Pacific Shores Basketball Team Gets Dunked By Funky Jammers

It’s a few minutes after 4 p.m., and members of the Funky Jam aerobics class are waiting impatiently outside the gym at Allen’s Athletic Club in Laguna Niguel. The Funky Jammers aren’t happy. They should be burning calories by now. They should be tightening and toning, lifting and lunging, turning flab into something fine.

But no. Those basketball kids from that dinky high school up the street--what’s it called, Pacific Heights or something?--won’t get out of the gym. They’ve been in there at least an hour. Isn’t that enough? Can’t they see these endorphin addicts need their fix?

One man, the Well-Chiseled One, has had enough. He struts on the court, muscles bulging from under his T-shirt, and glares. The Funky Jam dance music blares. The players get the point. They gather up their basketballs and trudge out the door.

“It’s about time,” says one Spandex-clad woman. “You guys were supposed to be out of here five minutes ago!”

Another day, another court battle for the basketball team of Pacific Shores High, a school of 36 students in Laguna Niguel. When you’re from the smallest school in Orange County, you tend to miss out on certain things, namely a gym, an abundance of athletes and community respect.

But the Sea Hawks make the best of it. When you have nearly as many students as some schools have in one classroom, you really have no choice. Having to rent a local gym for practice is just another factor in the small-school equation.

“We try not to stress winning and losing here,” says Rich Zanelli, 25, Pacific Shores athletic director, basketball and baseball coach, and teacher of geometry, English, physical education, yearbook and drama.

“I mean, with so few students, you take what you get. Here, if you’re a boy and you’re breathing, you’re on the basketball team.”

And if you’re a girl, you might be on the baseball team. That’s right. At Pacific Shores, playing hardball is a co-ed experience. Seems the school can’t field enough girls for a softball team, so the girls are invited to play on the same team as the boys.

This isn’t a problem for Zanelli--last year, his second baseman (basewoman?) was Staci Miller--but for the boys, well, a few rolled their eyes and shrugged at the mention of girls playing baseball.

“I don’t want to sound sexist,” said Chris Ross, a Pacific Shores basketball and baseball player. “But most of the girls aren’t very good.”

His friends nodded their heads in agreement.

Whoa, boys. Wait a minute. Have you ever watched yourself on the basketball court? A lesson in finesse, it isn’t. Monday’s practice--held in the tiny gym on the bottom floor of Allen’s Athletic Club--was filled with air balls, double dribbles and missed layups. One player, trying to dribble around Zanelli, tripped and fell. One wore jeans during practice. Another checked himself out in the gym’s mirrored wall after each shot attempt. Bad-news basketball at its best.

Of course, that’s beside the point and everyone at Pacific Shores knows it. The Sea Hawk boys’ basketball team--which is 2-3 and 0-1 in league--features 10 players, four of whom are freshmen. Most never played organized hoops until high school. The girls’ team has six players, not a bad turnout for a school with 10 girls total.

Home games are played at a nearby YMCA. Away games are, on average, two hours by car. Pacific Shores plays in the Metro League, made up of small, private schools from Riverside to Anza to Lake Elsinore. Fan support is nil, except when Zanelli offers his physical education students extra credit for attending games. However, the school does have an official statistician and team driver--principal Mark Weichel.

Of course, if all you wanted was big-time athletics, you wouldn’t be here, right?

“No one plays basketball here for the glory,” Ross says. “We don’t play to get into college. It’s for fun. Most of us probably couldn’t make it in big-time (high school) programs, anyway.”

“Yeah,” sophomore Kyle Marcum adds. “We’d get wasted at a big school.”

The small school has its advantages. Most of the students who come to Pacific Shores--at a cost of $550 a month--do so for the extra academic attention they receive from the six-to-one student-teacher ratio. Weichel opened the school in 1984 with five students. He had been tutoring students who, though bright, had troubles in large classroom situations. Parents of the children he tutored encouraged him to open his own private school, and Pacific Shores was born.

Until three years ago, Pacific Shores was located at Wild Rivers Waterpark in Laguna Hills--the school’s name was chosen by the students; it had nothing to do with the water park, Zanelli says--but now it stands in a single portable building behind a Presbyterian church, which is not affiliated with the school.

If it’s a nondescript high school, few of the students are complaining. Sure, everyone knows everybody’s business, people sometimes get tired of seeing the same faces, but generally a family feeling prevails. Plus, you’re never lost in the crowd--especially if you play sports. Everybody who wants to play, plays. Sitting on the bench isn’t a punishment, it’s probably a well-deserved rest. You take what you get.

Funky Jam and all.