Proving Ground

J.J. Sola squeezes himself into a high school desk seemingly designed for someone half his size and is reminded of the numbers that have been a big part of his sometimes controversial high school basketball career.

At 6 feet 7 inches tall, the 235-pound senior forward led the county in scoring last season at Aliso Niguel, where he averaged 26.7 points a game.

He ranked sixth in rebounding (11.2) and shot 56% from the field.

Those are the statistics for which Sola is recognized, but he readily admits they are not the numbers people are talking about.

Sola, who has made an oral commitment to attend Loyola Marymount next fall, is playing this season for Capistrano Valley, his fourth high school in four years. Despite the ability to score seemingly at will, he has no Southern Section championship rings to show for his moves.

And he acknowledges that he and current Cougar teammate Nathan Hair have been branded temperamental “basketball mercenaries.” After all, this is Hair’s third high school in four years.

They have heard the criticism: They are being shopped around as a package deal with nothing but their own interests at heart. It’s something their parents fiercely deny.

Such a reputation, true or not, is a lot for a 17-year-old to carry, Sola said. He sat down at Capistrano Valley the other day with some of his new teammates to talk about his situation.

Seated in that chair, 15 pounds heavier than he was last year thanks to a regimen of weightlifting and pasta, he rubs his hand over his short-cropped, bleached hair and confidently says he recognizes the upcoming season may be a referendum on just who he really is.

“Me and Nate have to prove that we’re not jerks,” Sola said.

There might not be a better place to do that than at Capistrano Valley, where Coach Brian Mulligan, beginning his third season, agrees that prep basketball fans throughout the county will be watching.

Mulligan grew up in a basketball family--his father, Bill, coached at Saddleback College and UC Irvine and his brother, Shawn, is the girls’ coach at Dana Hills. Brian is a no-nonsense guy who was formerly the school’s vice principal in charge of discipline. Sola said he appreciates Mulligan’s reputation for speaking his mind and has already felt his coach’s wrath.

Mulligan said this could be the best team Capistrano Valley--maybe the county--has seen in a long time. Or, it could be a complete flop if Sola doesn’t adhere to the game plan: If you learn to play better defense and don’t walk back down the court after a basket, we’ll give you the ball--a lot.

“Only time will tell,” Mulligan said.

Mulligan is most concerned about team chemistry. He said, so far, the old players have accepted the new ones, and vice versa.

Hair, who averaged 14.3 points last season and already has signed to play at USC, and Sola have joined their new teammates on regular fall outings, such as football and girls’ volleyball games. They say their goal is to emulate the success of the volleyball team, which reached the Southern Section Division I-AA championship match before losing to Newport Harbor.

“Having good players here makes us an even better team,” said Mike Stowell, one of three returning starters. A 6-3 guard, he averaged 16.7 points last season. “I know a lot of people thought we couldn’t get along with each other. I know a year or two ago, maybe we wouldn’t have. But that’s not the case now.”

The offense appears to be in good hands, but the defense?

“These guys are incredibly together,” Mulligan said. “But they are a little too cocky. I’ll let them be cocky if they all keep their part of the bargain, which is play defense. So far, though, they haven’t fulfilled their part of the bargain. If they do, potentially, they could be one of the best teams ever.”

Team Player

Sola, Hair and their teammates are keenly aware of the attention they are drawing. Several say they are concentrating on teamwork instead of pointing toward individual achievements. They point out that Sola has proved to be a fine passer who doesn’t mind giving up the ball.

“A lot of people think we won’t be able to share the ball with each other now that Nate and J.J. are here,” said 6-foot guard Jermaine McDaniel, another returning starter. “They think we’re all selfish. Well, we’re the most unselfish team there is.”

Sola admits to being cocky, but his sojourns weren’t entirely of his own making.

He and his mother, Kathleen Sola, who was recently divorced, lived near Edison High in Huntington Beach when J.J. was in eighth-grade and playing on a traveling team in National Junior Basketball. He befriended Hair, an opponent he respected from another team. Eventually, Sola and Hair, who lived near El Toro High, decided to play together in high school. They settled on Ocean View, according to Nathan’s dad, Dan Hair, because they had a lot of respect for Seahawk Coach Jim Harris, who was a neighbor of the Hairs.

Kathleen Sola, a former basketball player and coach who founded the girls’ team at Reading High in Pennsylvania 25 years ago, went along with the idea. Dan Hair said there was no problem getting the boys into Ocean View because of open enrollment rules in the district. Harris drove Hair and Sola to school each day and brought them home each night.

But Sola was disappointed at being placed on the junior varsity team as a freshman at Ocean View and almost quit at the end of the season, according to Harris. The Solas say they were told by Harris that J.J. was going to play on the varsity as a freshman.

