Every team goes into a season with specific goals.
Foothill had its goals. But something happened to the Knights.
“We were better than we thought we were,” Foothill coach Rusty Van Cleave said.
They were so much better that the Knights won the first CIF boys basketball championship in school history. It was a great year, for which Van Cleave is the Orange County boys basketball coach of the year for the 2009-10 season.
Foothill went 29-3, including 10-0 in the Sea View League. The Knights beat Ocean View in the CIF-Southern Section Division 3AA championship game at Honda Center. They lost to Gahr of Cerritos, 81-78, in the CIF Southern California regionals to end a 16-game winning streak; their other two losses were to Tustin, by three points, in the Beckman Tournament, and to Mater Dei in the Orange Holiday Classic championship game.
The victory over Ocean View in the CIF-SS finals was typical Foothill. Three players scored in double figures: Myles Carrillo had 16, Rob Filley added 14 and Lucas Mijares came off of the bench to contribute 12. Defense was, as usual, a key as the Knights held Ocean View to 32 percent shooting and outrebounded Ocean View, 40-31.
A few days later, when Van Cleave spoke with Ocean View All-County guard Avery Johnson, Johnson asked Van Cleave about the Foothill game plan for that game.
“Really, we just had to go out there and be us,” Van Cleave told Johnson. “We just had to get out there and play, and see how we matched up.”
Van Cleave, 39 and married with no children, just completed his sixth year at Foothill. He is a walk-on coach, which is a coach that is not a full-time faculty member. He works as a sales representative for different athletic companies.
Coaching is in his blood. His father, Dewey Van Cleave, coached at Garden Grove for 35 years, and is the freshman basketball coach at Foothill. Rusty was around dad’s teams a lot.
“Rusty’s been on the basketball court since he was 2 years old,” Dewey said. “When he became old enough to know what was going on, he used to socialize with the players at Garden Grove, play a lot of one-on-one with them. He gained a lot of knowledge over those years.”
Rusty played at Foothill when Jim Reames coached there, and Reames was and continues to be an important mentor.
“When you played for Jim Reames you were always absolutely and 100 percent prepared for who you were playing,” Van Cleave said. Van Cleave was an assistant coach at Estancia, Santa Margarita and Villa Park, and gives credit to the coaches there – Tim Parsel and Rich Boyce at Estancia, Jerry DeBusk at Santa Margarita, and Kevin Reynolds at Villa Park – for teaching him. A co-assistant at Villa Park, Jeff Gomez, now is Van Cleave’s assistant at Foothill, and Van Cleave said Gomez’s participation was crucial to Foothill’s success this season.
Mostly, though, Van Cleave learned from dad.
“He’s a great example of how important it is to be the same guy every day,” Van Cleave said. “He didn’t have a lot of highs or lows. He’s always been very consistent.”
Having his dad coach the freshman teams has been something special for Van Cleave.
“He gets our guys to transition out of little-league ball and shows them that, if you want to be a successful high-school athlete, this is what you need to do,” Van Cleave said. “I don’t have to correct guys’ attitude or worry about their attendance as they come up through the program, because that’s already been taken care of. To have him around to see these guys he brought together win a CIF title, it’s unbelievable.”
And maybe better than Rusty Van Cleave ever could have thought it would be.
