Something Special About Saturday Nights

Mark Trakh had no idea what he was starting when he invited the top-ranked team in the country, Pasadena Muir, to come to Brea Olinda for a girls’ basketball game on a Saturday night back in 1985.

In succeeding years, other top teams, including New York Christ the King, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Orem (Utah) Mountain View and Los Angeles Washington, followed suit.

The games became known at Brea as “Saturday Night Specials,” where a packed house and an electric atmosphere provided an on-court learning environment that was impossible to replicate in practice.

After winning four state titles, Trakh moved on to coach women’s basketball at Pepperdine in 1994, but his one-night special events have thrived.

It is now common practice for the top girls’ basketball teams to play each other on Saturday nights throughout January while dismissing league competition on weeknights.

Take this Saturday night, for example:

* Fourth-ranked San Clemente (10-2), which has won three consecutive Southern Section titles and is ranked 23rd nationally, plays at No. 6 Brea (9-4), an eight-time state champion.

* Fifth-ranked Harbor City Narbonne (5-5), which has won four consecutive City Section titles and two state titles, plays at No. 15 Santa Ana Mater Dei (8-7), last year’s Southern Section Division II-A champion.

* Norco (11-2), ranked 14th, plays at No. 12 Rosary (13-3). “It’s not a Saturday Night Special if you’re playing a team that’s a gimme,” said Brea Coach Jeff Sink, whose team is playing Orange Lutheran (10-3) on Jan. 24 and Fullerton Troy (14-0) on Jan. 31.

“Trakh’s idea was to create an environment that would simulate the quarterfinals or semifinals of [the playoffs]. That would entail good game preparation, dealing with a large crowd, the media, the expectations.... You occasionally need to play games that push the envelope.”

One of those occurred in 1998, when Narbonne visited Brea for a game featuring teams ranked in the top five nationally.

Narbonne Coach James Anderson said it was his team’s first Saturday Night Special. Narbonne lost, 83-82, in overtime, but Anderson called it a pivotal game in determining how coaches would make out their schedules in succeeding years.

“We had 4,000 people at that game,” Anderson said. “ESPN was there. Every newspaper was there. [Tennessee Coach] Pat Summitt and [Connecticut’s] Geno Auriemma were there. USC and UCLA played that night, and we had more fans at our game than they had at theirs.

“Once you had that, it really put the Saturday Night Special on the map. All of a sudden, everybody was going to do it.”

Among the benefits to winners of these types of games are advantages in playoff seedings as well as playoff-type experiences.

Trakh recalled that game against Muir. Brea rallied from a 10-point deficit only to fall three points short. But the Ladycats went on to win their first section championship that year.

“We might have won it that night,” Trakh said. “I definitely feel we won state championships in those things.”