ORANGE COUNTY LEGENDS FROM ... A to Z : Letter by Letter, a List of Area Movers, Shakers and Game Breakers Who Have Left More Than Their Marks of Distinction on High School Sports in O.C.--and Beyond

Get ready to argue.

You can call it entertainment, you can call it enlightenment, or you can call us idiots for trying to put something like this together, but we’re feeling like Tarzan and want to climb out on a limb. We just had to put it together: Orange County’s prep legends from A to Z.

Not an easy task, but our staff is a talented group--or at least an aged one--with more than 200 years of collective experience. We put our heads together and came up with a list that was as comprehensive as we could make it. How comprehensive was it? There were more than 150 wrestlers. No one can accuse us of not considering all the options.

Then we whittled it down, one legendary graduate for each letter of the alphabet. Still, we couldn’t find a true X. But that was the least of our problems.

Our criteria? We were looking for the intangible stuff of legend: those high school athletes who will be remembered years from now for their role in the evolution of sports in Orange County. We looked at what they did in high school and beyond, and the legacy they left.

Sometimes it was easy, and sometimes it created heated discussion in the newsroom.

The names that don’t make the list are sure to cause a stir, maybe even a nasty letter or two. But we don’t mind.

Rob Johnson, the starting quarterback at USC, isn’t on the list. Well, because the Js are heavy and Rob joins that impressive J list that includes his brother Bret, Alison Johnsen, Randy Jones, Dan Jorgensen and Amy Jalewalia.

Playmaker Nicole Erickson’s legend is well known, having led Brea-Olinda to four consecutive State girls’ basketball titles and a 130-5 record, but she’s not on the list, either. If only her last name was Smith or Thompson.

OK, Mark Wulfemeyer set an Orange County career scoring record in basketball at Troy. Tim Wallach was an all-star third baseman. Tes Whitlock scored 68 points in a basketball game. Myron White is one of the greatest rushers in county history. Mike Witt went on to pitch a perfect game for the Angels. Santa Ana diver Bob Webster won Olympic platform gold medals in 1960 and ’64. Todd White held the national high school mile record (4:20.0) for one week in 1955. But they didn’t make the list.

Sure, there will be some discontent here. Tony Gonzalez isn’t the best G-man you’ve ever seen on a football field and basketball court? Of course he is. And what about Brian Goodell, the Mission Viejo senior named world swimmer of the year in 1977? Well, Goodell also is a no-show. They were aced out by one of the best softball pitchers in the world.

It’s a comparison of apples and oranges. We aren’t saying this is the definitive list. But it’s our list. And if you can do better, well, bring it on.

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A. Rick Aberegg was a 5-foot-10 point guard at Katella who averaged 27.5 points his senior season in 1970. A year earlier, concentrating on assists rather than scoring, Aberegg helped the Knights reach the Southern Section 2-A title game; Katella lost, 90-87, to Los Angeles Verbum Dei as the two teams set a record for most points in a championship game that stood until 1992.

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B. Shirley Babashoff first won Southern Section championships for Fountain Valley in 1972 and ’73 when Title IX created athletic opportunities for high school girls. Babashoff anchored gold medal-winning 400-meter freestyle relay teams in the 1972 and ’76 Olympics and finished with six silver medals culled from the 100, 200, 400 and 800 freestyle events. At a time when the sport was dominated by East Germans, Babashoff was the best female swimmer in the world not on steroids.

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C. Gary Carter didn’t specialize in any sport at Sunny Hills, but excelled in three--and received college scholarship offers for football, in which he was a high school All-American, basketball and baseball. He was going to play quarterback and catcher at UCLA, but decided to pursue professional baseball because of an earlier knee injury. He signed with Montreal after his 1972 graduation; three years later, he was an Expo starter. He played 19 years, was an all-star 11 times and won three Gold Gloves.

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D. When the subject is female distance runners, 1976 Orange High graduate Mary Decker immediately comes to mind. She was competing at the international level while in high school and eventually set the U.S. record in the mile. But her legacy is one of Olympic disappointment and controversy.

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E. It must have been some piece of work, the Janet Evans essay, “What I did over my summer vacation.” She already had won consecutive 200-yard individual medley and three consecutive 500 freestyle Southern Section swimming titles for El Dorado, but those were strictly small potatoes on her grand scale. The summer before her senior year, she went to Seoul and won three Olympic gold medals in 1988. East German competitor Heike Friedrich said, “Janet Evans is a different dimension.” At one point, Evans held three world records. She returned to school and competed her senior season, setting national high school records in the 200 IM (1:59.96) and 500 free (4:37.30). Millions of dollars in endorsement offers came her way. She turned them all down so she could maintain her NCAA eligibility and swim at Stanford. “I’m 17,” she said. “I want to be a kid awhile longer.”

