Overview:
Jordyn Lilly broke the career scoring record for Bishop Diego High School girls basketball with 1,288 career points — a mark that her mother, Paula Charest Lilly, held for 35 years
Like mother, like daughter.
That familial combination will be represented for the first time in the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table’s Hall of Fame when former Bishop Diego High School basketball star Jordyn Lilly is inducted on Monday.
Paula Charest Lilly, her mother and a basketball star from Bishop’s Class of 1978, was inducted three years ago.
“Jordyn got in a little quicker than I did,” Mom quipped to Noozhawk.
Her daughter won CIF-Southern Section Division 5A Player of the Year and All-State honors after leading Bishop Diego to its first section championship since … Mom.
Jordyn’s 1,288 career points eclipsed a school record that her mother had once held for 35 years.
“I am proud to say that my mom is a legend,” Jordyn said. “I had little knowledge when I was growing up of the impact that my mom had on the sport and Bishop’s program.
“There is a different kind of fire and passion in her eyes when she talks about the sport and all the memories it holds for her.”
A Man’s World
Sports had been an old-boys club before Paula and her peers pioneered high school girls’ athletics in the Santa Barbara area.
I played four different, CIF-sanctioned sports during my own salad days at Bishop Diego.
My female schoolmates got to play … none.
But the times were soon a-changing.
Title IX — the federal civil rights legislation that prohibited, among other things, sex-based discrimination in schools — was signed into law mere days after my high school graduation in 1972.
But it wasn’t until 1983 that the Athletic Round Table Hall of Fame inducted its first female member: U.S. Open Table Tennis champion Wendy Hicks Stockwell.
She joined a fraternity that already included 25 male Hall of Famers.
It took another full decade for the next woman to enter the hall.
Diane Pestolesi, another Bishop Diego graduate who won an NCAA volleyball championship at the University of Hawai’i, became the second when she was enshrined in 1993.
The Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table has made up for lost time, however.
Pestolesi, a three-time collegiate All-American, has since been joined in Santa Barbara’s Hall of Fame by 56 additional female inductees.
She was also, in fact, Paula’s basketball teammate when she was known as Diane Sebastian.
They were the dynamic duo that led Bishop to consecutive CIF-SS basketball championships in 1977 and 1978.
I got a front-row seat to that second title run.
I’d just returned to town in December 1977 as the newest sports reporter of Santa Barbara’s daily newspaper.
I was not, to be honest, exactly thrilled when the sports editor assigned me to cover the Cardinals’ quest that season.
It was just girls’ basketball, after all.
My attitude turned 180 degrees the first time I watched Diane Sebastian spin to an acrobatic basket and Paula Charest pop in a long jumper.
I surprised Sebastian when I approached her for a post-game interview. Paula was long gone before I could pepper her with questions.
Girls weren’t used to sports reporters showing up to their games.
The CIF was only in its second year of sponsoring girls’ athletics when Charest and Sebastian enrolled as Bishop freshmen.
“It was a different time,” Paula said. “For my group, it was just amazing to have the opportunity to play.
“Just to be able to get up and do something as women in a competitive arena was awesome.”
Family Ties
The Cardinals’ success in those days — guided by future Round Table Hall of Fame coach Linda “Cookie” Dawson — was girded by the bonds of the large families who attended the Catholic high school.
Greer Shull, the first player to break Paula’s career scoring record in 2013, acknowledged as much when she showed up to one of her alma mater’s playoff games in 2015.
Her parents had both been star athletes at the school.
“One of the things I love most about Bishop is how family-oriented it is,” Greer said over the din at Bishop’s brickhouse gym that night.
“My teammate, Josie McCoy, was here tonight, and her dad played here, and it’s cool that it’s a family thing and everyone’s related.
“And it’s really cool that Jordyn beat her mother’s record.
“She was on my team a few years ago and was the hardest worker of anyone I ever played with.”
Diane Sebastian’s sister Patty, another former Cardinal basketball player, married a fellow schoolmate who became a strong influencer: Paula’s older brother, Michel.
“For me, personally, Michel was a big help when we were kids,” Paula said. “I was a tomboy, and he and his friends would always include me in their games.
“He’d always invite me to go play basketball with him at the YMCA.
“I was down there probably four or five days a week.”
Miracle Child
Her daughter was a hard worker from Day One.
Paula was told she couldn’t have children after she suffered numerous tubal pregnancies.
Jordyn proved them wrong.
“The chances are that the one remaining tube will never function again because of scar tissue,” Paula said. “The fact that she actually snuck through a damaged tube really was a miracle, in my opinion.”
Paula, who played at UCSB before transferring to Chico State, signed her daughter up for basketball at the Goleta Boys & Girls Club when she was just 4.
“My mom and dad were both my coaches,” Jordyn said. “I found the sport fun and it provided a social environment that allowed me to play with other kids.
“I was shy growing up, but basketball offered me another way to meet people and develop friendships.
“And growing up as an only child, quality time with my parents meant the world to me.”
She actually played more one-on-one games against her father, Martin, a former football player at Chico State who twice qualified for the NCAA Track & Field Nationals in the hammer throw.
“Dad and I played one-on-one nearly every evening out on our street,” Jordyn said. “We had a basketball hoop that stood right in front of our driveway.
“Dad would get me every time in the paint, but my jump shot kept me alive sometimes. I usually was better at the shooting games like HORSE or 21.”
Paula coached her throughout her youth-league days before turning her over to such club coaches as Carrick DeHart, a former UCSB star, as well as Jerry Howard and Andy Casanueva.
