Overview:
Karisma Lewis hopes to take the same path as her Oak Park High School coach, April McDivitt Schilling, from UCSB to the WNBA
Money won’t buy you happiness, or so the saying goes.
Karisma Lewis decided that it couldn’t buy the thing that would provide her greatest joy:
A professional basketball career.
Lewis, one of the nation’s top recruits in the high school class of 2026, turned down several NIL (name, image and likeness) offers that exceeded $100,000 to commit to UC Santa Barbara last week.
The Gauchos couldn’t offer much more than nil … except perhaps a good avenue to a WNBA career.
Lewis, a 5-foot-10 senior guard for Oak Park High School, will get every chance to show her elite skills as a marquee player at the Thunderdome.
“The going rate was six figures, that’s what she already had on the table,” said George Albanez, her stepfather and coach with the 805 Family Basketball Club.
“But as we got closer and closer to a decision, we started going, ‘What’s most important is family … Being with people we trust who see her the way we see her.”
Not only did Lewis grow up watching the Gauchos, her mother, Melissa Flores, grew up with their current coach.
Flores was 10 when she joined a Ventura-area basketball team that included Renee Jimenez, who will begin her second season as UCSB’s head coach next month.
They later played together for a traveling team that competed in tournaments as far and wide as El Paso and Tijuana.
“I just found the shirt for that team from 1997 that has both my name and Renee’s name on the back,” Flores told Noozhawk.
“I was a year ahead of her in school — and I played for Buena High while she went to Ventura — but I always invited her to my birthday party.
“I’d have these basketball birthdays where we’d play in my driveway with all my Buena and Ventura friends.”
Their connection continued while Jimenez was coaching at Cal State San Marcos and Flores’ daughter was tearing up the girls basketball circuit with Albanez’s club team.
“Renee pretty much watched Karisma grow up through social media,” her mother said. “It’s been really neat.”
Top Grades
Lewis recently graded at No. 44 in the 247 Sports composite rankings for this year’s national recruiting class.
She’s also at No. 55 in ESPN’s SportsCenter NEXT 100.
“She’s the hardest working player in America,” Albanez gushed. “Dan Olson, a scout from Florida (Collegiate Girls Basketball Report), says she’s the No. 1 shooter in the country.
“She was asked about her goals in one interview, and she told them, ‘I want to be the best shooter in the world.’”
Lewis opened the eyes of both college and pro scouts by scoring 32 points three months ago in her first game in the Drew League, a Los Angeles-based summer league that includes WNBA players.
“She was going up against a 6-6 girl who went to Stanford and played for the (Dallas) Wings,” Albanez said.
“Some girl from Europe tried guarding her and couldn’t stop her.”
Lewis averaged better than 20 points per game during each of her three seasons at Buena High School.
Southeastern Conference powers such as Mississippi State and Arkansas took notice and offered her some of the biggest NIL deals.
“Her goal was to play in the SEC,” Albanez said. “We thought for sure that’s where she was going to be because it’s the highest level of college basketball you can play.
“It was always going to come down to family — our core values — so we would’ve moved to wherever she was going, even Mississippi State, so I could train her full-time.
“She was close to going there. They offered her a really good package.”
But the more Lewis followed the career of Gaucho point guard Alyssa Marin — her summer training partner in Camarillo — the more she realized that UCSB was her best fit.
“She’s like Karisma’s big sister,” Albanez said. “We were there for just about every one of her games, and we got to watch the way they let Alyssa play.
“I was like, ‘She gets to play the way you do in high school … She gets the ball.’”
UCSB’s coaches likened Lewis’ game to that of Indiana Fever megastar Caitlin Clark and the Dallas Wings’ Paige Bueckers.
“They were like, ‘This is how we see you … We see you as playing like this on the first day with us,’” Albanez said.
“All Karisma wanted to know was, ‘If I go to UCSB, will I have a chance to make it to the league?’”
Past Is Prologue
Lewis, who transferred to Oak Park High this fall, discovered a good precedent in the Eagles’ new coach: former Gaucho point guard April McDivitt Schilling.
Schilling improved her WNBA stock when she helped UCSB reach its first NCAA Sweet 16 in 2004 after having transferred from SEC power Tennessee.
She played for the New York Liberty, Minnesota Lynx and Washington Mystics before serving on the coaching staffs of both the Indiana Fever and Dallas Wings.
Albanez recently moved the family to Camarillo and enrolled Lewis at Oak Park so she could play for Schilling, the wife of Pepperdine men’s basketball coach Ed Schilling.
“April has been working as a player analyst for the Los Angeles Sparks, breaking down their WNBA games on film, and I felt I needed to put Karisma with a pro like that,” Albanez said.
“Oak Park also has an independent studies program, which is going to allow her to train at P3 in Santa Barbara and with us every day while she takes online classes.
“Their OPIS program was created for some of Disney’s actresses (which have included Zendaya, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter and Xochitl Gomez).”
Several other elite players are also taking advantage of Oak Park’s independent studies program.
Maya Urteaga, who scored 26 points per game as a freshman last year at Moorpark High, and Dianna Sorrondo, who made the Cal-Hi All-State team as a junior post player for Arroyo Grande, have also transferred to Oak Park.
They join an Eagles program that returns stars Maya Deshautelle and Ava Rogerson from last year’s CIF-Southern Section Division 2AA champions.
“They now have about six NCAA Division I-level players on their team,” Albanez said. “They’re going to be Top 25 in the nation, and that should also help Karisma become a pro.”
Albanez admits that it wasn’t easy to turn down such a huge NIL payday.
“We’re not rich,” he said. “But we told Karisma, ‘You wouldn’t know what to do with it, anyway, so let’s just be grateful for this and what we did, and then earn the rest.’
“And hopefully, maybe now we can get some NIL stuff from the local community.”
Lewis is anxious to get to Santa Barbara as soon as possible.
“She’s going to graduate early and enroll at UCSB in their fourth quarter,” Albanez said.
“UCSB being on the quarter system was another factor in her decision.
“She can get acclimated to being a college student-athlete … Get around those girls in April and bring her energy.”
It might just empower the Gauchos for some March Madness in the coming years.
