Laguna Hills Rallying Around Its Team

If this city had a center, it would be its high school.

There is, after all, no main street, no civic center, no community theater, no monuments and no downtown. There are beautiful homes tucked away among rolling hills. There is Leisure World.

And now there is the winningest girls’ basketball team in the school’s history. Tonight, when the Hawks take the court against a team from the Bay Area city of Newark in a battle for the California Interscholastic Federation Division II state championship at the Pond, thousands of Laguna Hills residents will be there to cheer. The team beat top-ranked Brea Olinda last Saturday to reach the finals.

“I know a good part of the city will be there, I think everybody is excited,” said City Councilman Joel T. Lautenschleger.

These days, Laguna Hills High School, long the focus of civic pride, is at the center of a nascent sense of community building not just among parents and students, but among the other 30,000 people who start and end their days here.

“Really the high school has always been the only unifying force in the community,” Lautenschleger said. “Where is our city center after all? Well, there’s the mall. We’re trying to do better by that, but beyond that, what is there? There’s the school.”

Even before the basketball team started winning and the girls on it became local celebrities, Laguna Hills had taken intense pride in its high school.

The school has long won honors academic and otherwise. Its Academic Decathlon team won state titles in 1990 and 1991 and has represented Orange County in the statewide tournament for the past eight years. Its boys cross-country team has won state and county titles, and its softball team has won a Southern Section title. Its students consistently get into top colleges and universities.

Since the city was incorporated in 1991, local officials have maintained close ties to Laguna Hills’ only high school. After all, every member of the City Council has children who attend or will attend the school and city offices are just down the street from where the Laguna Hills Hawks make their home.

For the last four years, plans have been afoot to create on city land adjoining the high school what it literally lacks: a community center. Early next year, workers will break ground on a $20-million center on the 18-acre site that will include a library, gymnasium, roller hockey court, skateboard park and four athletic fields. The project is by far the single biggest capital expenditure the city has ever taken on.

“That community center is going to be it. That is going to be the city. And it is no coincidence that it is being built right next to the school,” said Charlene Hummel, 43, sitting inside a fast food restaurant along Interstate 5.

” . . . With the school winning all kinds of honors, with the city--well ever since they became a city really--working hard to build parks and get this community center idea moving, it’s impressive,” Hummel said. “It’s putting heart into the place.”

But building a sense of community in this city of 6.2 square miles will not be easy, community leaders say.

City Hall is in an office park behind the auto club and across the street from a gas station. Leisure World, the country’s largest retirement community, has a population almost as large as the city but is made up of older people who rarely get involved in civic affairs.

Apart from the Laguna Hills Mall and the odd video store, gas station and yogurt shop, the city is garden-to-garden residential. Most weekends, the town’s teenagers go to the beaches of Dana Point or Laguna Niguel or the cinemas of Irvine to hang out.

And until recently, it was difficult to get a substantial crowd at a high school football game, much less for girls basketball.

“Let’s face it, we’re so close to the beach and all these other things, and there’s not many things to do right here in our own community,” said Lynn Taylor, head coach of the basketball team. “We felt for a long time that the community wasn’t really interested in us. We were kind of discouraged.”

That’s all changed now.

“Once the papers began picking up on us winning, that’s when interest just snowballed,” Taloy said. “At our last game it was amazing to look up and see the crowd. It was just unbelievable the noise they made.”

For the team, getting to the state championship has been a long and thrilling journey. Until last season, the Hawks’ best league finish since the school opened in 1978 had been third place. Last year the team won its league but lost in the semifinals of its division.

Suddenly this year, the team finds itself a state power. Its members are squealed at by junior high school girls like the community stars they suddenly are. On the campus of Laguna Hills High School Thursday, talk of the big game Friday night was everywhere. A wall was covered with posters created by students in tribute to the team. Local residents and students lined up at the school for tickets.

“It’s cool to go to the games and see all these really different people there, it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened here, I think,” said sophomore Kim Sherman, 15. “It’s really spirited. Everybody’s getting into it.”

* O.C. STREAK: Laguna Hills has a chance to become the county’s ninth consecutive state champion. C16