Some Orange County teams are about to get better.
Monday is the first day of athletic eligibility for high school winter sports student-athletes who had to sit out the first month of the season.
Among the boys basketball players who become eligible Monday and are expected to make significant impact are juniors Joel Mensah and JT Robinson at JSerra. Mensah is a 6-foot-10 center who moved in from the East Coast. Robinson, a 6-3 guard, was on the Santa Margarita varsity roster his freshman and sophomore years and played some for Roosevelt of Eastvale during the summer and fall.
Fairmont Prep’s girls basketball team, No. 1 in the O.C. top 10, will improve when junior Anjali Ghadi, a standout at Woodbridge last season, becomes eligible Monday.
There will be others at other schools in basketball and in other sports.
Transfers become immediately eligible at their new school if a change of residence by the entire family has occurred or if the transfer was made for hardship reasons. There are all sorts of other conditions, such as the student-athlete was academically eligible at the time of transfer at the former school, the transfer is not being made because of disciplinary reasons and more.
Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
• The national letter-of-intent signing period for football players begins Feb. 1. The NCAA Board of Directors in April will vote on a proposal that would create a football early signing period in June before a player’s senior year or in December of their senior year, in addition to the February signing period. A good reason to keep the football signing period exclusively to an early February start is late- or end-of-season college football coaching changes usually have been made by early February. Players who have committed, and not yet signed, with a college have the flexibility to change their minds should a coaching change occur.
• Yes, if early signing periods for football existed kids could still opt to wait until February after the senior seasons are done before signing. But sometimes high school athletes feel that if they wait before taking a scholarship that the scholarship they delayed on taking could be given to some other recruit.
• Santa Margarita All-County receiver Grant Calcaterra is in the UnderArmour All-American game that will be played Sunday at Orlando, Fla., and televised live by ESPN at 10 a.m. Calcaterra, who committed to Oklahoma, is listed as a tight end on the UnderArmour roster. With his ability to find creases in coverage and his sure hands, Calcaterra would do just fine at tight end for the Sooners.
• Mater Dei’s football team will play Bishop Gorman of Las Vegas at Santa Ana Stadium in Week 1 of the 2017 season. Gorman was No. 1 in USA Today’s final national rankings for the season. Mater Dei will play at Gorman in 2018.
• USA Today’s final national football expert rankings had CIF-Southern Section Division 1 and CIF State Open Division champion St. John Bosco at No. 6, CIF-SS Division 1 runnerup Mater Dei at No. 9 and CIF-SS Division 1 semifinalist Centennial of Corona at No. 12.
• Bol Bol, a 7-foot junior basketball player and the son of former NBA player Manute Bol, has applied to Mater Dei but as of Thursday had not been accepted for the spring semester. Bol is ranked as the No. 14 junior in the nation by people who rank players nationally. He was at Bishop Miege of Shawnee Mission, Kan., his sophomore year. Wherever Bol’s destination, eligibility would have to be acquired.
• If you haven’t seen it yet, search “LaMelo Ball” and “half-court shot.” Ball, a sophomore at Chino Hills and a younger brother of UCLA star Lonzo Ball, on Monday in a game against Foothill of Henderson, Nev., dribbled slowly through the backcourt, pointed at the half-court stripe and then from behind the stripe launched a set shot and made it. Chino Hills is in the Nike Extravaganza at Mater Dei on Feb. 4, when the Huskies, No. 6 in USA Today’s national rankings, play No. 5 Oak Hill Academy of Virginia.
• National No. 2 Sierra Canyon of Chatsworth also is in the Nike Extravaganza. A very good all-O.C. matchup is in the event is Los Alamitos vs. Villa Park.
• Services information for Mark Thornton, longtime Capistrano Valley and Dana Hills boys basketball coach who died this past weekend, are expected to be announced over the next couple of days.
• Dave Cowen, who was Woodbridge athletic director from 1984 through ’99 and lately has helped direct Concordia Univeristy’s masters program in coaching and athletic administration, has died. More information and services information are coming.
• The National Football Foundation’s Orange County Chapter is closing in on its deadline to receive from coaches their teams’ honorees for the chapter’s Student-Athlete banquet at which it honors high school players who achieved all-league first-team recognition while maintaining a grade-point average of 3.5 or better, and for community college and Chapman University players who were all-conference first team and have a GPA of 3.3 or better. Nominees should go to Paul Cannon, 3200 Park Center Dr., Suite 1170, Costa Mesa, 92626. When we publish the list of honorees after the March 20 event, we’d hate to have to tell the parents of an eligible player who was not part of the evening that the coach did not supply the potential honorees’ information.
Contact the writer: sfryer@scng.com
