Orange County Prep Review : Esperanza Ends Up Ending Its Own Soccer Streak

John Coppage, the Esperanza High School boys’ soccer coach, said a week ago that the Aztecs’ three-year stretch without a loss probably was nearing its end.

Saturday, against nearby rival Canyon, the end came in the oddest of ways: Esperanza’s John Byers made a sliding kick in an attempt to clear the ball away from the Aztec goal, but the ball rolled into the net instead.

The streak ended at 61 games.

“We ended up ending it,” Coppage said.

Esperanza outshot Canyon, 17-4. The only shot that counted, the one off Byers’ foot, was credited to the nearest Canyon player.

Esperanza had been tied twice this season, and had been outscored in a shootout by Dominguez just more than a week ago, although that match stood as a tie by CIF standards because the shootout was only incorporated to determine which team would advance in a tournament.

“It was bound to happen,” Coppage said. “Of course, it’s somewhat of a relief. That part had been a little nerve-racking.”

Esperanza beat Canyon, 2-0, earlier this season. That match was no happy occasion for the Aztecs, either, as all-league midfielder Bryan Abue broke a leg.

“This game was a no-win situation for us,” Coppage said. “We had played a tough league game the night before, and we’d had some kids sick with the flu. These aren’t excuses, just a culmination of things. We had a player ejected, and for 20 to 25 minutes we were one man short. It obviously wasn’t meant to be.”

Same time, next week: Exactly one week after El Toro won the Southern Section Southern Conference football title, defeating Santa Ana, 26-10, El Toro and Santa Ana met in a basketball game. El Toro won again, 69-55, taking third place in the Irvine World News Tournament.

The remarkable fact is this: Bret Johnson, El Toro’s junior quarterback who passed for 134 yards and 2 touchdowns in the football final Saturday, started at point guard for El Toro on Monday in the first game of the tournament. In five tournament games, Johnson scored 101 points, including 27 Tuesday against University.

And there were others:

Cory Wayland, a 6-4 junior defensive tackle for El Toro, had 76 points and 73 rebounds for the week.

Santa Ana’s Bobby Joyce, a 6-6 starting safety for the Saints’ football team, scored 79 points in four games, including a 24-point, 20-rebound performance Monday against Laguna Hills, not even 48 hours after the end of the football game.

Darrell Bailey and George Tuioti also made the quick transition for Santa Ana, and Scott Spalding played both sports for El Toro.

Neither basketball coach was very concerned about the switch.

“They went from football Saturday night to basketball Monday with only a 15-minute shootaround and walk-through (of plays) at lunch on Monday,” El Toro Coach Tim Travers said. “I didn’t think Bret would have much trouble, but Cory surprised me.”

Santa Ana Coach Greg Coombs conducted a 10-minute walk-through, and the Saints were ready to go.

“The only thing was I knew they’d be out of shape,” Coombs said. “It’s tough to play man-to-man coming out of football. Let’s face it, they don’t do much running in football.”

It may be time for Dave White, coach of the undefeated Edison girls’ basketball team, to renege on some of his preseason predictions.

Edison won the Savanna Tournament Friday night, defeating Mater Dei by 29 points in the final and defeating its four tournament opponents by an average of 41 points a game.

White was emphatic before the season in saying that his team was not the best in Orange County, but the Chargers (9-0) already have beaten Brea-Olinda, which was the top-ranked team in preseason polls.

“I thought we would be good, but that early in the year we might not be ready,” White said. “We’ve been playing awfully well.

“Everybody in the preseason, including myself, thought Brea was the class of the county,” said White, whose team defeated Brea by four points in the finals of the Irvine Tournament Dec. 7. “But we and Mission Viejo, which is doing really well, can play with them.

The biggest test of the young season comes this week, when Edison plays host to Lynwood, the top-ranked Southern Section 4-A team and defending champion, Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

Lynwood, which was ranked No. 1 in the state in one preseason poll, defeated Edison by three points in the second round of the playoffs last season. Lynwood is led by Trisse Jackson, a junior guard who was first-team All-Southern Section last season.

Edison’s leading scorer is Kristi Smith, a transfer from Elsinore.

The Empire League boys’ basketball teams opened league play Wednesday with a four-game program in the Anaheim Convention Center. It was the second straight year the league teams have gathered for the league openers, but it may be the last.

Steve Brooks, Los Alamitos coach, came up with the idea of opening league play at a common site a few years ago. As Orange County’s only eight-team league, the Empire League schedules two games before the holidays in order to fit in all 14 league games each team must play. Brooks proposed opening the league season with a four-game extravaganza as a way of attracting fans to pre-Christmas games, which had been poorly attended.

But next year the league will shrink to six teams when Pacifica and Kennedy join the Garden Grove League, making pre-holiday league play unnecessary, and several league coaches said they would prefer not to open league play in December in the Anaheim Convention Center next year.

“I wouldn’t say it’s dead for next year, but there are a couple of schools not interested in doing it,” Brooks said.

Prep Notes

Rick Costello, a Times’ All-Orange County center last year at Mission Viejo High, earned the Kodiak Award at the University of California as the football team’s best scout team player. Costello, a walk-on, is attending Cal on an academic scholarship this year and earned a full football scholarship for the next three years. . . . Former El Toro lineman Mike Piel was named the most valuable defensive lineman for the University of Illinois. Piel, a junior, finished with 92 tackles, including nine for losses of 41 yards.