She’la White begged.
But Mom and Dad weren’t so sure their 5-year-old daughter was serious — really serious — about wanting to play basketball.
“For two years she asked to play, and me and my wife didn’t believe her,” She’la’s father, Anthony Chappelle, said recently. “We were set on violin. We were thinking along those lines.”
Little She’la pounded the family’s back patio night and day with an orange rubber basketball, driving the neighbors nuts.
Mom and Dad gave in, and White rarely has been without a basketball since.
Now a senior at Norfolk Collegiate, White is regarded as one of the nation’s top female high school point guards and this season has led the Oaks to victories in their first 14 games.
For White, a 5-foot-5 dynamo, it has been an adventurous — and successful — basketball journey, including touring with one of the country’s top AAU teams, spending rigorous days training with her father, a two-year stay at Wilson High School and signing in November to play at North Carolina.
White and fifth-ranked Norfolk Collegiate play at No. 2 Wilson at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in an intriguing private school-public school showdown.
After her family moved from Chesapeake to Portsmouth, White played as a freshman and sophomore at Wilson. By then she already was on college recruiters’ radar.
And she already had learned from her father, who played basketball at Churchland High School and tutored his only daughter in the mold of players he admired, including Tiny Archibald, Isiah Thomas and Allen Iverson.
“He taught me everything,” White said. “He’s the most influential person in my life.”
Once White had convinced her parents she was serious about basketball, Chappelle began toting his daughter nearly every day to the Churchland YMCA in Portsmouth.
“If you’re going to play,” he told her, “you’re going to know how to play.”
Chappelle started from scratch, at first rarely letting her touch a basketball. They worked on conditioning, balance and posture, then moved on to dribbling.
“I didn’t shoot a lot because he said I wasn’t strong enough, and I was just throwing the ball,” White said.
After two years of workouts with her father, at age 9 White began playing organized basketball, and no 3-point shots were permitted until she was in middle school because, Chappelle said, “We didn’t want to sacrifice the form because she wasn’t strong enough.”
The pair often spent close to four hours at the gym each day. They brought lunch, and White usually grabbed a 30-minute nap while her father worked out or played basketball.
Sometimes there were run-ins between father-daughter and father-coach.
“There were a lot of tears for her and me; both of us cried,” Chappelle said.
“When we’re in the gym I’m the coach, and sometimes I might have to fuss with her, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love her. That line kind of blurred sometimes.”
White’s tireless work paid off, and when she played organized basketball for the first time, Chappelle said, “She didn’t have any bad habits.”
White played with a Boo Williams elite AAU girls teams when she was two years younger than most of the players. As a seventh-grader, she averaged more than 20 points per game at Jolliff Middle School in Chesapeake. At Wilson, she started at point guard and averaged 19.2 points per game as a freshman.
White has played under Williams, a revered AAU coach, since eighth grade, and he ranks her among the best shooters he has ever seen.
“Her signature, that’s her shot,” Williams said. 'That’s what she does as good as anybody that’s ever come out of Hampton Roads.”
White left Wilson for Norfolk Collegiate between 10th and 11th grades to better prepare her for the academic rigors of college.
“It was different” is how White describes moving to a private school.
“I had to get used to a lot of things — the dress code, the teachers, making new friends,” she added. “I was never uncomfortable or anything. I got used to it.”
Basketball helped. Many students already knew White from her success at Wilson, and last season she averaged 25.6 points per game for the Oaks. White heads into Saturday averaging 19.9 points, 5.6 assists and 3.7 rebounds per game.
“She’s a rock star here,” Oaks coach Suzanne Midkiff said. “Not only because of her basketball skills. She’s a great kid with a great personality, and kids love to be around her.”
White received college scholarship offers from a Who’s Who of women’s college basketball programs, including Connecticut, Duke, Georgia and Virginia, before deciding on UNC.
In Saturday’s game, White should surpass 1,000 points at Norfolk Collegiate, and by the end of the season she should reach 2,000 in her varsity career.
But for all of her success, White isn’t done learning — or working out with Chappelle. She’s part of a heralded recruiting class for UNC, and the Tar Heels currently are ranked No. 3 in the nation.
“I’m expecting to start,” White said. “I don’t think I should go with any other thing on my mind. But I have a lot of work to put in.”
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