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Godinez coach Robert Morgan has built his program into a league champion after a rough start when the school opened.
Godinez coach Robert Morgan has built his program into a league champion after a rough start when the school opened.
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Robert Morgan had to start off from scratch when he became the girls basketball coach at Godinez High when the school opened in 2007.

He didn’t have a roster loaded with club players. None of the top players in the county were looking to transfer to a new school with no tradition of winning.

Morgan had freshmen and sophomores who grew up in the Santa Ana neighborhood near the school.

“I still remember the first day of practice in the gym when we said, ‘We’re having tryouts and it’s basketball season,'” Morgan said. “I think we had 60 or 70 kids that could not do anything. I mean, it was bad. There was no height there. There was no anything whatsoever.”

Forget running plays, most of the girls had never played organized basketball in their lives. But Morgan and his coaching staff were up to the challenge.

“We were starting out with this is a basketball and this is a court and taking it step by step,” Morgan said. “That first summer and even the next summer we set very achievable goals whether it be scoring 10 points in a game or taking one charge in this game. We tried to set goals in that direction until we could possibly start thinking about wins and losses.”

Morgan’s players bought into what he was teaching and they went 15-12 and won a share of the Orange Coast League title last season in their first season as a varsity program. This season, the Grizzlies went 19-9, won the league title outright and they won their first postseason game.

Morgan’s hard work and dedication are why he was chosen as The Register’s 2009-10 girls basketball coach of the year.

“The first year it was trying to get them to stop wearing the gear from the school that they were at (before Godinez opened) and buy into the new school,” Morgan said.

Morgan has been coaching boys and girls basketball for 20 years. He took the Newport Christian boys team to the CIF-SS finals. He knows how to build a program as well. He coached the girls team at Saddleback from 2000-06 and guided the Roadrunners to a Golden West League title before taking the job at Godinez.

Godinez doesn’t play the same kind of schedule that the top 10 teams in the county play, but Morgan wanted to give his players a taste of what that level is like by putting them in tough tournaments during the summer.

“The summer before (Godinez’s first varsity season) we put ourselves in very difficult tournaments,” said Morgan, who brought his entire coaching staff from Saddleback over to Godinez. “We played Long Beach Poly, we played Mater Dei, pretty much everybody in the (Trinity) League that summer. We got beat up and bruised, but when it came to league we know we can play these kinds of teams and it’s not a big deal. Our league is not of that caliber, so it made it a much easier step.”

The league titles were milestones for Godinez, but the victory over Western in the first round of the CIF-SS Division 3AA playoffs was something special for the Grizzlies.

“That was amazing,” Morgan said. “I think every step was amazing.”

Morgan said guard Bridgitte Madrigal and power forward Jalecia Wilson will go on to play at Orange Coast College. Both have untapped potential. Madrigal averaged 16.7 points, 5.6 rebounds, 4.2 steals and 3.3 assists per game. Morgan found Wilson on the cheerleading squad last season. She had never played organized basketball, but she averaged 8.6 points, 10.4 rebounds and 2.3 steals per game in her second season.

If the past is any indicator, look for more good things to come from Morgan’s program at Godinez.