Going to State Takes More Than a Dream and a Cheer

BREA —  At Brea Olinda, attending the girls’ state basketball championships on Friday is an unexcused absence. It’s one that will be ignored, but officials at the school aren’t going out of their way to stir up support for the Ladycats in Sacramento.

“We’re not penalizing students who choose to go,” said Bill Tangeman, Brea activities director, “but we’re not doing anything to encourage them to go.

“There’s no way they can go unless they miss some school, and we understand that.”

When the Ladycats take the floor for the Division II title against Redding Shasta at 6:15 p.m. Friday at Arco Arena, it will be the school’s state-record seventh girls’ basketball championship appearance since 1989. It’s the first trip to the finals since 1994, when the Ladycats were undefeated.

“I’ve always had a track meet the day of the Southern [California] final, so I’ve never gone to those games and I thought they would go to the [state] finals and I would get to go,” said Matt Saverino, a senior who bought an airline ticket to Sacramento before Brea won its semifinal Saturday over Compton Dominguez.

“When you say Ladycats and state title, it’s not that uncommon, but we’ve never won one while I’ve been here,” Saverino said. “We finally got there. We’ve got to win it. And I’ve got to see it.”

According to Kolby Wheeler, another senior, the Ladycats had to win for another reason.

“We told a lot of players on the team, Chelsea Trotter and Jeri Costello, they better win because if they didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to have our road trip,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler is the wheel man for a group of friends--between three and five--who plan to drive to Sacramento late tonight. About an hour after the game ends, they expect to make the long drive home so Adam Aronsen can make his 9 a.m. job at a Brea sporting goods store.

Brea has a good chance to send the lads home happy. The Ladycats are 32-1 with a 21-game winning streak, ranked No. 1 in the state.

However, there won’t be a bus filled with green and yellow-clad students heading up Interstate 5. The band won’t be going either because of a previously scheduled event. Other sporting events also are scheduled, limiting the number of students who will attend.

Though the school has fielded about two dozen inquiries and is recommending hotels and a means to getting tickets, students who want to attend the game must make their own plans.

“In the past, we’ve tried to arrange those kinds of things, but there’s been very little interest because they want to do it on their own,” said Tangeman, who has been at the school 10 years. “We don’t have a rooters’ bus or a block of seats on a plane because we haven’t had a lot of takers.”

Brea’s students are so accustomed to winning, often they only show up en masse for “events,” like showdowns against Mater Dei, Ventura Buena or a late-round playoff game. Most of Brea’s hard-core fans are older.

In fact, Coach Jeff Sink referred to them in his pregame speech before the Ladycats’ victory Saturday in the Southern California Regionals.

“A lot of those people are grandparent-type figures to the girls in the program,” Sink said. “So I told them, ‘Let’s win for all the grandmas and grandpas out there.’ ”

One of those grandfatherly types is Sid Isreal, 62, who has followed the Ladycats for 15 seasons. Like many of the others, he has no kids in the program. He made “a conservative estimate” that more than two dozen of the over-60 set will attend Brea’s game Friday. He also said two dozen of those older fans have seen each of Brea’s state title games.

“There are about a dozen of us hoping we’ll get to go from Sacramento to Oakland to see Nicole Erickson play for Duke on Saturday in the West Regional semifinals at Oakland,” Isreal said. Erickson graduated from Brea in 1994.

Isreal booked a room after dinner on Saturday night. He bought airline tickets last Thursday after the Dominguez game to take advantage of a discounted fare.

Girls’ Athletic Director Sharen Caperton began making flight arrangements for the team in February.

“It’s not arrogance, it’s preparation,” said Caperton, who works from a checklist she has made over the years. “When you’re a five-time champion, you have to plan ahead. I had all the confidence at the start of the season we’d be where we are right now.

“The first time you go, it’s real scary because you don’t know what to expect. . . . You have 15 kids, a couple of coaches--you’re not really in control because the state office is doing this; you hope the buses are there, the rooms are nice and the flights are on time because the kids and coaches have enough to worry about.

“You have the 15 kids and 15 variables--it’s a long ways back to Brea to pick up a uniform or a pair of shoes.”