Sleeping with the enemy

Katy Digovich hasn't let diabetes hinder her prep basketball career

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By Vincent Liu / Special to the Town Crier

Unlike in the movie "Sleeping with the Enemy," in which Julia Roberts dispatches her nemesis with a bullet, Katy Digovich needs to make peace with hers, perhaps for the rest of her life.

Digovich's enemy lives within her body: She has diabetes.

An all-everything basketball powerhouse from Pinewood School, Digovich is a gifted athlete with a brain to match her brawn. On the basketball court, she was often double- or triple-teamed in her senior year and still averaged 22.2 points and 9.2 rebounds per game. In the classroom, she managed a 4.2 GPA for her high school career.

For her athletic and academic excellence, Digovich was recently selected as the Scholar Athlete of the Year by both Sports Focus and CalHi Sports.

To Digovich, such accolades are "nice but no big deal." After all, taking care of business on the basketball court and in the classroom has always come easy for her. But taking care of business against diabetes is no easy matter. "I have to be perfect at it because it has little margin for error," she said.

At the age of 6, Digovich was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes as it afflicts children and young adults. It is an autoimmune disease that prohibits the body from producing insulin which distributes sugar from the blood into the body cells and regulates blood sugar level.

Type 1 is a more severe form of diabetes than type 2, in which the body develops resistance to insulin, and the disease is usually hereditary or diet-related. A low blood sugar level induces fatigue, dizziness and loss of consciousness and can lead to brain damage. A high level, if not controlled, can lead to damage to internal organs.

To control her blood sugar level, Digovich carries with her at all times a palm-sized electronic monitor, an insulin kit and carbohydrate drinks or snacks. When the monitor reading falls outside the range of 70-120, she either ingests carbohydrate (if low) or injects insulin into her body (if high). She typically undertakes such monitoring five to seven times a day and insulin intake three or four times a day.

"When Katy was discovered to have diabetes, we initially were in disbelief, panic and shock," said Digovich's father, Peter. But he and his wife, Carolyn, soon closed ranks behind their daughter and dedicated themselves to licking the disease as a team. They read all they could about it and worked with doctors and researchers at Stanford University and University of California at San Francisco.

One support group to which the Digovichs owe a large dose of gratitude is the Diabetic Youth Foundation, located in Concord, with a satellite office in Fresno. It is an organization run by diabetics to provide education and recreational support to people with diabetes.

While Digovich was not encouraged by the medical staff to participate in sports, the foundation took a different view toward such activities by focusing on controlling the disease through knowledge, education and interpersonal support. "They bring the latest technology, knowledge and advancement to the lives of diabetic children on a personal basis," Carolyn said, "and they train the family to work as a team."

Digovich has become a regular visitor at the Bearskin Meadow Camp, nestled in the Kings Canyon National Park of Nevada, a summer camp for diabetic youth run by the Diabetic Youth Foundation. "I want to inspire other diabetic kids interested in playing sports," said Digovich, who will become a camp counselor this summer.

Dr. Mary Simon, the medical director of the foundation and a type 1 diabetic herself, called Digovich a role model for the youth. "Katy is an excellent student and a scholar athlete," she said. "It takes incredible discipline and stamina to achieve what she has done."

The admiration is mutual. Carolyn credits the foundation for guiding her daughter through the critical period from youth to adolescence and calls its curriculum a lifesaving program. "Thanks to them, Katy is the athlete she wants to be and in excellent health," she said. "Katy has taken on this challenge in a big way. She's our hero every day."

While the cause of diabetes is not entirely known, the physical growth pattern of Digovich has also become somewhat of a mystery. A strapping 5 feet 8 inches tall at the age of 11, she was enticed into trying basketball due to her size. She quickly discovered her natural skills at the game, not to mention her love for it.

When Digovich enrolled as a freshman at Pinewood, a private school in Los Altos Hills with a tiny enrollment and a big basketball reputation, she had grown to 5 feet 10.5 inches. "She was raw, but her talent was obvious; she was like a diamond in the rough," said Doc Scheppler, Pinewood's girls basketball coach.

Digovich became a four-year starter at Pinewood and emerged as as one of the most dominant post players in the Central Coast Section in her junior and senior years. Yet over four years, she grew all of half an inch to 5 feet 11 inches, her current height.