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F. Mickey Flynn’s life was a Hollywood B movie, the one that takes place in the 1950s and everyone in town knows the local football hero. Flynn, who scored 55 touchdowns for Anaheim from 1954 to ‘56, could enter any restaurant and his meal would be taken care of. The first big prep star in Orange County history, he was called “The Ghost of La Palma Park” because the lights were so bad at Glover Stadium, Flynn would disappear into the night on his long runs, such as the 95-yarder the first time he carried a football. He averaged 13.8 yards per carry in a three-year career that reached its zenith in front of 41,383 in a 13-13 championship game against Downey and Flynn’s so-called “Touchdown Twin,” Randy Meadows; Flynn rushed 17 times for 134 yards and two touchdowns. The two rivals were in the same backfield a few months later at the Shrine All-Star game--and 85,931 came out to watch it.

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G. Michele Granger’s 75 m.p.h. fastball helped make her the world’s best pitcher while still in high school; because of her dominance, coaches changed the way they taught hitting and the slap bunt became an everyday weapon. The left-hander was the U.S. Olympic Committee’s softball player of the year in 1986 and ’87 while still at Valencia; she graduated in 1988 with national prep records for strikeouts in a career (1,687) and season (509), consecutive strikeouts (21), career no-hitters (37), perfect games (11) and victories (71). Her year-round pitching in high school, age-group, women’s open and international competition led to a wrist injury from overuse her freshman year at California; although she was never the same after the injury, she set NCAA records for strikeouts (1,640), shutouts (94) and victories (94), among others.

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H. John Huarte’s legend grew first as a Mater Dei quarterback who led the Monarchs to the 1960 Southern Section championship--as expected. At Notre Dame, he led the Irish to a 9-1 season after the team had been 2-7 the year before--and won the 1964 Heisman Trophy.

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I. Keith Iwanaga often took on bigger opponents who were cutting weight, but Iwanaga was a natural 123-pounder who won 1976 and ’77 Southern Section titles for El Dorado’s wrestling powerhouse. Iwanaga won with finesse, quickness and strength, and was the first of five wrestling brothers who followed him: Kevin, Kerry, Kent and Kyle.

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J. This letter is loaded with outstanding candidates, but Walter Johnson’s fastball was loaded with high octane. The “Big Train” pitched for the Washington Senators from 1907 to 1927, set the standard for strikeout pitchers for the next 60 years, won 419 games and was an inaugural inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But long before he stood beside Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner at the induction ceremonies, Johnson was playing hardball for Fullerton High. Even after he became a professional, Johnson called a 15-inning, 0-0 tie in which he struck out 27 against Santa Ana his greatest game. Dr. Garland C. Ross played for Santa Ana that day in 1905 and recalled Johnson’s fastball: “It came up to the plate like a pea shot out of a cannon. For the most part, we just went up to the plate, took three swings and walked back to the bench.” Five years later, Johnson was baseball’s dominant pitcher, winning 264 games over the next 10 years.

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K. Few dominated an event the way Fullerton’s Natalie Kaaiawahia dominated the shotput. She is the only athlete, male or female, to win four State titles in the same event. Kaaiawahia, over the course of 1980-83 at Fullerton, put the top 10 girls’ marks of all time, including a national prep record 53 feet 7 3/4 inches in 1983 that still stands. She also won two State titles in the discus, including a county-record throw of 174-9.

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L. Rick Leach led Laguna Beach to two Southern Section titles, was a Southern Section singles finalist in 1981 and the champion in 1983. He went on to win NCAA individual doubles titles at USC and nearly $2 million in prize money and 27 doubles titles as a professional, including Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. He also played on the U.S. Davis Cup team.

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M. Ann Meyers brought national attention to women’s basketball. After receiving varsity letters in seven sports (field hockey, badminton, tennis, softball, volleyball, track, basketball) and graduating from Sonora in 1974, she became the first high school player to make the U.S. national team, became a four-time All-American at UCLA, led the U.S. team to a silver medal in the 1976 Olympics and became the first woman to sign an NBA contract when she went to training camp with the Indiana Pacers. Meyers, the MVP her only year in the defunct Women’s Basketball League, landed in the Basketball Hall of Fame; with her husband, the late Don Drysdale, they are the only husband-wife team in halls of fame.

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N. Phil Nevin, Baseball America’s collegiate player of the year in 1992, was the first player selected, by the Houston Astros, in the June 1992 amateur baseball draft. But Nevin, who first excelled at El Dorado and Cal State Fullerton, also left his mark in the Orange County football record book. He holds the county record for longest field goal, making one from 57 yards in a game against Esperanza his senior season in 1988. He was the kicker for the Titan football team from 1989-91 and also led Fullerton to the 1992 College World Series.

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O. The Oden Sisters dominated girls’ volleyball in the 1980s while at Irvine. Kim was the 1981 Southern Section player of the year and three-time NCAA All-American at Stanford; Elaina won the honor in 1984 and was a two-time All-American at Pacific; Beverly was so honored in 1987 and ’88 and was a four-time All-American at Stanford. Beverly is the only sister who hasn’t played in the Olympics, but she’s currently starting on the U.S. national team.

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P. Nicknamed “The Chief,” Cherokee Parks was one of the county’s most highly touted high school basketball players. He accepted a scholarship offer to Duke, where he has helped the Blue Devils reach the national championship game twice and win it once. In his senior year at Marina in 1991, the 6-11 center scored 30 points--16 of them on dunks--and blocked five shots to help the Vikings defeat top-ranked Mater Dei in the semifinals of the Division I-A playoffs, 64-55, in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 5,000 in the Bren Events Center. Said Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight: “It was like me playing Nerf with my kids against the door. Cherokee was a man.”

