A Season to Remember, Say Goodbye

Another prep sports season came and went with the usual suspects returning to the championship podium.

Mater Dei won another section football title and Brea Olinda claimed another state girls’ basketball championship. Olympian Amanda Beard added two individual section titles to her resume and helped Irvine win a third consecutive girls’ swimming team championship.

And it was also a season of farewells.

The public schools waved goodbye, some rather joyfully, to a final season of league competition with four Catholic schools--Mater Dei, Santa Margarita, Servite and Rosary. Also, two of the county’s all-time winningest coaches--Katella’s Tom Danley and Mater Dei’s Bob Ickes--stepped down.

Danley called it quits as Knight boys’ basketball coach to serve full time as the Anaheim Union High School District athletic director. As Katella’s only basketball coach, the Knights went 618-242 under Danley.

“I’ll miss the people and associating with a great community of administration, boosters, players, everyone,” Danley said. “A total family is the key in terms of making all this happen.

“I’ve had field and equipment people that have been with me for 25 years, and they’re equally as important as the athletic directors, the coaches and the players. They all played a major role in this family.

“Coaching has always been the passion for me, but after 40 years, it’s time.”

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Ickes also stepped down after spending 25 years at the helm of the Monarchs’ baseball program, compiling a 451-181-9 record and winning a Southern Section Division I title in 1980.

The Monarchs couldn’t send Ickes out with a championship this season--Mater Dei lost to Riverside Arlington in the Division I semifinals, 3-2--but that didn’t mean that Ickes didn’t think the season was a success.

“This senior group was loose,” Ickes said, “they stepped forward and when we got to the playoffs, maybe that helped them go a little farther than people thought they would.”

Ickes said he is going to miss the day-to-day interaction with the players, but didn’t rule out a return to coaching.

“Twenty-five years ago, when I started, I thought I knew everything I needed to be a coach,” Ickes said. “I found out very quickly, that wasn’t the case. You learn something new every year.”

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Mater Dei, Santa Margarita and Servite join Bellflower St. John Bosco in a Catholic Athletic Assn. league for football this fall, but they will still play Orange County opponents during the nonleague portion of their schedules.

Servite will play four Orange County nonleague games: at Tustin (Sept. 3) and home games at Cal State Fullerton against Esperanza (Sept. 10), El Toro (Sept. 25) and Fountain Valley (Oct. 2).

Mater Dei will host Loara in Santa Ana Stadium (Sept. 17) and play at Irvine (Oct. 1) and Santa Margarita will host Dana Hills (Sept. 24) and San Clemente (Oct. 1) at Saddleback College.

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Billy Eagle began Corona del Mar’s seventh-inning comeback Saturday in the Southern Section Division IV baseball final by lining a single into center field.

The hit sparked a five-run rally that gave the Sea Kings a 9-8 victory over El Segundo at Edison Field.

But Eagle, who hit the first pitch he saw in the seventh, was supposed to take pitches until he saw a strike.

“He’s going to owe me some sprints, lots of them,” Corona del Mar Coach John Emme said. “But we’ll take it.”

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When Servite sophomore Nico Bollini approached the par-five 17th hole at the CIF-SCGA finals Tuesday, he immediately thought about making a birdie.

At 480 yards, the 17th hole at the SCGA Members’ Club in Temecula is reachable in two shots by players with Bollini’s length off the tee.

But Bollini pulled his second shot into a bunker, then hit his sand shot over the green. The ball landed in the rough about 20 feet from where coaches Brad Sherfy of UCLA and John Geiberger of Pepperdine were standing as they scouted Bollini.

He ended up making a bogey.

“That was real good, right?” Bollini said. “The easiest par five on the course and I bogey it in front of them.”

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Los Alamitos’ Bernard Riley has been named the Orange County Sportswriters’ Assn. prep football player of the year.

Riley, 6 feet 3, 305 pounds, will play in the California-Texas Shrine Football Classic June 26 at Cerritos College before heading to USC this fall. He was also The Times Orange County Lineman of the Year and the Sunset League defensive player of the year.

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The San Clemente girls’ 400 freestyle relay team set a Southern Section Division I record during its May 14 victory in the section swimming finals, but it wasn’t until the following week it discovered its time also eclipsed the existing state mark.

Sarah Jones, Kristen Caverly, Stephanie Chambers and Aria Gardner completed their race in 3 minutes 28.46 seconds, breaking Mission Viejo’s 1989 Division I (and state) record of 3:28.56.

The San Clemente girls dropped six seconds off their previous best time, the night before, to upset Irvine in the race.

“We set the Division I record and they were so excited,” said Coach John Bandaruk. “It would have been nice to have been [acknowledged] at the time, but they were as excited as heck.

“Now, they’re even more excited.”

Staff Writers Peter Yoon and Erik Hamilton contributed to this report.