“As the season wore on, things didn’t work out,” Kathleen Sola said. “There were a lot of things that were reneged on. I have no ill feelings toward Jim Harris. He is a good man, but my son didn’t fit into his program.”

Harris said it was Sola who didn’t fit very well into the school and was at odds with his teammates. But, the coach said, he definitely could shoot the ball.

“He was a force,” Harris said. “He was a pretty big kid for a freshman and he could score and also shoot from the perimeter. It’s very unusual at that age that you can do both.”

At the end of J.J.’s freshman year, Kathleen Sola’s father became ill back in Pennsylvania, and she and J.J. moved there to be near him. J.J. enrolled in the fall of 1996 at Wilson High in Reading, Pa., where he played on the varsity basketball team. He was chosen All-Berks County District I.

“The kid is clever inside,” said Wilson Coach Reggie Weiss. “I told him right away that he was a Division I player, the closest thing to having one that we have ever had here. I told him that if he was willing to work hard and play up to his best ability, he could be a biggie, maybe even NBA.”

But Weiss said J.J. didn’t like him or the school, and that he never really adjusted to his new surroundings. Sola, who was born and raised in California, said he hated the cold and longed to move back.

Coming Home

He got his wish in the summer of 1997, shortly after Kathleen Sola’s father died. Kathleen sent J.J. to live with the Hairs. Nathan had transferred to Aliso Niguel. She followed a few months later.

“The Hairs were friends,” Kathleen said. “Dan Hair talked to me and said that Aliso Niguel had the program to go into.”

But things quickly soured. Dan Hair, who admits he’s not afraid to speak his mind, became unhappy with the Wolverine basketball program. That disenchantment eventually spread to the Solas.

Things never clicked on the court, either. Sure, Sola led the county in scoring, but Aliso Niguel struggled to a 12-14 record and failed to make the playoffs after finishing fifth in the Pacific Coast League.

Aliso Niguel Coach Ken Goldstone chooses his words carefully when speaking about the difficulties of last season. He said Sola always appeared to have a chip on his shoulder, but that “he was a good-size player in our league. No one could challenge him.”

Meanwhile, Ocean View, with many of the same athletes who played on the freshman team with Hair and Sola, won the Southern Section Division III-AA title last season.

“They leave and we win a CIF championship,” Harris said. “There’s got to be something to that.”

When it became clear early last summer that Hair and Sola intended to enroll at Capistrano Valley, Mulligan said he became the object of both pity and scorn by fellow coaches. Some told him it would never work. Others accused him of arranging the transfer.

According to Mulligan, an unnamed administrator tagged Hair and Sola as “basketball mercenaries.”

In characteristic fashion, Mulligan decided to get everything out in the open early on. He called for a team meeting in mid-June, before the start of summer league play.

“Mulligan called us together and told us that these guys were two of the top-rated players in the county,” McDaniel said. “Coach said, ‘They’re better than you.’ He’s very straightforward.”

Mulligan said he wasn’t sure how his players would react to their new teammates.

“I’ve been involved with teams before that don’t want players like this,” he said. “But these guys wanted this to happen.”

His Own Man

Kathleen Sola takes issue with those who say her son has blindly followed Hair everywhere. She believes Mulligan can prepare J.J. for the type of play he will see when he gets to Loyola Marymount.

“I didn’t send him to Capo because of a package deal,” she said. “He doesn’t follow Hair. They love each other like brothers, but my son has a mind of his own. So, I did research and I felt Brian [Mulligan] had the right program to be in.

“I really, really respect Brian. I like what he has done so far with my son,” Kathleen Sola said. “This is the first time . . . that my son feels good about a coach, and he appreciates what he has done for him.”

J.J. adjusts the sunglasses on top of his head and settles into that desk chair at Capistrano Valley. He acknowledges his past has had its rough spots. Things are better now.

“This is the best group of guys and coaches I have ever been around,” he said. “We’re not just players, but off the court we’re friends and we hang around together.”

Seated not far from Sola, Mulligan needles him about a videotape from the Cougars’ 1997-98 season opener against Aliso Niguel, a game in which Capistrano Valley rallied from an eight-point deficit in the final 1 1/2 minutes for a two-point victory.

On the tape, Sola can be seen scoring, then walking back down the floor while Cougar players are hustling past him into the front court with the ball.

That’s the part Mulligan fears most, and wants to correct. Sola grins at his coach, knowing he’s about to get another lecture about defense.

“I know we have a track record,” Sola said of himself and Hair. “But we have to come clean now that we are here.

“I’m not looking back now. The past is over. I’m here to get ready for college. All I want is to win a league title and go to the playoffs.”