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Q. The most amazing thing about Dan Quisenberry is that he was so average at Costa Mesa, from where he graduated in 1971. Long before he became one of the best relief pitchers in baseball history as a submariner, Quisenberry went over the top with three-quarter tendencies, and met marginal success; he was a .500 pitcher at Costa Mesa. “I was just a skinny kid that threw a lot of strikes,” he said. “The only reason I was a prep legend is because I became good in the big leagues.” Very good; his 277 saves, including 238 with the Kansas City Royals, put him in the top 10.

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R. Cathy Rigby launched women’s gymnastics into the American consciousness at the 1968 Olympic Games as a pigtailed ninth-grader from Oak Junior High, and appeared on the cover of Life, Look and Redbook magazines. By the time she graduated from Los Alamitos in 1971, she had become the first American woman to win a medal in world competition. She retired at 19 after the 1972 Olympics having won 12 medals in international competition, including eight gold, and embarked on a successful theatrical career.

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S. El Toro produced two of the county’s greatest quarterbacks in brothers Rob and Bret Johnson, but it was Steve Stenstrom who threw for more yardage than either in a single season, completing 65.4% of his passes for 2,175 yards and 25 touchdowns, and leading the 1989 Chargers to a 12-2 record during his senior year. Now a senior at Stanford, he has broken John Elway’s Pacific 10 records for all-time total offense (9,606) and yards passing (10,314).

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T. Garry Templeton was a standout baseball and football star for Santa Ana Valley. He had already signed to play football at Arizona State when he became the 13th baseball player drafted in 1974. Claude Gilbert, the San Diego State coach when Templeton was a senior in high school, said: “He was a great cornerback talent; he could have been one hell of a football player, but the baseball draft settled his career.” That career as a major league shortstop covered more than 15 years; he had a .271 career batting average and in 1979, he became the first of only two switch-hitters to get 100 hits from each side of the plate.

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U. When Jim Usevitch arrived at Ocean View, he was slow moving, slow talking and slow thinking, but four years later he had become one of the greatest overachievers in Orange County basketball history. Standing 6-9, height was his only natural gift. He was a high school All-American in 1982, his senior season, when he averaged 22 points and 14 rebounds. Though he had a fourth-grade reading level when he arrived, by his senior year, Usevitch was taking college prep courses. He averaged 15 points and seven rebounds at BYU, became a Continental Basketball Assn. all-star and is playing his sixth season in Europe.

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V. Two years removed from Fullerton High, Arky Vaughan was playing shortstop and batting third for the 1932 Pittsburgh Pirates; he would hit .318 his rookie season, which would also be his average in a 14-year career. He missed three years because of World War II, but didn’t miss the Hall of Fame--he was elected in 1985.

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W. By the time Tiger Woods graduated from Western in 1994, he had established himself as the best junior golfer of all time. He had the greatest comeback in the history of the U.S. Amateur, from six down with 23 to play, to surpass Jack Nicklaus as its youngest winner, and win a record-tying fourth consecutive USGA title. Only 16, he became one of the youngest to play in a PGA Tour event when he competed in the 1992 L.A. Open. And he continued to play for his high school, finishing with three Southern Section titles and four consecutive league titles, even though he was used to attracting hundreds in his gallery elsewhere.

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X. What, are you kidding? We exhausted our resources and exhumed the old record books. We looked everywhere. We toyed with Blaise Bryant, whose middle name is Xavier. And we toyed with Xuan Nguyen, a Garden Grove badminton player. Finally, we decided it wasn’t worth toiling over.

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Y. George Yardley, a 1946 graduate of Newport Harbor, was a scoring sensation who helped popularize the jump shot and set collegiate and NBA scoring records along the way--he was the first pro player to score 2,000 points in a season (2,001 in 1957-58) while playing for the Detroit Pistons. Yardley averaged 19.2 points per game and was a six-time NBA all-star. He also was an All-American AAU volleyball player in the open division while attending Stanford and won six United States Tennis Assn. age-group doubles titles beginning in the mid-1970s.

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Z. Lori Zeno was the most physically strong volleyball player in county history, the first O.C. female to religiously lift weights with a purpose to complement her sport. She tried to win through intimidation and any other means and became a two-time co-player of the year in the Southern Section. She was so competitive, torn ligaments in her ankle couldn’t stop her; she played in a full cast up to her knee in 1982, her senior year at La Quinta--and a no-cast rule soon followed. By her own admission, Zeno was a mean player. It just added to her legend.

Legends Breakdown

Sport M W Total Baseball 6 - 6 Basketball 4 1 5 Football 3 - 3 Swimming 0 2 2 Track and field 0 2 2 Volleyball* 0 2 2 Golf 1 0 1 Gymnastics 0 1 1 Tennis 1 0 1 Softball 0 1 1 Wrestling 1 - 1 Totals** 16 9 25

* Oden sisters count one.

** There is no X.