If she did not do it, that would be understandable.
Isabella D’Aquila did play for the JSerra girls soccer team this season, her senior year. She scored 34 goals and led the team to a third straight CIF-Southern Section Division 1 championship. D’Aquila scored that 34th goal Saturday in the Lions’ 3-0 win over Los Alamitos in the Division 1 final.
She was the national high school player of the year last season. D’Aquila, at JSerra since her freshman year, has been selected to play for national teams. She now is in Spain training with the U.S. Under-20 Women’s National Team.
D’Aquila could have chucked her high school senior season to play exclusively in the United States Soccer Development Academy. She opted to continue to play club soccer locally with the Southern California Blues and high school soccer at JSerra.
“Many of the elite kids don’t play high school soccer because of the academy,” said JSerra girls soccer coach Greg Baker who also coaches D’Aquila and several other Lions in the mega-successful Southern California Blues program. “A lot of people get lost and think high school soccer isn’t relevant. Maybe it’s not relevant from a competition and talent standpoint, but it is very relevant for social interaction and for playing for your school.”
D’Aquila helped make JSerra a championship team again. And she made for herself the lifelong memories that are best created for athletes who play for their high school teams and who played for their teams all four of their high school years.
Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
• JSerra’s team is much more than D’Aquila. The Lions without D’Aquila beat San Luis Obispo 3-0 on Tuesday in the first round of the CIF Southern California Division I Regionals. Goals were scored by Santa Clara-committed junior Rachel Bastone, Stanford-committed junior Samantha Williams and by sophomore Abby Lynch.
• JSerra (20-0-4) plays a 4 p.m. home match Thursday in the semifinals against San Diego’s Academy of Our Lady Of Peace.
• Huntington Beach baseball coach Benji Medure got his 300th career win Saturday when the Oilers defeated Bellarmine Prep of San Jose 4-3.
• Santa Margarita’s hiring of Brent Vieselmeyer as its football head coach received an endorsement from a former Santa Margarita head coach: Harry Welch. “He checks all the boxes,” said Welch who coached the Eagles to a state championship in 2011. (Welch also coached Canyon of Canyon Country and St. Margaret’s to state championships and is the only football coach to win state titles at three different schools.)
• Vieselmeyer was an assistant coach at Orange Lutheran in the 2000s, coached Valor Christian High to Colorado state championships, was a college assistant coach and an Oakland Raiders assistant coach.
• It’s been more than two months since Ernie Bucher resigned as football head coach at Capistrano Valley. The school still has not replaced him. Securing a teaching position that has an attractive salary for the next coach could be slowing the process.
• Entertaining battles on Twitter pop up from time to time in high school sports. One of the better ones is in south county football where San Clemente’s program has its #OneTownOneTeam mantra, makes sure that everyone remembers that Sam Darnold played there and often asks why would a football player want to be anywhere else. Mission Viejo responded recently with “@missionfootball truly is QBU” – a reference to the many college quarterbacks that have come from there.
• The transfer of quarterback Peter Costelli to Mission Viejo from Santa Margarita, where Costelli was the starter as a sophomore in 2018, makes it seven quarterbacks who transferred to Mission Viejo from Trinity League schools over the past 17 years. The others (alphabetically): Ian Fieber (from Orange Lutheran), Matt McDonald (Mater Dei), Mark Sanchez (Santa Margarita), Jordan Palmer (Santa Margarita), Joey Yellen (St. John Bosco) and Brayden Zermeno (Orange Lutheran).
• A quarterback who was at Mission Viejo for all four of his high school years was Brock Johnson, but with his father Bret and grandfather Bob coaching there, that was expected.
• For Costelli, it will be three schools in three years – freshman year at St. John Bosco, sophomore year at Santa Margarita, junior year at Mission Viejo.
• Even coaches move around a lot. Scott Meyer was Servite’s coach in 2017; he resigned from Servite and was University’s coach in 2018; and Meyer resigned from University after one season to become the coach at Lakewood, Meyer’s third school in three years.
• CIF-SS commissioner Rob Wigod offered his take on all of these transfers who take the starting positions from kids who stuck with a school and program for four years in his “Commissioner’s Message” column that can be found at CIFSS.org.
Wigod wrote: “The coach has demanded loyalty from the students and parents in his/her program from that very first parent meeting and when they have the opportunity to return that loyalty by rewarding those who have sacrificed for their program, they turn their backs on them in favor of what is new, and in their mind, better. I don’t know how coaches can say one thing when it comes to loyalty and then not return it when the time comes.”
• Wes Choate last week was named varsity football head coach at Esperanza. Choate is a well-known coach in O.C., having been a head coach at La Quinta and an assistant coach for several years at Pacifica and also at Golden West College.
Esperanza removed Thomas Storing as head coach after the 2018 season, the Aztecs’ third consecutive 1-9 season.
• The CIF State Wrestling Championships for the first time incorporated the girls state meet into the boys state meet this past weekend at Bakersfield’s Rabobank Arena. That led to the end of some traditions, like a weight-class’ final no longer taking place on an elevated mat in the center of the arena (boys and girls finals were wrestled side by side on flat mats) and wrestlers who advanced to the final four did not receive large cardboard copies of their weight-class bracket (only champions got those).
“The pizzazz was taken out of some aspects of the state meet,” said Servite wrestling coach Alan Clinton who expects the CIF State wrestling committee to make adjustments for the 2020 state meet.
• O.C. wrestling had two boys state champions – Trabuco Hills senior Trey Munoz at 170 pounds and Esperanza junior Aaron Nagao at 126 pounds. Villa Park senior Mike Ruiz was runner-up at 220 pounds.
• The county’s top finisher in the girls meet was Westminster junior Aine Drury, second at 137.
• In the state boys wrestling meet team results Servite was the top O.C. finisher at No. 11 with 70 points. Esperanza was No. 16, Trabuco Hills No. 19, Calvary Chapel No. 24, Fountain Valley No. 29 and Yorba Linda No. 56. Buchanan of Clovis was state champion for the fourth consecutive year.
• Mike Dinneen has been removed as head coach of the boys basketball team at University High in Irvine. Dinneen was the Trojans’ coach since 1990. He had some good and entertaining teams at University over his long tenure and his cell phone is probably filled with offers to become an assistant coach at other high schools.
• Zach Johnson resigned as boys basketball head coaching position at Foothill to pursue his teaching credential. He coached the Knights for two seasons. Rusty Van Cleave, a past O.C. coach of the year at Foothill, said he is not at this time pursuing the Foothill job he vacated three years ago.
