Story By Mike Wood | Photos By Dennis Lee
In the iconic movie Jaws, Chief Brody needed a bigger boat.
At Miramonte High in Orinda, the girls basketball team needs a bigger trophy case.
The current cabinet of championship hardware is near full capacity. Yet the Matadors look to be in line to add to their lofty collection. At 26-2 amid one of the most demanding schedules around, Miramonte has cruised into the North Coast Section Division II semifinals looking poised for another deep postseason run — perhaps all the way into March.
All the typical characteristics of previous great Matadors teams are present with this group.
Intense defensive pressure.
A relentlessly fast-paced offense that shows no fear in shooting 3-pointers.
A deep crew of contributors.
Yet there is one difference this time. This season Miramonte, currently fifth in SportStars’ NorCal rankings, played its regular season as an independent.
So instead of packing big-time competition and road trips into the first half of the season, the Matadors were able to continue that arduous December schedule pace all the way until playoff time. They still play area rivals like Campolindo-Moraga and Acalanes-Lafayette, but are cleared from league-play obligations.
“It’s awesome,” said Miramonte coach Kelly Sopak, in his 10th season running the elite program. “I think that is the wave of the future. I think more teams need to do it.”
As an independent, the Matadors packed up plenty of quality wins, beating 2018 Open Division teams like Clovis North-Fresno, Harvard-Westlake-Studio City and Folsom and fellow Division I competitors from a year ago such as Mission Hills-San Marcos, La Jolla Country Day, Presentation-San Jose and Chaminade-West Hills. They avenged last year’s 69-48 NorCal Division I championship loss to Sacred Heart Cathedral-San Francisco with a 98-68 win on Jan. 21 at the Bishop O’Dowd MLK Classic.
Miramonte’s losses have been 72-49 to Highlands Ranch — the No. 1 ranked team in Colorado — and 70-66 to fellow NorCal-power Carondelet-Concord.
Ranked 24th in the nation in the most-recent (Feb. 15) MaxPreps computer rankings, the Matadors are the third-highest nationally ranked NorCal team, after Central Coast Section powers Archbishop Mitty-San Jose (third) and Pinewood-Los Altos Hills (10th).
This is the seventh time in the past eight seasons that Miramonte has been nationally ranked. The Matadors won four straight NCS titles from 2014-17, winning at least 30 games each of those seasons. The Matadors reached the CIF Open Division state championship game in the 2015-16 season, falling 80-71 to Chaminade-West Hills. They made the NorCal finals two straight years before that.
They have had great leaders during those seasons. There was the phenomenal Sabrina Ionescu, now at Oregon. She recently set the NCAA record for triple-doubles with 13 in her career, better than any women’s or men’s player. There was Clair Steele, who played in every game all four of her years at Miramonte. She’s now at Lehigh.
Now that leadership role belongs to Emily Huston, the only senior who has played varsity all four years. She emerged as a starter her junior year after a front-row seat to the earlier successes. She knows what it takes.
“I got to watch on the sidelines for a while, which was nice,” she said. “It allowed me to see exactly what was going to be expected of me, when I was going to go in. The level of play we had to live up to in this program.”
And she has learned what Sopak expects.
“She embodies what Miramonte basketball is about,” Sopak said. “Her effort; she plays hard every second she is out there.”
And what the Matadors seek are more players able lead, being vocal on the court and while on the bench.
“I was telling someone earlier, that is probably our biggest area of growth,” Sopak said. “We can’t wait until next year to have other people step up and be vocal and be a leader. We have got to get more of that this year.”
Sopak owns a career mark of 279-38 at Miramonte heading into the NCS semifinals. Because he holds the bar of achievement high, he sees there is room for improvement this season. The Matadors closed out the Lamorinda Classic on Jan. 26 with a 84-57 win over Whitney-Rocklin that was somewhat of a mixed bag, considering the current season’s catalog of success stories.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Sopak said after that game. “For us to be successful, we are not just going to show up and beat anyone. We are not that good. We have got to play 32 minutes.”
The Matadors had to adjust after starting point guard Amerika De Los Santos suffered a season-ending knee injury in the Jan. 5 win over Chaminade at the Matt Denning Nike Hoops Classic at Mater Dei. Rebecca Welsh, among the Matadors’ most brazen 3-point shooters, moved into that role from the No. 2 guard slot.
“Rebecca is a natural point guard anyway, so it’s a pretty smooth transition,” Sopak said. “But we miss Amerika’s toughness and her leadership.”
Added Huston: “It was hard for us to watch because we care about her as a teammate. Nobody wants to go through that, especially not a second time. Especially someone who loves basketball as much as Amerika does.”
As the transition continues from older stars to newer ones, Miramonte has continued to thrive.
“I am definitely learning from Emily Huston and I did from Clair Steele,” said sophomore Mia Mastrov, who is in the midst of a breakout season. “Clair was a really great leader for our team. And so is Emily right now. More people definitely need to step up, I think. Because losing Clair as a really great point guard and leader is hard on us, but Emily is really taking the (mantle) on that and stepping up.”
Don’t ask the Matadors to look ahead when asked about any postseason aspirations or predictions.
“We don’t like to set too many goals for ourselves; we just like to play our games as it goes,” Huston said going into February. “We don’t like to look too far into the future and try to plan that far ahead.
“We live in the moment. … It will happen if we just work hard and play our game.”
This is an updated version of a feature that ran in the February 2019 issue of SportStars Magazine. The magazine’s March issue releases on Feb. 22 at SportStarsMag.com and will feature a 2019 Baseball/Softball Preview.
