White Keeps Edison Charging Hard
When Melanie Cherney left Edison High in the middle of the 1997-98 season to attend El Toro, her new basketball coach noticed her attitude right away.
“She had that football player’s mentality,” Vincent Avitabile said. “Everybody else started playing better.”
Fast forward one year and return to Edison. Picture an entire basketball team with a football player’s mentality, that dives, drives and makes the big passes, that knows who the money player is and knows when someone else should attack the defense.
Edison’s Dave White might be a football coach in the fall, but right now he’s The Times Orange County girls’ basketball coach of the year.
He last won the award in 1987, when his team went 31-2 and won the section title. He followed with a seven-year hiatus.
This season, Edison went undefeated to win the Sunset League title, which meant twice beating three other teams with top-10 credentials in Orange County.
Before losing in the Southern Section Division I-A quarterfinals, Edison had won 15 of its previous 17 games, losing to Palisades, the Southern California Division I champion, and to Mater Dei, the team that knocked Edison from the playoffs.
Sometimes, a team just has your number.
But Edison played one of the most demanding schedules of the ‘98-99 season. The Chargers (24-6) played no fewer than 17 regular-season games against top-notch opponents, then added two playoff victories.
They performed well, though only one player, junior all-county forward Michelle Zylstra, actually makes opponents fret.
Three seniors who always seemed to be playing over their heads and under control, Christina Patterson, Allison Libeu and Trisha Grady, comprised the nucleus, winning games because they executed plays, not because they were more physically gifted than their opponents. Each had a strength, and each fulfilled her role.
White integrated two freshmen into the mix, twins Bianca and Rachel Ziemann, so that the Chargers actually got better as the game progressed.
Twice in one week’s time, Edison overcame nine-point deficits midway through the fourth quarter to beat Marina and Esperanza, teams that finished the season ranked sixth and ninth in Orange County.
Edison finished the year ranked fifth, though ascended as high as No. 2 for a two-week stay.
In a year in which there was enormous parity, there were several great coaching jobs:
* Kevin Kiernan, Troy (27-1), whose team’s trademark hustle and smothering defensive press led it to 27 victories before finally losing in the playoffs.
* Vincent Avitabile, El Toro (23-6), who nurtured the Chargers through a suspension for fan behavior, and developed the role players who helped their stars succeed.
* Ollie Martin, Mater Dei (22-6), who took over the program and, with only one senior, guard Anita Colon, took the Monarchs to the Division I-A semifinals.
* Ty Watkins, Foothill (27-5), whose team had 11- and 16-game winning streaks in returning to the section finals for the first time since 1986.
* Dick Katz, Westminster (22-6), whose team reached the top 10 with a bumblebee-like defense that disrupted, annoyed and frustrated opponents into mistakes.
But given the tough schedule, outstanding results and the confidence of his peers, White stood a little taller than the rest.