Junior Achievement

Matt Barkley, a guitar-playing, spiral-throwing quar- terback from Santa Ana Mater Dei, was selected Wednesday as the Gatorade male high school athlete of the year during a celebrity-filled ceremony at the Sofitel Hotel in Los Angeles. Barkley, who has committed to USC and is preparing for his senior year of high school, is the first junior to win the award. Past recipients include LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Greg Oden and Kevin Love. "I'm amazed," Barkley said. "It's awesome."

Canyon Ceman enjoys the theater, is a college honors student and hopes to someday manage a company. But for Ceman, a 20-year-old Stanford junior and former Mira Costa High player, volleyball remains the focal part of his life. He was recently selected as the top college player by the American Volleyball Coaches Assn. "This year there were a lot of really good volleyball players," Stanford Coach Ruben Nieves said. "But it was a senior-dominated year. Canyon was an exception.

Aimee McDaniel, the crackerjack point guard on the Pepperdine women's basketball team, couldn't help but laugh when recalling the childhood games and pains that essentially created her on-court persona. "I was a total tomboy and very competitive," she said. "I didn't have any brothers or sisters, but I lived in an apartment building, so I would play tackle football with the boys in the complex. Eventually, I started beating them up.

For the third year in a row, Jason Kapono will watch his senior teammates honored in a pregame ceremony at the last UCLA home game. They will accept bouquets of flowers, hug their teary-eyed parents and even the most jaded fans will cheer. And for the third year in a row, Kapono will wonder if it, too, is his last game at Pauley Pavilion. The high-scoring junior forward seriously considered jumping to the NBA each of the last two seasons and will do so again. But he isn't tipping his hand.

Conventional wisdom says that entrepreneurs are born, not made, and that the best classroom is the office, workshop or factory. But don't tell that to Kathleen Godwin, partner in a small San Pedro-based apparel manufacturing company, who has come to the USC campus this night to hear a lecture on garment production costs.