Taylor Proctor, the nation's fifth-leading scorer heading into the weekend and one of the San Francisco team leaders, is good at basketball. Very good.

However, it might not even be the sport at which she's best, depending who you ask.

The senior from Colorado Springs, Colo., spent a brief but highly productive time on the handball court, playing left wing for Team USA. According to the U.S. Director of High Performance, David Gascon, Proctor would still rate as one of the top players in the nation, despite a nearly five-year hiatus.

Gascon was first introduced to the sport after his daughter Sarah made the transition from playing women's baseball for Team USA to picking up the sport of handball. He first noticed Proctor on the handball court at a tournament in North Carolina, where a youthful team from the Springs jumped on top of a seasoned squad and forged ahead, unafraid and unwilling to back down from the challenge.

"I had heard about a team from Colorado Springs and how good they were, and Sarah was playing on a team with maybe three other national team players and I thought that would be a really good test for the young team," recalled Gascon. "I was really impressed by this one girl – Taylor Proctor. And I was impressed by her because she looked like a clone, a larger version, of my own daughter.

"Whatever Sarah did, Taylor would do the same thing. As physical as Sarah was, Taylor was. Sarah was tenacious on defense, Taylor was tenacious on defense. And you could see a real competitive fire in both of these players. She just stood out in my mind – that one, she's special."

Proctor, who began playing handball on Sundays for the Colorado Landsharks, began to focus enough time on her new sport to be selected to the USATH Futures Program, earning a spot on the first-ever U-18 Team USA Handball roster. The team traveled to Poland in Aug. 2009, and Proctor eventually worked her way up to the national team, again traveling abroad with the squad.  

In the fall and winter of 2010, Proctor's national team experience came to a head. First up was an October trip to Cuba to play in a Pan Am Championships qualification tournament with Gascon as the administrator on the trip, helping the team navigate the water, the roads, the living conditions and the tarantulas.

Two months later, the team battled Canada in a pair of matches to qualify to represent the US in the 2010 Pan American Games. For Proctor, playing against stiff competition with and against season veterans of the sport was a daunting task early in her handball career.

"Honestly, it was intimidating. It intimidated the heck out of me," Proctor said with a laugh. "They were so experienced and I was starting out. When I first got on the senior national team, I had been just playing for maybe like six months and everybody else had been playing for years. It was just very intimidating, but I had great teammates. They showed me what I needed to do, how to play the game, and they really helped make me feel more comfortable."

And in her comfort, the 16-year-old youngster for the U.S. shined.

DEC. 23, 2010 – Down five and facing a packed house at La Magdeleine School in La Prairie, Canada, (QUEBEC) it did not appear as if there was much hope for the USA Women to turn it around and earn a precious berth to the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara.

But then, something just clicked.
…
Perhaps the most indicative example of the USA Women's transformation was seen through the play of teenagers Sophie Fasold, Stephanie Hesser, Kate Louthan, Morgan Thorkelsdottir, and Taylor Proctor. Not intimidated by the big stage, the group showed USA fans how bright the future may be.  Fasold finished the game in goal, Hesser scored four times, Thorkelsdottir added one, and Proctor chipped in two of her own.

"I made some major changes to the offense and went with some the youngsters, sitting some of the veterans," Cappelmann said. "They seemed to be the right decisions."

Proctor's biggest contribution, however, came beyond the stat sheet, as her effort and attitude signified that the USA Women did not just come to put on a decent showing. After being throttled in the throat by a Canadian player, the teenager did not back down from the challenge, stared down her opponent, and seemed to have a few choice words for her.

It was and is the type of attitude that USA Team Handball coaches and fans have been wanting for years.

By the time the team was ready to compete in Guadalajara, they would have to do so without the services of Proctor. After tearing her ACL as a prep basketball player, and then going on to pursue her dream on the hardwood for the Dons, Proctor's days as a handball player were done.

Or were they?

One of the compelling facts of the sport of handball, is the fact that nearly every woman who graces the Team USA Handball roster played a sport other than handball collegiately. Soccer, volleyball, softball, and basketball players transition to the sport after obtaining their degrees.

"All of our players on the national team grew up playing something else," noted Gascon. "We get them out of volleyball, we get them out of the throwing sports like softball, we get them out of soccer and basketball. Our view is we've got to take the best athletes and teach them the sport.

"With her experience already, Taylor could walk on and already be an elite handball player in our program, without even playing in the last few years. That's how good she is. That's how tenacious an athlete she is and that's how knowledgeable and skillful she is. This is a sport that could take her to the Olympics."

After Proctor matriculates with a degree in advertising, what's next?

The forward is not done on the hardwood yet, and with the Dons streaking to an 8-2 start on the season, Proctor is just about ready to hit the meat of the basketball season as conference play starts next week. As it stands right now, she is leading the West Coast Conference in points per game, ranking fifth in the nation. She's one of a handful of women in the country to be averaging 20 points and 10 rebounds a game, and her skills at getting her teammates involved on the assist have her ranking in the top 10 in the WCC.

She sees the impacts that handball has had on her game as a basketball player.

"Basketball helped me with handball just by being very physical and finesse, but honestly I think handball helped me a lot with basketball. In handball, you're going up against big girls so you have to really see the court. When you go up you have to know, ok I need to go on the side, I need to go up top – just movement. You need to have really crisp passes, and hand-eye coordination is very key with handball."

When Gascon came to see Proctor take on his alma mater, Long Beach State, in the Dons' last outing, he could still see that Team USA handball player wearing a USF basketball jersey.

"When I watched her play it took me about 30 seconds to say yeah, that's our Taylor. That's exactly the same athlete. You can see the good ones – she is tenacious, she is physical and she can run, but you also see in her the intangibles. She's a constant team player, she's always looking to get other players involved in the play, she's finding the open man.

"One thing I saw five years ago when I watched Taylor seems to be very true still. As good as she is, she's a very coachable athlete. She's a coach's athlete. A coach speaks and this athlete listens and reacts to it. Completely coachable and a constant team player. That's the kind of athlete she is on the handball court too. Aggressive on the offensive front, a great tenacious defensive player, good in transition, but she also makes others around her better."

In that contest at Long Beach, Proctor finished with 20 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists, nearly notching the elusive triple-double as the Dons effectively executed the game plan to leave The Pyramid with the victory.

Needless to say, Proctor's focus on basketball – now and in the future – is at the forefront, but her competitive spirit to compete past this season is also on her mind.

"I'm definitely interested in playing again after I pursue my dream of basketball," said Proctor. "I would definitely go back to it. I think that handball is a very fun game. It's physical. It's just one sport you kind of fall in love with right when you get there, honestly for me. I love to travel, that's something I want to do, and handball could take me there.

"I definitely want to get in an Olympics and handball is a way to do that. There's a good group of girls that now have stayed together that they can do it. That's one of my favorite things about it is we're building that back up to where it used to be. That's one thing I love about it is just building a program. That's what David Gascon and (Coach) Kathy Rex did, and that's what all the girls that I played with and stuck with it have done. In a couple years now, handball is going to be one of the sports to look out for in the U.S."