Three freshmen girls basketball players have scored 40 points or more in a single game this season. One of them has done it three different times.
“Girls are evolving. The game is evolving,” Moorpark girls basketball coach Bobby Johnson said. “They’re taking it a lot more seriously, so I could definitely see these things happening a lot more just because of the landscape of girls basketball.”
Notre Dame’s Hamiley Arenas, Valencia’s Kamilla Basyrova and Moorpark’s Maya Urteaga have all made their mark on girls basketball in their first years of high school — and they’re all doing so with their own style.
Three players, three unique situations
Arenas’ arrival onto the high school basketball scene was highly anticipated after her older sister, Izela, had a standout career at Sierra Canyon and went on to play at Louisville. Her older brother, Alijah, currently plays for Chatsworth and is currently averaging 31.3 points per game.
The well-known basketball lineage goes beyond that. Gilbert Arenas played 10 seasons in the NBA and was a three-time NBA All-Star. The Arenas siblings’ mom, Laura Govan, played college basketball at New Mexico State.
“Hamiley is not a secret. Everybody’s gonna know,” Notre Dame head coach Jena Laolagi said of the natural shooting guard. “She already has such a mature approach to the game at such a young age. A lot of times as a freshman, it’s (dealing with) the ups and downs of scoring — it’s kind of like a roller coaster of scoring. For her, it’s having constant pressure on her.”
Despite the double- and triple-teams that Arenas has faced in her first year of varsity basketball, she still put up 40 points and 16 rebounds on her birthday against Santa Monica on Dec. 9.
Valencia’s Basyrova set a school single-game record with her 40-point performance in a loss to St. Joseph in the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions semifinals on Dec. 20. Basyrova’s height (5-foot-10) combined with her work ethic is what gives her an edge.
She has a reliable 3-point shot, but head coach Jared Honig has tasked her with learning the point guard position this season and the Vikings have been able to take advantage of an inside-out attack with Basyrova and junior guard Cara McKell.
“She works on her game so much that she’s really confident in her ball-handling abilities,” Honig said of Basyrova. “She just accepted the role and saw it as an opportunity to play a ton and have the ball in her hands a lot.”
Moorpark’s Urteaga has used her understanding of the game to score 46 points against Fairfax, 47 points against Foothill Tech and 42 points against Agoura. She’s 5-foot-5 and 14 years old, but that hasn’t stopped her from getting to the basket.
“She knows where the next pass is going,” Johnson said. “Jumping, dribble handoffs and things like that are kind of mature for her age. And of course, she has one of the best jump shots that I’ve seen.”
Urteaga previously played club basketball on boys teams, which Johnson believes developed her sense of grit.
Growing talent
Girls basketball is the fifth-most popular spot in the state of California, according to a survey completed by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), but participation is down from 29,007 in 2023 to 28,950 in 2024 after reaching a peak in 2019 with 35,902 players.
Participation has declined in California, but the talent pool doesn’t seem to have lessened. All three freshmen play basketball at a high level year-round and seek out individual coaching on top of it all.
“That’s kind of a new wave of things,” Honig said. “They’re really getting a lot of individual skill training and putting in extra time as opposed to maybe five or 10 years ago where kids are coming in and maybe they’ve played on some club teams but maybe not having all the individual tools.”
A search for individual girls basketball coaches on the website coachup.com, which matches athletes with private coaches, yields 55 results in Los Angeles County alone.
The success of the No. 1 UCLA and No. 4 USC women’s basketball teams allows players to see what can come of their hard work. High school players can watch players like the Trojans’ Juju Watkins or the Bruins’ Lauren Betts online or on television and even meet them in person as the women’s college game expands.
LSU women’s basketball player Flau’jae Johnson has an NIL valuation of $1.5 million and many more are securing brand deals. Miami’s Haley and Hanna Cavinder, for example, have built their own image as twin basketball players and have partnerships with Uber and Under Armour — just to name two — and have launched their own series of at-home workouts.
But Arenas, Basyrova and Urteaga are more focused on having fun with basketball in their freshman seasons while recording monster stat lines.
“I’m always smiling,” Arenas said. “When I get really good passes and when I make my three’, it makes me want to be even happier — but working together, making really good passes makes me happy.”