Estey’s Height Plight : Saddleback’s 5-5 Guard Can’t Convince Coaches Taller Isn’t Necessarily Better

Heather Estey has been fighting it for a long time. And the way things are going, she’s going to have to continue the battle for some time to come.

Estey is a 5-foot 5-inch basketball player, and most coaches refuse to look past her size to see what she has to offer.

Estey can shoot, pass and dribble with extreme skill. She has become one of the South Coast Conference’s best players this season as a member of Saddleback College’s team. She averages 18.3 points per game, 7.4 assists and has a 79% free throw average.

Still, there is an image problem.

After earning first-team All-CIF honors at Corona del Mar High School, Estey tried to walk-on at Oregon State. She failed, Oregon State Coach Aki Hill said, because of her lack of height.

“She played hard but we were looking for taller guards,” Hill said.

They always need taller personnel. It’s a vantage point Estey has become accustomed to.

While growing up on Balboa Island, Estey wanted to play basketball. When she was 8, she asked her parents to erect a basket in their backyard alley. But the Esteys weren’t keen on their 4-foot-2 daughter becoming a basketball junkie. The basket didn’t go up for four years.

Undaunted, Estey found pickup games with neighborhood boys. She takes the same perseverance to the court today with the Gauchos (9-3 in SCC, 20-5 overall).

“I think she likes to run and is a very aggressive individual who obviously will do whatever she can to win,” UC Irvine Coach Dean Andrea said.

Estey hopes to transfer to either UCI or Louisiana Tech after this season. Her chances of playing at either Division 1 school are slim because of her size.

Said Andrea: “Whether or not we need the kind of person Heather is next year with who we have coming back is hard to say.”

And UCI is not even close to Louisiana Tech’s league. The No. 6 Lady Techsters have one of the best women’s programs in the country. But Estey understands her dilemma.

“Because Louisiana Tech is really good, that’s like a goal (to play there),” she said.

But, really, it may be more of a dream. The day of the short guard is over. And even Estey’s perpetual spirit can’t change it.

Still, it won’t stop her from trying.

“Estey has worked hard in trying to make adjustments and improve her game,” Saddleback Coach Joe Wolf said. “Her passing game has improved tremendously this year. For her to be a Division 1 player, she had to improve her game.”

Can she improve enough to make it in major college basketball? Wolf believes she has something to offer.

But even the Saddleback coach must develop a special strategy to free Estey so she can utilize her precision shooting.

“In order to get Estey loose, we have to use screens much more than an ordinary team,” he said. “This, in turn, sets up the type of offense that we run, because we try to play a one-on-one situation with her.”

Estey realizes her one weakness is defense. She said her boyfriend Darin Mason, a redshirt on the Saddleback men’s team, helps her in that area.

But when it comes to shooting, Estey does it alone. She developed a rather unorthodox style to fit her height limitations. Instead of jumping straight up, she shoots to the side.

“I never really noticed the way I shot until people started imitating me,” she said.

“No one’s tried to change it except Billie Moore, but it was too late by then.”

Estey had attended a 1982 summer camp with Moore, UCLA’s coach and a former U.S. national team coach.

Estey said she would eventually like to become a coach. But for now, she’s having a difficult enough time convincing people she can play.