Pacifica Christian to make varsity debut this school year
Pacifica Christian High sophomore Maddy Alaluf has heard the questions from her friends about the school she attends.
Classes start on Monday at the Newport Beach private school, which is just entering its second year of existence. It’s easy to miss the nine-classroom campus driving down 15th Street. The Pacifica Christian enrollment is expected to be around 100 students this year, about double last year, and the school will have juniors for the first time.
In terms of athletics, the Tritons are gearing up for the season. The girls’ volleyball team has its home opener Wednesday at 6 p.m., against Riverside Christian.
“All my friends are like, ‘What’s this school?’” Alaluf said. “I’m like, ‘We’re good.’ I mean, our volleyball team was really good last year. We only lost three [matches]. Our soccer team, we were undefeated until our last game.”
Those campaigns, though, were on the junior varsity level. This year, though, the Tritons will be competing in varsity sports for the first time. And Alaluf, a Newport Beach resident and club soccer goalie for Strikers FC, is excited. She plays outside hitter for the Pacifica Christian girls’ volleyball team, and forward for the girls’ soccer team.
Wednesday’s match will be the first home varsity volleyball match in school history. “The Wedge,” which is the name of the Pacifica student cheering session, will be ready to support the team.
“It’s good,” Alaluf said of building up the athletic program. “At a regular high school with like 2,000 people, I don’t think they would get out of their comfort zone and play two sports, three sports. It’s good [here] because everybody’s comfortable to play with each other, and everybody is friends. I just have fun here [in volleyball]. I don’t stress out over it.”
Pacifica Christian Athletic Director Brandon Gonzalez also is excited. Many of the team’s sports are playing similarly small schools this season, though Gonzalez, who’s also the girls’ soccer coach, said he has scheduled a game in that sport against Sage Hill. The Lightning have more than four times the current enrollment of Pacifica Christian.
Varsity action is definitely a step up for the Tritons, but Gonzalez thinks it’s a good time to do it. They will play as a freelance school, with no league attachments. Other fall sports at the school include boys’ and girls’ cross country, rowing (which is also a winter sport) and boys’ sand volleyball. A football team is not planned in the near future, Gonzalez said.
“We’re excited,” he said. “It’s going to be a big deal. I think girls’ volleyball, girls’ soccer, boys’ basketball and boys’ volleyball will be strong sports. Those four should get into the postseason. Of course, it’s the small-school world. We’re playing Capistrano Valley Christian, Bethel Baptist, a lot of the smaller schools. We’re not quite ready for the Newport Harbors of the world, Corona del Mars.”
But Gonzalez is also happy with the level of coaching that the Pacifica Christian teams have been able to attract. The cross country and track coach is former SMU standout Valerie Sizemore. The girls’ volleyball coach is Newport Harbor alumna Jennifer Darrow, who played at Princeton.
Jenny Griffith, another former Newport Harbor standout who was an All-American at UCLA, is the sand volleyball coach. Gonzalez said that Griffith’s junior son Josh, who stands 6-foot-9 and is a transfer from Estancia, will be a key piece of the Pacifica Christian boys’ basketball team coached by former El Modena High head man Jeff Berokoff.
“We’re really trying to take our sports here seriously, as well as our academics,” Gonzalez said. “I say that we want to be the Duke of Orange County, a highly academic but highly athletic program. We don’t have the glim and glamour quite yet, as far as facilities and whatnot, so it’s really important to me that we supplement that with the proper coaches, the right training, the right partnerships for our athletes.”
The partnerships include one with a Crossfit that’s a block over from the Pacifica Christian campus.
“We don’t have a weight room on campus, so on Tuesdays and Thursdays, our P.E. classes go to Crossfit,” Gonzalez said. “And our teams, if they want to get lifting and workouts in, it’s a five-minute walk to Crossfit.”
The more serious sport-specific athletes go to Proactive Sports Performance in Santa Ana twice a week. One of the trainers there, Genet Loganbill, acts as the Tritons’ strength and conditioning coach, as well as an assistant varsity volleyball coach.
Athletics are definitely a big part of campus life at Pacifica Christian. Gonzalez said that 77% of the students play two sports, and 38% play three sports.
Madi Gates, an incoming sophomore and Huntington Beach resident, plays both girls’ volleyball and girls’ soccer. Her background was in gymnastics prior to coming to Pacifica Christian, but she has fit right in with the team aspect as well. In volleyball, she plays setter.
“I feel so tremendously humbled and grateful to even say, ‘I played varsity volleyball and soccer in high school,’” Gates said. “At a public school I’d either not make it or make a freshman team. I don’t know. It just makes me smile every time I think about it, because so many people don’t get this opportunity and so many small schools that are varsity just don’t have talent. But for us, we’ve worked so hard and we want this for our school. We want to be so well-rounded. Varsity level, it’s insane and it’s super exciting.”
Gonzalez said that a long-term goal for the school is an enrollment of 400 students. When that happens, the plan is to move the academic campus off-site, and keep the current location as an athletic campus.
For now, though, the Tritons are working hard, and anyone can be part of it. Gonzalez said the school’s teams have a no-cut policy.
“If you as a parent and a family and a student-athlete are willing to commit to a team, we’ll find a spot for you,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that we don’t want to win. It doesn’t mean that there’s equal playing time ... but our goal is to create an environment where kids can have fun.”
