OCEANSIDE — As a little girl, Te-Hina Paopao’s first basket came on an outdoor hoop stanchioned in an oversized parking space in front of her parents’ Oceanside home.
At age 10, she could run the flex offense as a point guard. All it took was a few minutes of observation of the eighth graders running through it.
Finding cutters around the basket, not forcing bad passes, and knowing the why and how of each specific motion just made sense.
Terri Bamford, Paopao’s head coach at both La Jolla Country Day School and at the AAU level, remembers that first practice in clear detail.
“She was a fifth grader and we have a big club, so fifth-sixth practices on one side of the court and seventh-eighth on the other,” Bamford recalled. “My coach from the younger side came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I think you need to move her up.’ When we went to run the offense — flex-motion at that time — it’s tough for 10-year-olds to pick up offenses, so she watched, and I asked, ‘Are you ready?’ She was like, ‘Yeah.’ I said again, ‘You got it?’ She was like, ‘Yeah.’ She ran the point guard spot and she was great. She played on our 15U team as we traveled the country at 10.”
Paopao, now 21 and less than two months removed from winning a national championship as a University of South Carolina guard, a Nancy Lieberman Award finalist, and a U.S. Basketball Writers Association second-team All-American honor, described her childhood relationship with basketball as something that “just clicked.”
“My parents put me in soccer and softball, but I didn’t like to be outside in the sun,” Paopao recently told The Coast News. “I played volleyball, but I didn’t like the uniforms. I liked the relationship aspect of basketball – you meet so many people on your journey.”
Coming from the family-first culture of Oceanside football, Paopao always had a support system built in at home. Looking back at the athletic landscape of North County in the early 2010s, however, she can’t help but wonder about the local talent that slipped through the cracks.
“It was kind of weird – there weren’t really any female athletes I looked up to as a Samoan,” Paopao said. “There wasn’t a support system outside of my house [in Oceanside]. If I came from a different family, I probably would have quit. My dad and I had to figure this basketball thing out together because he’s always had boys and football. It was a learning curve for both of us.”
A decade later, Paopao said things appear to be changing for the better in Oceanside.
“I do have a sense that things have changed a bit,” she said. “Coming back home, it seems like more girls are involved in sports and they are enjoying it instead of just being out there because of their parents. I think they genuinely want to be out there and get better.”
That intrinsic pursuit of improvement is a trait Bamford saw in Paopao early in their relationship.
“All the great ones — [La Jolla Country Day School alums] Candice Wiggins, Kelsey Plum, and Te-Hina — have this work ethic that was above and beyond everyone else,” Bamford said. “It wasn’t their parents forcing them to go to these workouts. It’s them being self-motivated and wanting to be there. Te-Hina always came in smiling and ready to go during early morning workouts. She really enjoys the process of working hard to get to where she wants to go.”
This year’s national championship has been particularly sweet for Paopao after an adversity-packed basketball experience at Country Day.
In her freshman year in La Jolla, Paopao tore her ACL, and then, in her first scrimmage as a sophomore, as the team worked on their defensive press, she tore her other ACL.
“The first injury, Te-Hina was like, ‘It’s an injury. Let’s work out and get through it and get back on the court as soon as we can,’” Bamford remembered. “Sophomore year we were pressing and she was at the top of the press and she jumped up to get a steal and when she landed, you could tell that her other ACL popped on the way up. On that one in her mind, I think she got down and was like, ‘I don’t even know if I am supposed to be playing basketball.’”
As a senior, Paopao led the Torreys to a 32-1 season and a San Diego Section CIF Open Division championship. But then, in March 2020, the world stopped.
“Senior year was so much fun after injuries upon injuries,” Paopao said. “I felt like we were going to win the state championship that year, but because of COVID, we couldn’t.”
After her final season with the Gamecocks, the consensus is that Te-Hina Paopao will be a high pick in the 2025 WNBA draft.
Plum, the best player in Country Day history, the second all-time scorer in NCAA women’s basketball and a two-time WNBA all-star, has previously been quoted as saying, “Honestly, I think she could be the best to come out of San Diego.”
For Paopao, visits home are infrequent, with the last during the 2023 Christmas season.
But there is one specific ritual every trip back to Oceanside must include.
She takes the short trip from the Paopao family home to Oceanside Boulevard in search of familiar comforts.
“The Mexican food in San Diego is over-the-top delicious,” Paopao said before maintaining a stance of neutrality on the classic Oceanside debate between Anita and Colima. “Literally every spot is the best.”
But it isn’t the Mexican fare that Paopao thinks about during the academic year in Columbia, SC.
No, to Paopao, the taste of nostalgia can only be found in the hot dog.
“I have to hit up Wienerschnitzel,” Paopao said. “I love Wienerschnitzel. I might get a lot of backlash for this because people don’t really like hot dogs and corn dogs these days, but I absolutely have to go to Wienerschnitzel when I’m home.”
