El Dorado Honoring Gary Raya

El Dorado Athletic Director Carl Sweet decided to honor the school’s former girls’ basketball coach by calling its tournament, running daily through Saturday, the Gary Raya Coed Classic.

Raya died in September of cardiac arrhythmia because of idiopathic cardiomyopathy--a heart muscle that didn’t work properly; he was 29.

The tournament had previously been called the El Dorado Coed Classic, but Sweet wanted to honor Raya, who was a ball boy for the boys’ basketball team when he was 8, attended El Dorado and coached the varsity girls while assisting on the boys’ team. He had an 83-24 record over four years with the girls.

“He’s been involved with the tournament for so long, I figured it was real fitting to put his name on it,” said Sweet, who created the tournament nine years ago. “My recollection is that he’s been involved with the tournament pretty much from the get-go.”

A more permanent memorial is forthcoming, however. The Raya family, an institution at El Dorado, had given a large trophy case to the school in memory of Pat, another brother who died, and they are considering one of two tributes for Gary.

“One of the things talked about is doing a hall-of-fame kind of deal in the gym, or some kind of sculpture of a big flying hawk--Gary liked the hawk,” Sweet said. “The family is leaning toward the sculpture at this point.”

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With three seconds left in the first half of the Southern Section Division V championship game, El Toro offensive lineman Matt Mason lay on the ground. The trainer came out to administer aid. And then they walked off together.

Amazingly, it was only the third time this season that trainer Paul McGhay had to go on the field. And all three times involved Mason.

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El Toro’s 27-17 victory over Servite for the championship was the Chargers’ fourth Southern Section football championship--tied with Brea Olinda, Edison and Whittier Christian for third in Orange County.

The leader is Santa Ana, which has won seven section titles, followed by Mater Dei (five).

Nine teams have three titles: Fullerton, El Modena, Esperanza, Servite, Sunny Hills, Valencia, Trabuco Hills, Irvine and Los Alamitos.

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So much for the preseason boys’ soccer rankings. Orange, the top-ranked team, lost three of its first four games and has fallen out of the top 10. Third-ranked Fountain Valley won three of its first four and fell to ninth. Unranked Esperanza jumped to third after going 7-0-1. Two other unranked teams--Buena Park and Newport Harbor--have appeared in the rankings at No. 7 and 10, respectively. The official rankings of all winter sports will appear in Prep Extra beginning with the Dec. 19 issue.

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After the technical fouls her team received in the first game of the Longview (Tex.) Shootout, Mater Dei girls’ basketball Coach Mary Hauser was a little concerned about her game against Houston James Madison.

Hauser got a technical foul, she said, when she told a passing referee to “Call a foul.” So he did. When she asked why he called the technical, she was told it was because her assistant, Geri Gainey, was standing up, and that in Texas, assistants can’t stand up. Melody Peterson, The Times Orange County 1995 player of the year, also got one, “for supposely slamming the ball.”

Someone told Hauser she was going to get “homered” by referees the next morning against Madison.

“Maybe I should get out my rosary,” Hauser quipped.

Maybe. Against Madison, the 1995 Texas state runner-up in Division 5-A, and currently ranked No. 3 in Texas, Madison shot 25 free throws (making 18 of 25) to Mater Dei’s five (four of five); Peterson got another technical foul from the same official “for rolling the ball,” Hauser said, and also fouled out. The Monarchs lost, 67-56.

It was a tough tournament on Mater Dei (2-1). Madison was playing its 14th game.

“An official came up to me on the final day, said she was embarrassed as a Texas official and apologized for what happened,” Hauser said. “He apparently had switched games so that he would have us against Madison; I understand they fired him from the tournament and suspended him as an official.”

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Brea Olinda’s 42-40 loss to Lynwood in the title game of the Rancho Grande tournament caught girls’ basketball Coach Jeff Sink completely off guard. Or Danielle Gaskin, a 5-foot-9 guard, caught the Ladycats off guard.

“She walked in five minutes before game time and their three coaches started hugging each other,” Sink said, figuring at that point that something was up. “A lot of Brea faithful didn’t show up for the game because they were convinced we were going to kill them, and I was too.”

But Gaskin had nine points, and her penetration and ballhandling enabled 6-3 Taneisha Johnson (21 points) to play underneath, where she could hurt the Ladycats.

“They went from being a talented team with no guards to being one with a talented guard,” Sink said. “She’s going left and right and between her legs. I went to the coaches afterward and they were all laughing. They said this was the first time they had seen her all season. She wasn’t even in their score book the other nights.”

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When the Australian national men’s water polo team jumped into the pool for the final exhibition game of a four-game series, it was facing Team . . . El Toro?

Instead of wearing Team USA colors for Sunday’s exhibition game against Australia, the U.S. men’s national team wore blue and gold caps with “EL TORO” written above the brow.

“I locked our USA caps in my car,” U.S. Coach Richard Corso said, grinning. “But it was an honor to wear the El Toro caps. Coach Stoll has a great program here and it just gave the home crowd something else to get excited about.”

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Schea Cotton, who led Mater Dei to the boys’ Division I state championship last year, is now a junior at Bellflower St. John Bosco. On Saturday, he had 15 points, nine rebounds, and the free throw that tied the score with 29 seconds left in Bosco’s 54-52 upset of Frederick (Md.) St. John’s Prospect Hall, the No. 1-ranked team in the nation, according to the USA Today poll.

Correspondent Michael Itagaki and staff writers Chris Foster and Dave McKibben contributed to this story.