Daily Journal Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year: Half Moon Bay’s Alli Dioli

As a senior, Dioli saved her best season for last, scoring 497 points while ranking tops in the Peninsula Athletic League by averaging 19.9 points per game. Her splash game was prolific, ranking first in the Central Coast Section among teams to submit statistics to Maxpreps.com with 110 made 3s.

“It comes naturally after hours and hours and hours of work,” Glynn said. “Like the old saying, the more you practice the luckier you get. She’s just … the hardest working person I’ve seen.”

The hard work paid off, as she was a four-time league MVP. Dioli earned her third PAL North Division MVP honor this season and was also voted MVP of the shortened PAL season during the pandemic in the spring of 2021. Now, Dioli has also been named Daily Journal Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year.

Beyond the numbers, honors and accolades, however, it’s what Dioli did to get onto the court this season that it truly triumphant. When her junior season ended prematurely due to a knee injury when she tore her ACL in a Feb. 11 home game against rival Terra Nova, it was in doubt whether she’d ever play high school basketball again.

Not only did she return after undergoing reconstructive surgery on her left knee, the 5-10 sharpshooter made her 2022-23 debut in just under 10 months from the date of her injury.

“I think she played better, definitely, than I’d ever seen her play coming back,” Glynn said. “She didn’t waste time when she couldn’t do stuff. … She got a lot physically stronger. And I don’t see any difference in speed at this point.”

For Dioli, overcoming the injury was a matter of reestablishing the discipline she’d spent years developing. In this sense, the comeback almost came naturally to the senior, known for her long hours in the gym, often working with her father Martin, a former forward at Gonzaga University.

What Dioli didn’t anticipate was the psychological obstacles, but she had to deal with them in a hurry when HMB hosted Terra Nova for the first of two PAL North rivalry matchups. While the Cougars held on for a 30-22 victory, the low-scoring contest had everything to do with Dioli having the worst game of her career, shooting 1 for 20 from the field while scoring just three points.

“That first Terra Nova game, it definitely did not go very well,” Dioli said. “It was really hard to bring back the whole scene of a crowded home game, playing against Terra Nova and seeing some of the same girls that were out there on the court when I got hurt. That was really hard, and I was in my head about that the whole game.”

Dioli’s ability to bounce back was on full display in HMB’s second game with Terra Nova, though. With the Cougars traveling to Pacifica one year after her injury nearly to the day for a Feb. 10 showdown, Dioli hit eight 3-pointers and scored 30 points in a 42-23 victory.

“[The first game] freaked her out a little bit and she had her worst game of the season, by far,” Glynn said. “And then the second time we played them, she scored all our point the first three quarters.”

Dioli is the youngest of three sisters to play at HMB. Her oldest sister Katherine graduated in 2018, and as a junior was teammates with middle sister Bella when the Cougars won their first CCS championship in program history in 2016-17. Dioli, as a freshman, played with Bella when the Cougars won their next CCS Division IV title in 2019-20.

The Dioli family’s other consistent throughout the championship years is their father Martin, a mild-mannered lawyer by day, who dedicates hours every week coaching basketball.

“My dad has basically made me the player I am today,” Dioli said. “He’s taught me the mechanics of shooting since I was in kindergarten shooting around with my sister. He’s been a big part of everything, and all the success.”

Despite Dioli’s remarkable varsity career, the senior has yet to receive any college offers to play basketball at the next level. Her injury has everything to do with the lack of offers. More specifically, the timing of the injury cost her the most precious recruiting window for a high school athlete, between her junior and senior seasons.

So, what does Dioli have going for her besides the skillset, the results, and the comeback fortitude — all of which speak for themselves? Well, in 2022-23, as one of just two seniors on the HMB roster, and the only one to play regular minutes throughout the season, she emerged as quite the team leader.

“This team, she was the only player that had more than one year of high school basketball experience,” Glynn said. “So, it was very green and a lot of them were transitioning into roles, it wasn’t just nice if they did something, we needed it. There’s times where you’re kind of growing into that new role, they needed an external source of confidence. And just seeing her there — she makes a 3, she gets a steal — it just grows the confidence.”

Not that this came naturally to Dioli.

“It definitely doesn’t usually come natural,” Dioli said. “But I think it was my teammates and the atmosphere my coaches had set. They made it all really fun. I think it kind of allowed me to bring that part out of me.”

It was a leadership role that needed to be filled. The year prior, HMB graduated point guard Abby Kennedy, one of the other players in the career 1,000-points club, whose personality defined the Cougars for four years.

The way Dioli impressed with her leadership is she became as much as a mentor as a leader.

“She was very vocal … which was a big change for her,” Glynn said. “She really embraced the fact that she was the lone senior in the rotation. It was her senior year, and she took control of things. She did it a certain way.”

For a HMB girls’ basketball program that has now established itself as a local powerhouse for the past decade, Dioli’s leadership — highlighted by her extraordinary comeback — is what Glynn intends to build on in the years to come.

“The experience they got this year, learning from the best girl who’s ever come through the program, is going to reverberate throughout their next three years,” Glynn said. “And they’re going to pass it on to the next group.”