COACH OF THE YEAR : Becker Sparks Rancho Alamitos

When the Rancho Alamitos girls’ basketball team opened the season with two losses in three games, Coach Bob Becker faced one of the most challenging motivational efforts in his three seasons with the team.

“It was difficult for us because the girls who had been on the team the year before didn’t lose until the final game, so they had a tough time understanding and dealing with it,” Becker said. “But I knew most of our problems would be corrected in time. . . . I wasn’t overly concerned about the winning and losing as I was about them losing confidence.”

From that point, the Vaqueros didn’t lose much of anything.

After opening with a nonleague victory over Edison, the Vaqueros dropped their next two games to Long Beach Millikan and Tustin. They then had 22 consecutive victories, including 14 in the Garden Grove League, on their way to the Southern Section Division III-A title and later the Division III finals of the Southern California Regionals.

The Vaqueros lost to State Division III champion Brea-Olinda, 70-51, in the championship game of the regionals. But advancing that far in the playoffs was more than any Rancho Alamitos athletic team had done in the school’s history. And much of the credit belongs to Becker.

Becker, 28, took over the Rancho Alamitos girls’ program in the 1989-90 season and promptly guided the Vaqueros to within a basket of the section’s III-A title, losing to Costa Mesa, 51-49. The team was 26-0 going into the semifinals last season until Playa del Rey St. Bernard stopped the Vaqueros, 74-72. This year, they finally broke through.

“I’m as proud of those kids for the way they handled being 1-2 as for winning 22 in a row,” said Becker, who is 70-9 with the Vaqueros. “They didn’t point fingers at each other. They stuck together.”