Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
• Three county athletes have posted the state’s top marks in their events in this still-young track and field season. Mater Dei’s Curtis Godin recorded California’s fastest time in the 100 meters at 10.5 seconds, and in the 200 at 21.29; Villa Park’s Garrett Corcoran leads the state in the 3,200 at 8:58.01; and Kaitlyn Merritt, the Register’s county girls track and field athlete of the year in 2013, has a state-best 13-0 in the pole vault.
• County athletes are second- and third-best in the pole vault in the state. Orange Lutheran’s Carl Johansson’s 16-6 is just behind the 16-7 of state leader Luigi Colella of Thousand Oaks. Parker Curry of Santa Margarita is No. 3 at 16-0.
• Mater Dei’s Stanley Johnson on Thursday was selected Wooden Award winner for CIF-Southern Section Division 1. The L.A. City Section winner is Elijah Stewart of Westchester. Mater Dei plays Westchester in the CIF Southern California Regionals Open Division final Saturday at 8 p.m. at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario.
• Johnson’s final Mater Dei home game was Tuesday’s 67-64 double-overtime win over Etiwanda. Over his four years of varsity basketball, he played in 46 games at Mater Dei’s Meruelo Athletic Center and the Monarchs won all of them.
• That Etiwanda-Mater Dei game was one of the better athletic events witnessed in 24 consecutive years of covering high school sports, plus many more games scattered over the late 1970s and early ’80s. It was so draining for everyone involved that Mater Dei coach Gary McKnight gave the team and coaches Wednesday off, kind of a rare event.
• The Wooden Award winner for Division 3 is Jack Williams of Chaminade of West Hills. Santa Margarita plays Chaminade in the Southern California Regionals Division 3 final on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Colony High of Ontario.
• McKnight has 993 career wins, all at Mater Dei since the 1982-83 season. He has the most career wins of any boys basketball coach in California history.
• Three of the four teams in the California regional finals in the Open Division are private schools: Mater Dei in the Southern California final; and Bishop O’Dowd of Oakland and Capital Christian of Sacramento in the Northern California final. The Monarchs’ opponent, Westchester of Los Angeles, is a magnet school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
• Of the 12 teams playing in the six Southern California finals on Saturday (Open Division through Division 5), eight are private schools.
• Santa Margarita’s boys and girls basketball teams advanced to the Southern California finals, but neither is in the state top 20 compiled by calhisports.com. Neither are the Eagles’ opponents Saturday, Chaminade (boys) and Santa Barbara (girls).
• This is the first time both Santa Margarita boys and girls teams advanced to the Southern California basketball finals. The Eagles boys are 2-1 in those finals, with the most recent appearance a win in 2008. The girls are 0-1, having lost in ’07.
• Mater Dei’s boys basketball is 14-8 in the Southern California finals, on the court. The CIF Southern California Regionals program will show the Monarchs are 14-7, because the team they lost to in 2000, Clovis West of Fresno, later forfeited the win for using an ineligible player.
• Mater Dei’s 14 Southern California championships are the most in boys basketball state tournament history. Brea Olinda has the most championships in girls basketball with 11.
• Santa Margarita’s girls basketball team has won its three Southern California Regionals games by an average of 20 points. Santa Barbara has won its three games by an average of 23 points, but that is skewed because it won its first game by 46 points and followed with winning margins of 12 and 10 points.
• Canyon boys basketball senior Kalem Rokosz took 61 charges in 35 games. Maxpreps.com has a category for that statistic, and, according to the website, Rokosz leads the nation in charges taken. Only a small percentage of schools record and report charges, but still that is a laudatory total.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