Jeff Burich, who coached her throughout her four years at Bishop Diego, won his second CIF title last March when the Cardinals beat Burroughs in the 5A final.
One of the Boys
Uncle Michel accelerated her basketball growth by bringing her to his Saturday morning pickup games, just as he’d done with his sister.
Paula was once reminded by one of the older pickup players of how she accompanied them “to check it out and make sure it was OK.”
“He told me, ‘You walked in, you met us, and you left,’” she said.
Nothing made Jordyn prouder than when she earned “my respect” from those men.
“It challenged me to get faster, tougher, and learn to adapt in situations where my opponent was usually bigger and stronger than me,” she said. “The boys learned not to leave me open for the jump shot.”
One of her sweetest memories was getting invited to their post-game coffee klatches at Java Station.
“I no longer was just the high school girl playing ball, but I felt like I was one of the boys,” she said. “All of the OG guys were my uncles.
“They always looked out for me at Page … I will forever be grateful to my uncle Michel.”
The late Steve Rehage, one those OG uncles and my longtime softball buddy, encouraged me to check out one of Jordyn’s games.
I was soon covering another title quest with the Cardinals, 37 years after the first one.
A knee injury limited Jordyn’s play as a freshman, but she soon became Bishop’s floor general.
“I think it was Josie McCoy who started calling her Lightning Lilly,” Burich said. “She was so quick, flying in there.”
He was most struck, however, by her “good poker face.”
Burich noted that cool, calm demeanor during their title run of 2015.
It was instrumental in their 46-32 victory over Bloomington Christian in the CIF championship game.
“You rarely know what the score of the game is by looking at her face,” he said at the time. “She plays the game the same, no matter if we’re up or down.”
Mom’s the Word
Paula kept the team’s official statistics as her daughter approached the scoring record.
She admitted that Jordyn “was a far more gifted basketball player than I ever was.”
“I was good at reading the court, as was she, but she could do things like out-rebound people who were 6-foot-2,” Paula said. “She was just 5-7, but she knew when and how to go in.
“It was always fun to watch.
“You wouldn’t even know she was in there, and then all of a sudden she’d come dribbling out with the ball.”
Paula still teased both Jordyn and her coach by noting that she would’ve kept Bishop’s scoring record if the three-point shot had existed in the 1970s.
“I told Jordyn, ‘In my world, you have to break my record without counting the three-pointers,” she said. “And then she did.
“But that didn’t matter to her. It really didn’t. She wasn’t competitive that way.
“She was probably the most gracious athlete I’ve ever seen.”
Mom was most proud of how Jordyn would always be the first to pick up an opponent who had fallen to the floor.
“She was always very respectful of coaches … protective of her teammates,” Paula said.
The Athletic Round Table recognized those traits during her junior year when she was presented with the Phil Womble Ethics in Sports Award.
“Don’t get me wrong, Jordyn is incredibly competitive … She really is,” Paula said. “She beats herself up more than anybody else.
“But the one thing that was always fun was that only we as parents knew what she was thinking on the floor because of that great poker face.”
There was plenty of heart-felt emotion underneath, however.
Jordyn was deeply touched when she noticed the coaches of the football team — the school’s flagship sport — coming to all their home games.
“They’d sit in the corner by the locker rooms cheering us on — believing in us and our mission,” Jordyn said. “Those are exactly the kinds of coaches and mentors you want in your corner.”
There wasn’t a seat to be had when “fellow classmates, teachers and the community” showed up for her CIF State Tournament opener against Bakersfield Christian.
The sport that her mother had helped pioneer for girls had finally made it to center stage.
Dog-Pile Days
Jordyn Lilly scored 23 points and made four steals that night.
Center Hannah Rogers — the inside force in Bishop’s second coming of the Dynamic Charest-Sebastian Duo — contributed her typical double-double of 12 points and 10 rebounds in a 46-38 victory.
None of Jordyn’s points were more important than the last four that foiled a late Bakersfield Christian comeback. Her clutch two free throws sealed the victory.
The poker face soon cracked with joy.
“The student section dog-piled the starting five after the final buzzer sounded,” Jordyn recalled fondly. “Earning respect as a program was probably one of our greatest achievements as a team.
“Growing up, there was never support in women’s sports like there was in men’s sports.”
Her dedication shifted to a nursing profession when she enrolled at Chico State. But she soon missed the game enough to co-found the college’s first women’s club basketball program.
“Playing basketball was the easy part,” Jordyn said. “The hard part was getting traction and enough involvement from the women on campus to start a team.
“I remember tabling out in the campus quad with signup sheets I had printed in the campus library.”
Her organizational skills were honed by recruiting the team, arranging the purchase of uniforms, and scheduling gym time and a game schedule.
They played in tournaments up and down California, from Sacramento State to UCLA.
“I loved getting to meet women from different walks of life,” Jordyn said. “Many of the skills that I developed through that process translated over to how I approached graduate school and my professional career.
“I thrive in a team environment.”
Her team for the last five years has been headquartered at Jacobs Medical Center at UC San Diego.
She works as a registered nurse in the surgical oncology and progressive care unit.
“I am working with patients who are probably experiencing the worst moments of their lives,” Jordyn said. “So how can I be helpful to them? How can I make their life 1% better?”
It’s a lesson about teamwork, dedication and camaraderie that Title IX has helped girls learn for the last half century.
And no one better knows the value of picking up your fellow man — or woman — than Jordyn Lilly.
