O.C. Prep Teams Score 2 State Titles in 3 Shots

Three Orange County high school basketball teams, trailing a horde of frenzied rooters behind them, came here for state championships Saturday, and two of them grabbed the brass ring.

Mater Dei High School of Santa Ana hung on for a 62-60 victory over Riordan High School of San Francisco, to become the best high school basketball team in the state.

Servite High School of Anaheim, playing in Division III, handily defeated Mt. Eden High School of Hayward, 67-51.

But Brea-Olinda High School’s Division III girls team suffered a bitter defeat, 54-43, to Placer High School of Auburn.

In the final game, Mater Dei’s five-man team had help in the stands. About 2,000 fans turned the Oakland Coliseum into a raucous sea of scarlet, cheering the team on despite hours spent in the caravans of buses and cars that made the 8 1/2-hour trip here.

“The bus trip was great,” said Mary Vukasovich, a teacher who rode on one of four rooter buses. “The kids were great and full of spirit. They were ready to win.”

Although the Brea-Olinda and Servite rooters were enthusiastic, they could not match the frenzy of the Mater Dei fans, who appeared to outnumber those of Riordan, despite the fact that Riordan rooters only had to travel across the bay.

Fired up by the Mater Dei cheerleaders--national champs themselves--the fans clapped in unison, screamed “Let’s Go Monarchs!’ and roared at every basket throughout the game. And when the final buzzer sounded, the Coliseum rocked with the screams and cheers.

“We had a little of St. Patrick’s luck last week with Jason Quinn’s miracle shot,” said Father John B. Weling, the school’s principal, referring to the basket that pushed Mater Dei to a one-point victory over Long Beach Poly for the Southern California championship. “Hopefully, will have a little more of that luck tonight,” he said before Saturday night’s game.

For fans of Servite the journey also was a joyous pilgrimage.

They mocked their team’s relative obscurity in the Bay Area by wearing “Servite Who?” T-shirts. They whipped themselves into a frenzy trying to outshout Mt. Eden rooters, who came in great numbers the short distance from their homes in the Oakland suburbs.

The drive was more like 450 miles for Servite rooters, but more than 300 were court-side for the 11:15 a.m. tip-off chanting “We are/Ser-vite! We are/Ser-vite!” and seeming to rock the arena.

Fans from the all-boys school were, for the most part, all boys, except for a smattering of mothers, sisters, cheerleaders and female staffers. They stood through nearly all of the second half as the Friars jumped out to a 19-point lead and hung on to win by 16.

The crowd intensity was already at the boiling point before the tip-off.

“I’ve been up for about 30 hours,” explained Servite sophomore Andy Ledesma, 15, who had painted his face the school colors, silver and black, and wore a shower cap for no apparent reason.

“We were getting pumped up for the game, getting ready to go crazy,” Ledesma said.

Servite’s principal, Father Patrick Donovan, was a bit more conservative, wearing his black Servite sweater beaming as the arena scoreboard spelled out “SERVITE STATE CHAMPIONS.”

It was St. Patrick’s Day, he conceded, but first things first. “I’ll have to change into green later,” he said. “But for now, I have to wear my black sweater.”

Servite students were given the day off Friday for celebrating the team’s rise to the state finals and for traveling to the game.

“We’ll probably have to give them another day off now” for celebration, Donovan said.

But for the boosters of Brea-Olinda’s girls’ team, there was no mention of celebration. For them, the trip turned into a long-distance lesson in disappointment.

The arena was nine-tenths empty when the Brea-Olinda game began at 9:30 a.m., but the cheers echoed loudly around the court.

Eager to support their team, Brea-Olinda fans jammed buses, cars and planes to reach Oakland and urge on their Ladycats.

It was a close contest throughout the first half and for much of the second. Fans, most dressed in Brea-Olinda green, waved green placards reading “BHS 1.” They went wild as the team went into the locker room at halftime with a 29-25 lead.

Among the fans seated behind one of the baskets was Toniette Blackburn, whose daughter, Tammy, a Brea-Olinda senior, started at guard for the Ladycats. Blackburn said she, her husband, her son and a friend left Brea at midnight Friday and drove for nearly seven hours, reaching Oakland about 2 1/2 hours before game time.

“We got here at 7 o’clock this morning, but I feel great,” Blackburn said. “I feel pumped up.’

So were hundreds of other Ladycats backers who sat behind the basket in Section 103. Few jumped higher or cheered as wildly as Sue Lange, a Brea resident, who was beaming in her Brea Wildcats sweater.

Her three daughters have long since graduated from Brea-Olinda, but her enthusiasm seemed not to have flagged at all.

“We drove up just for this,” said Lange, who traveled with her husband, Dan. “It was worth it. It was well worth it.’

After the final score was on the board and players buried their heads in their hands and sobbed, the Brea-Olinda section stood, cheered and applauded, continuing through the presentation of second-place medals by 1960 Olympic decathlon winner Rafer Johnson. But the applause and the medals were bittersweet.

“It’s tough to learn how to lose when you’ve been winning all season,” said Phil Anton, father of Brea-Olinda sophomore forward Jodi Anton, who sat crying on the bench.

He added that while the “community loves them and we’ll stand behind them,” there will be no celebration of the team’s rise to the finals.

“We don’t celebrate second place,” Anton said.