Rising Star Extinguished When Athlete, 19, Dies Suddenly : Tribute: Mike Goff always loved a full house, Magnolia coach says. About 1,000 packed gym to remember school’s hero.

On the last morning of his life, 19-year-old Mike Goff picked up the telephone at his home in Anaheim and invited his best friend, Randy Czech, to go out for a quick breakfast.

Czech declined, having stayed up late the previous night with his boyhood friend, whom he had watched become a standout basketball player by setting six high school basketball records at Magnolia High School in Anaheim and outscoring all other players in Orange County during one season.

Fifteen minutes later, Czech said, he got another phone call. It was Goff’s father, Mike Goff Sr., and his voice was shaking.

“Mikey just passed away,” Czech recalls the father telling him. Mike Jr. had collapsed after breakfast with his dad.

The cause of the young man’s Dec. 16 death remains a mystery. His private physician has ruled out anything other than natural causes, and toxicological tests performed by the county coroner’s office were negative, the elder Goff said.

The 6-foot-6, 210-pound youth was in peak physical condition and had no history of medical problems, said his uncle, Fred Goff.

Mike Goff was remembered Friday night when his coach and former teammates at the school took time out between the junior varsity and varsity basketball games to retire his No. 30 jersey.

Coach Al Walin unveiled Goff’s gold-and-black jersey framed with a picture of him poised to shoot a basket. The frame will remain on the Wall of Honor next to one holding the retired jersey of another noted Magnolia athlete, California Angels baseball star Brian Downing.

“To Magnolia basketball, he was grace in action, a game performer, a young man who loved his family, his school and his team,” Walin said in prepared remarks to a crowd of more than 1,000 who packed the gymnasium bleachers. “He enjoyed basketball, but most of all a full house--a packed Magnolia gym!”

Goff had been such an exceptional athlete at Magnolia, where he graduated in 1988, that Walin said the jersey retirement ceremony would have occurred even if he had lived.

In his three years with the Magnolia Sentinels, Goff’s performance on the court led to six school records: most points in one season; most points in two seasons; most points in three seasons (1,270); most points in one game (53); most field goals in one game; and most free throws in one season.

Goff was also the leading scorer and rebounder in Orange County high school basketball during the 1987-1988 season, averaging 31.4 points and 20 rebounds per game.

He scored Magnolia’s single-game record of 53 points in a Sunny Hills tournament game between Magnolia and Brea-Olinda. Magnolia won the game, 79-78, in overtime. Later, Goff was named a Times All-County player for that season.

In 1987, Goff helped lead his team to the California Interscholastic Federation quarterfinals, and to the best season in the history of Magnolia basketball, said Walin, who is in his 15th season as the school’s head basketball coach.

In a January, 1988, interview with The Times Orange County Edition, Mike Goff attributed his scoring skills to a compulsion he once had of practicing baskets by himself.

“I played whenever I could,” Goff said. “I’d go to any gym that was open. It seemed like I could always find a gym that was open.”

After graduating from high school, Goff enrolled in Fullerton College, where he was chosen most valuable player last season by averaging 15 points and 7.2 rebounds per game. He was also an All-Orange Empire Conference selection.

This season he had been averaging eight points per game, and was to play in his team’s community college tournament in Riverside later the same day he died. Just three days earlier, his uncle Fred said, Goff led his team in points and, in a game the previous night, had made the most assists.

Coach Walin said he is confident Goff would have gone on to excel at a four-year university and, quite possibly have made it into the pros.

“All the way around, he was the best player with the most potential of any kid in this school,” Walin said.

Goff’s father, 42, who with other family members remain devastated by the death, said the only solace he receives now is in knowing his son led a remarkably happy and carefree life.

“In 19 years, he never caused a problem,” Goff, The Times’ San Gabriel Valley Edition circulation division manager, said before Friday’s retirement ceremony. “Besides being father and son, we were also friends and we enjoyed each other. His loss is the hardest thing to deal with.”

Father and son, just two weeks before the tragedy, had spent a three-day weekend camping and fishing near Lake Havasu City, Ariz.

The younger Goff also frequented his family’s weekend home at Lake Havasu to relax and water ski with his father, mother, Michelle, also 42, and a married sister, Stacy Allinson, 24, of Buena Park. Goff lived with his parents.

“His family came first and they’re very, very lost right now,” said Fred Goff, 33, of Cypress. “He was like a little brother to me. He was the kind of kid who every time he was around you he added something to you.”

Goff was so popular in the community that his funeral drew a standing-room-only gathering of more than 1,000 at St. Justin Catholic Church in Anaheim, Fred Goff said. The motorcade to a local cemetery stretched as far as four miles, he added.

Czech, Mike Goff’s friend, said that playing in the National Basketball Assn. was Goff’s goal.

“He used to say that someday he would get me season tickets for whatever team he’d be playing on,” said Czech, 19, of Anaheim. “He loved the Lakers and his favorite player was Magic Johnson.”

Three weeks before he died, Czech said, Mike Goff was badly shaken by the death of a former Magnolia classmate in an Orange County traffic accident. Czech said that tragedy reminded Goff of his own mortality, and prompted him to try to get closer to his old high school friends.

“He told me one day that he wouldn’t be able to take it if I died,” Czech said. “I told him he wouldn’t have to worry because I’d live until 103.”

After he and Goff spent Friday night, Dec. 15, talking at a friend’s house in Norwalk, Czech said his friend telephoned him the following day at 9:30 a.m. and asked if he wanted to go out to breakfast. Czech said he had not gotten to sleep until 2 a.m.

“I said, ‘No, I’m still really tired,’ ” Czech said. “He said, ‘All right dude, you’re just trying to make me feel bad.’ Then he said he would call me when he got back home.”

Then came Goff Sr.’s call.

“Mr. Goff said to get all of his friends together and tell them what happened,” Czech said. “He said Mikey just ‘fell asleep’ in the living room chair.”

Fred Goff said that the father and son had just eaten breakfast at the kitchen table after playing a game of Nintendo. After getting up from the table, Fred Goff said, “he just kind of fell over.”

Although paramedics responded quickly, Fred Goff said, there was nothing they could do to revive the young man. An avid basketball fan who missed only a handful of Mike Goff’s games, Fred Goff said he still can’t believe his talented nephew is gone.

“I still get in the car on Friday nights,” Fred Goff said, “and think I’m going to go watch his games.”