Essa’s proteges are now his peers

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You know you’ve been around a long time when kids who used to play for you are now coaches themselves. Bell-Jeff boys’ basketball Coach Eli Essa knows that all too well. On Friday night he matched wits for the second time this season against a former player in Delphi Academy’s first-year Coach Vincent Ramirez.

Ramirez was a freshman at Granada Hills Kennedy when he played on Essa’s East Valley Trojans youth team that won the Valley Conference title and reached the state final at Stanford University’s Maples Pavilion. Student and teacher kept in touch through the years and when Ramirez, also the Dragons’ athletic director, took over as coach just before the season started it seemed only fitting that he should face his mentor’s team.

‘Vince was a foot soldier in Iraq during Desert Storm and he’d call me all the time,’ recalls Essa, in his 13th season at Bell-Jeff following a nine-year stint at North Hollywood. ‘He’d say ‘I’ve only got five minutes’ but it was always special to hear from him.’

-- Image by fotosearch.com

Earlier this season, Bell-Jeff defeated Armenian General Benevolent, coached by another of Essa’s former players, Carlos Arroyo. Essa also tried to schedule a game with another of his former players, Ernest Baskerville, now the coach at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies.

So what happened on the hardwood Friday night in Burbank? The Guards built a 31-14 halftime lead and cruised to a 61-23 nonleague victory, although Essa said the future looks bright for Ramirez’s team.

‘They’re very young and they have no seniors but they play hard and that’s a reflection of their coach,’ Essa said of the Dragons. ‘I don’t want to play them next year because he’ll have everyone back and I’m losing almost everybody.’

-- Steve Galluzzo, guest blogger