Brea Olinda has occupied the position frequently. Mater Dei has been there a lot, too.
One school we’ve never seen at No. 1 in the Orange County girls basketball top 10 is Fairmont Prep … until this week.
Fairmont Prep is No. 1 in the county girls basketball rankings. It’s the first time a Fairmont Prep team has been on top of any O.C. sports top 10.
The Huskies (11-2) lived up to the ranking Thursday. They beat Brea Olinda, 60-52, in overtime at the Nike Tournament of Champions in Phoenix.
It’s not like Fairmont came out of nowhere to get to No. 1. The Huskies were No. 2 in the ocvarsity.com preseason top 10, behind Brea Olinda, which lost a couple of games recently, including one to No. 4 Sonora.
Last season, the Huskies were placed in the CIF-Southern Section’s elite Open Division. It didn’t go well for them. They lost to eventual finalist Long Beach Poly, 61-13, in the first round and went into the Open Division’s consolation bracket in which they lost to Alemany of Mission Hills, 54-50.
A couple of things to keep in mind about that: Fairmont, a private school in Anaheim, has an enrollment of 519; Poly’s enrollment is 4,470, Alemany’s is 1,328.
Fairmont has won several league championships over the past dozen years, so the program has experienced success. But this could be the best season yet.
“It’s a process,” said Fairmont coach Dave Esparza, in his 14th season as Huskies head coach after serving as an assistant coach for seven years. “We’re adding one or two pieces at a time and getting the student-athlete that wants to get a great education and play competitive basketball.”
Fairmont Prep has scoring balance. Senior Cierra Hall, who signed with UC Davis, is averaging 16 points a game. Another senior, Tristen Rollon, is scoring 13 points a game. Sophomore Ally Yamada has been a solid contributor, too. Esparza said the team will be even stronger once Anjali Ghadi, a junior transfer from Woodbridge who was Pacific Coast League MVP last season, becomes eligible on Jan. 2. (Transfers who do not make a change of address that would make them immediately eligible must sit out the first month of their season of sport before becoming eligible.)
Fairmont is competing against bigger schools, and beating them, too. The Huskies coaches are frequently reminded, though, that Fairmont still is a smaller school.
“We drive the van, we tape the ankles, we get the water,” Esparza said, mentioning some of the duties he is responsible for in addition to coaching the team. “And we love doing it.”
Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
• St. John Bosco football assistant coach Mike Crawford has returned to Orange Lutheran as its offensive coordinator. Crawford, who coached running backs at Bosco, previously was head coach at El Dorado. He was a standout receiver at Lutheran in the 1990s.
• San Clemente’s football team finished second, behind Mission Viejo, in the South Coast League and went on to win CIF section and state championships. That happened to Santa Margarita, too, in 2011, when the Eagles finished second to Servite in the Trinity League then won CIF section and state championships.
• Mater Dei beat Santa Margarita in 2011. Mater Dei beat a state champion this year, too, when the Monarchs defeated CIF State Open Division champion St. John Bosco in a Trinity League game in October.
• That one-town-one-team stuff that San Clemente pushes is legit. The city’s victory parade for the team on Wednesday proves it.
• The CIF-SS office had the right teams in the right divisions, for the most part. There will never be a perfect season in which every team is in the correct division.
• The Register’s All-Orange County football team will be posted at ocvarsity.com Friday evening and in the OC Varsity section that is part of the Register print edition on Saturday.
• The Sunset League has experienced some turnover in its football coaching ranks in recent seasons, making Marina’s Jeff Turley second in seniority when he coaches the Vikings for his fourth season in 2017. Newport Harbor’s Jeff Brinkley is the leader. The ’17 season will be his 32nd coaching the Sailors.
• The Sunset/Trinity Baseball Challenge returns for a second year in January and February. The games are in the offseason, so they won’t count on the teams’ 2017 records. The games: Santa Margarita at Los Alamitos, Jan 21, 10 a.m.; Servite at Fountain Valley, Jan, 21, 10 a.m.; St. John Bosco at Huntington Beach, Jan. 27, 3 p.m.; Orange Lutheran at Edison, Feb. 1, 3 p.m.; Mater Dei at Newport Harbor, Feb. 4, 1 p.m.; and Marina at JSerra, Feb. 15, 5:30 p.m.
Contact the writer: sfryer@scng.com
