Loara High Hires Another Basketball Coach

Loara High School this week hired its second head basketball coach of the summer, its third in a year. The new coach is Craig Conrad, 33, a former Los Alamitos and Perris high school coach.

Conrad replaces Bill Hughes, hired at Loara two months ago to fill a position vacated by Brian Daly. Daly left Loara in June after one season to take an assistant coach’s job at the University of Iowa.

Hughes supervised Loara’s summer basketball program, but notified Principal Gerry Glenn two weeks ago that he would like to be released from his contract to accept an assistant principalship at a Reseda junior high school.

Conrad, the other finalist in the original search to replace Daly, began the job Monday. A graduate of Sunny Hills High, Orange Coast College and Cal State Fullerton, he spent three years as head coach at Los Alamitos, twice taking the Griffins to the Southern Section 4-A playoffs.

In 1980, he was named Empire League Coach of the Year after his team complied a 16-7 record, finishing in third place behind perennial league powers Ocean View and Katella. He subsequently coached at Perris through the 1983-84 season, twice guiding the Panthers to the 1-A playoffs.