Karisma Flores saved her best act for last.
In the final games of her final high school season, playing on the biggest stage for girls basketball in Southern California, the Oak Park High senior put a bow on one of the most illustrious prep basketball careers Ventura County has ever seen.
Flores scored 29 points against No. 2 Sage Hill in the Eagles’ one-point loss in the CIF-Southern Section Open Division quarterfinals, then followed that performance up with a 27-point outburst in the first round of the CIF-State playoffs against La Jolla Country Day in which she went 7 of 7 from beyond the 3-point line — three short of the state record.
It was no surprise to Oak Park head coach April Schilling.
“ ‘You are built for this.’ That is what I told her,” Schilling said of the late-season heroics. “You are playing your best when it counts the most. That is what we all, as coaches and as competitors, live for.”
For finishing her career with a flourish, Flores is The Star’s Girls Basketball Player of the Year of the 2025-26 season.
Long before she reached the 2,000-point mark and became the fourth-highest scorer in Ventura County history, before she led Oak Park to its first Open Division playoff berth, Flores was a raw talent still learning her game.
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down gyms and courts all across the county, she and her trainer, George Albanez, searched far and wide for a court — any court — to keep training.
She trained with Albanez alongside former Ventura High star Jazzy Carrazco, then home from playing for Sacramento State, and 2011-12 Star co-Boys Basketball Player of the Year Alex Ramon, at a small court behind a church in Oxnard.
They jokingly dubbed themselves “The Quaranteam.”
On long days out on the asphalt of their makeshift hoops home, Flores learned the most valuable skill of her yearslong journey of development as an athlete — far more vital than her patented step-back 3-pointer or fadeaway footwork:
An indomitable work ethic.
“I am just grateful that other people see what my family sees and what I see. In COVID, I would spend five hours a day outside at the park, getting a little farmer’s tan,” Flores said. “It gives me so much confidence.”
The thousands upon thousands of shots made and missed in those quarantine months were the building blocks of a growing confidence.
When she put one up in a game, she knew had earned a make.
“(People ask), ‘Karisma, how do you even make these crazy shots?’ ” Flores said. “It doesn’t seem crazy to me. I practice it, over and over and over again.”
Any time the Eagles needed a clutch bucket this season, like when they were tied in the final moments of a nonleague battle against Sage Hill at a holiday tournament, Flores delivered.
She drilled a 3-pointer on a baseline out-of-bounds play to defeat the SoCal power, 59-56, proving to herself, her teammates and every other top team in the region that Oak Park deserved a spot at the table.
“That was a huge moment for our team,” Schilling said.
It wasn’t always smooth sailing this season for Flores.
There was an adjustment period to a new system after transferring from Buena High and to playing alongside other stars like Coastal Canyon League MVP Maya Deshautelle. She was also joining a program that had won three straight CIF-SS titles.
Flores scored more than 1500 points during her time at Buena, but took a step back as a scorer early in her first season with the Eagles. She averaged 17.3 points — a drop from her 23 points per game as a junior at Buena — and 3.2 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game in her final high school season.
“I had so many nights with my mom where I was crying because of how frustrated I was. I felt like I wasn’t showing my full potential,” Flores said. “I wasn’t succeeding, in my eyes.”
Flores found other ways to impact the game, diving into her defensive game and frustrating opposing ball-handlers at the top of Oak Park’s zone defense. A step back as a scorer allowed her to take a leap forward as a player.
She averaged an impressive 3.2 steals a game to lead the defense on the perimeter.
“Her length really bothered people, both in their shot and in getting her hands in deflections on balls and starting the break,” Schilling said. “Usually, shooters, you don’t necessarily think of them as defensive stoppers.”
Looking back on her career, Flores said her message to up-and-coming players is to love the work.
It’s a principle Flores said she and her biggest rival Kai Staniland, who just finished a record-breaking career at Ventura High, both embodied.
“I think one of the most crazy things about my story is that I didn’t start off good,” Flores said. “I hated Kai when we played VYBA (Ventura Youth Basketball Association). She made me so frustrated because of how good she was. I was like, ‘I just want to be like her. That is my mark.’ ”
The pair finished their careers within five points of one another on the county all-time scoring list, with Staniland in third (2,199) and Flores in fourth (2,174), forever leaving their mark on girls basketball in the area.
Flores will now take her prodigious talent and work ethic to UC Santa Barbara.
“That’s what people can learn about my story,” Flores said. “The work really shows. It’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish. I know I still have a long way to go, and I am just beginning.”
The Star’s All-County Girls Basketball Second Team
Dominic Massimino is a staff writer for The Star. He can be reached at dominic.massimino@vcstar.com. For more coverage, follow @vcsdominic on Twitter and Instagram.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Karisma Flores is The Star’s Girls Basketball Player of the Year
Reporting by Dominic Massimino, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
