, and she, Cook, Quarto and the other Gulf players began to resurrect the program.
They will play more than 30 games this summer. At their current pace, they will lose fewer than five. Gulf seniors -- who as freshmen lost a junior varsity game to Ridgewood, 80-8 -- get to win for the first time in their careers.
Quarto feeds his energy to the players like postgame pizza. Meanwhile, English and Cook plot a takeover.
They plan to relieve Ridgewood of the district title. They don't plan to develop slowly. They are children of the digital age. They expect everything in an instant, including success.
Some of Gulf's opponents claim regular-season intensity will drain that bravado, that the young Bucs have feasted on players who won't get minutes in November. Others say the Bucs simply will feast, that English will join Quarto, Cook and the rest to usher in a new era.
Of course, the second group whispers this proclamation.
And as English slices through the lane Thursday, looks left and slides the ball to Cook on her right for a layup, the whispers turn to ooohs, then aaahs and finally cheers.
