DATE: Tuesday, November 4, 1997             TAG: 9711040451

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: ATHLETES OF THE WEEK

SOURCE: BY PAUL WHITE, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   40 lines

JOHNSON: FRESHMAN'S SIGHTS SET ON VOLS

Although she's only 14, Catholic basketball whiz Ashley Johnson already knows she wants to play for two-time national champion Tennessee.

Judging from her performance this season, the feeling should soon be mutual.

The 5-11 Johnson, heralded as perhaps the area's best freshman before the season even began, lived up to the hype by scoring a TCIS-best 19.6 points a game, earning first-team All-TCIS honors and leading the Crusaders (21-3) to 13 more wins than they notched the previous season.

``In our big games, I felt like I had to have big games,'' Johnson said, who is also the freshman class president. ``But whenever I had bad games, my teammates picked up the slack.''

Even the sting of a surprising loss to Hampton Roads Academy last week in a TCIS semifinal didn't quell's Johnson's enthusiasm about the resurgent Crusaders.

``It was disappointing seeing the seniors cry, the disappointment in coach's face,'' Johnson said. ``The younger players felt like we let the older players down.''

The Crusaders should be winners for the next several years. Only three players graduate, and the Crusaders continue to be fortified by a thriving junior varsity program that has dropped only three games the last three years.

But the program's rise has certainly been enhanced by the presence of Johnson, a second-team All-TCIS pick as an eighth-grader whose sharp fundamentals and on-court maturity have been honed by several years of AAU competition. Last summer, Johnson's Boo Williams team finished fourth in the AAU nationals.

And Johnson seems almost certain to become an even bigger star - according to her mother, doctors say Ashley still has a growth spurt coming. ILLUSTRATION: Catholic's Ashley Johnson finished her first year with

a league-best 19.6 points per game average and all-TCIS honors.

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