It was no big deal to Scheppler. "Height is deceptive. Katy at 5-foot-11 plays like a 6-foot-2 because she has a big wingspan and strong hands. At 170 pounds, she's a bull," said Scheppler, who also described Digovich as an unselfish team player.

While her growth hormone took a hiatus at Pinewood, Digovich flourished on the basketball court under the tutelage of Scheppler. She amassed 1,960 points and 1,028 rebounds over four seasons. Her 22.2-point scoring average in her senior year is the second highest in school history. More significantly, her scoring average during the postseason playoffs in her junior and senior years went up to some 25 points per game.

"This is impressive because in CCS playoffs, defense usually

takes center stage and shooting drops off," Scheppler said. "Katy came up big in big games."

During Digovich's high school career, Pinewood racked up an incredible 110-15 record. Both Digovich and Scheppler were quick to point out that the school benefited from a plethora of outstanding players assuming the role of team leadership. Such players included Lauren Smith-Hams, who went on to play for University of Southern California; Sebnem Kimyacioglu, a current starter at Stanford; and Sarah Feely, last year's CCS player of the year recruited by University of the Pacific.

In her senior year, Digovich found herself surrounded by a full slate of outside sharpshooters, whose ferocious three-point shooting amazed their opponents as well as their coach. At the end of the season, the Panthers shattered the state record for three-pointers with 337, which may have also set a national record.

Digovich became part of an expression used by her coach: Pick your poison. "You can try to stop our inside game or our outside shooting but not both; one of them will kill you," Scheppler would say before a game.

During this year's Division II CCS title game, St. Francis decided to defend Pinewood's outside game by rotating its three 6-footers to single-cover Digovich. It picked its poison. Thirty-one points and 10 rebounds later, Digovich led her school to a 70-51 victory and its sixth straight CCS championship.

As well as she has maintained her physical health, diabetes from time to time has taken a toll on Digovich. Exercise tends to lower blood sugar level. Against Amador Valley in the NorCal semifinal contest, Pinewood was struggling and Digovich was seen with her nostrils and mouth wide open, gasping for air. To the uninformed, she appeared out of shape. Not to Scheppler, who quickly took Digovich out for extensive rests. Pinewood and Digovich came back to win a cliffhanger by one point.

"Katy's mouth was wide enough to swallow an ocean tonight," Scheppler said after the game. Such light-hearted levity masked the coach's sensitivity toward the disease within his prized player. "Since Katy joined us, I've learned a lot about diabetes and how to deal with it," Scheppler said. He would try to avoid creating verbal tension and pressure with Digovich by "biting my tongue" and extend rest for her by calling timeouts around quarter breaks.

There is also mutual respect between the two. "Doc is a great coach and the reason I went to Pinewood," Digovich said.

"Katy is the best post player ever from Pinewood, and she did a tough balancing act between working hard and controlling her diabetes," said Scheppler, who owns a remarkable 217-30 coaching record over eight years at Pinewood.

"She hasn't scratched the surface of her potential yet," continued Scheppler, speaking like a caring mentor pushing his student for more. "She needs to really work hard to challenge the next level."

The next level is Division I basketball at Princeton University, where Digovich is headed this fall on an academic -- not basketball -- scholarship. And she is heeding her coach's advice by working out three to four hours daily on a variety of exercises, including playing in the ProAm league, where she hones her skills against ex-WNBA and college players.

Digovich chose Princeton over a number of Division I schools due to its academic standards. She intends to major in molecular biology, including the study of genes. While she displayed a ho-hum attitude toward her athletic honors, her face lit up when a connection was made between her college major and her diabetes.

Digovich's involvement with diabetes made a winning impression on Robert Braunstein, director of CalHi Sports of KRON Television, in her selection as the Scholar Athlete of the Year. "We felt Katy showed great dedication to her sports and to her schoolwork. In the end, it was Katy's unselfish work on behalf of young children with diabetes that put her above the rest," Braunstein said.

Digovich's success with diabetes has rubbed off on her family. "Because of her battle with diabetes, the whole family has learned to take better care of our bodies," her father said. "When she was diagnosed with diabetes, I promised my little girl that one day there would be a permanent fix," continued Peter with a sheepish grin, realizing that he was not in a position to make that promise.

However, he needn't despair. One day, with the help of Digovich's academic pursuits, his promise may come true.

The Diabetic Youth Foundation is located at 5167 Clayton Road, Suite F, Concord, CA 94521. For more information, call (925) 680-4994 or logon to www.dyf.org.