Huntington Beach Sports Hall of Fame inducts its class of 2026
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There’s one thing that Brett Simpson, Joy Fawcett, Tito Ortiz and Cherokee Parks have in common besides elevating to the top of their respective sports.
Each is proud to be from Huntington Beach, growing up there in the 1980s and ’90s.
“We just had a lot of fun as kids roaming the neighborhood, riding our bikes everywhere,” said Fawcett, a girls’ soccer star who graduated from Edison in 1986. “We’d climb on neighbors’ walls and no one cared.”
Parks, a 1991 Marina boys’ basketball graduate, said he would ride from Huntington Harbour over to Edwards Street.
“That’s when Edwards was just kind of this janky road, and it was steep,” Parks said. “Riding your skateboard down it was a big deal.”
The quartet was inducted as part of the second class of the Huntington Beach Sports Hall of Fame on Sunday afternoon at the Huntington Club. The 2024 Edison High football team, which won the program’s first state championship, was also inducted.
The event was emceed by Basketball Hall of Fame member and Huntington Beach resident Ann Meyers Drysdale.
Simpson, a 2003 Huntington Beach High graduate, put himself on the map by winning back-to-back U.S. Open of Surfing titles at his home break in 2009 and ’10.
He said winning the second title was particularly satisfying, as it showed everyone that it wasn’t a fluke.
“I always looked up to the Titos, the Cherokees,” said Simpson, who was U.S. Olympic surf team head coach in 2021 and is now a marketing director for Hurley. “Those guys were a little bit older, but when you have people in your city that you can aspire to be, or aspire to be great, I think that’s really important.”
Fawcett, who led Edison to the CIF Southern Section Division 4-A title match in 1986, retired in 2004 as the highest scoring defender in U.S. women’s soccer history. A National Soccer Hall of Fame member, she helped Team USA win both the 1991 and 1999 Women’s World Cup titles, as well as Olympic golds in 1996 and 2004 and silver in 2000.
Parks helped Duke win the 1992 NCAA men’s basketball title as a freshman, and went on to play nine seasons in the NBA.
Ortiz, a 1993 Huntington Beach High graduate and two-time state champion at Golden West College, is a UFC Hall of Famer who was known as the Huntington Beach Bad Boy during his time in the octagon. One of the sport’s early stars, he held the UFC light heavyweight championship from 2000 to 2003.
In 2020, he was elected to the Huntington Beach City Council with what was, at the time, the most votes in city history, resigning months later.
Now a Florida resident, Ortiz was unable to attend the ceremony due to a canceled flight, but offered a video message. He said he’s now a high school wrestling coach at the school where his sons wrestle.
“Life comes full circle,” said Ortiz, who also owns a restaurant. “Hard work pays off.”
Edison’s football team had three of its four team captains from 2024 present in linebacker Matt Lopez, lineman Cooper Cirillo and receiver/safety Jake Minter, who caught a 54-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Sam Thomson in the final minute of the state championship game. Thomson also attended the ceremony.
Each was wearing his state championship ring, which Lopez said has 56 diamonds for the 56th year of Edison football.
“The thing about us that I found most impressive was that you didn’t have to have that letter ‘C’ [for captain] on your jersey to show that you were a leader,” Lopez said of the team’s success. “Our whole team buying in from the beginning of the year, after facing the adversity of starting 0-2, I think that’s what helped us a lot.”
