High Expectations

Mike Sciacca, Independent

The bar is set high in the Ocean View High boys’ basketball program,

the standard of excellence established well before any of the current

Seahawks were born.

Yet members of the 2001-02 varsity team are quite aware of the

aptitude that has preceded them. Championship banners hanging in the

gymnasium and records displayed in the basketball program are formidable

reminders of the program’s steeped tradition.

Impressively these Seahawks are living up to those standards, and

doing so without the services of two of their top six players.

“The key to success is to overachieve,” Ocean View coach Jim Harris

said. “At the beginning of the season I try to project how we should do,

then my goal is to better that projection. It was bumpy at first, but we

really have come around.”

The turning point came in December, when the Seahawks, saddled with an

uncharacteristic record of 6-7, had dropped a one-point decision to a

talented Silverado team in the Arroyo Grande Tournament. They held a mini

practice the next day at Arroyo Grande, where coaches installed a new

game plan.

“We wanted the kids to realize that they needed to become a better

defensive team and more proficient on offense.”

Since that practice, Ocean View went on to win 10 of its next 11

games. This despite losing leading scorer, senior guard/forward Steve

Clarke, to a broken cheek bone one day after the Golden West League

opener in early January, and sophomore forward Bear Wurts, who is out

with a stress fracture.

In Clarke, they lost 13 points per game and one of the county’s top

three-point specialists. Wurts was a key sixth man, who also had started

in a few games.

“You really can’t replace a player like Steve but a few guys have

responded and have picked up the slack,” Harris said.

Two of them are junior post player Alan Kreymer and sophomore

guard/forward Greg Okwudibonye, who has been moved to the perimeter and

has improved from averaging six points per game to nearly nine per

contest.

Casey Ortiz is the team’s leading scorer with a 16-point average. The

junior guard netted 23 points in Saturday’s loss to St. John Bosco.

But Ocean View bounced back on Monday to improve to 17-8 with a

resounding 75-36 rout of host Saddleback where in three of the four

quarters they held the Roadrunners below 10 points. The win put them at

7-0 in league play.

The only disappointment, Harris says, has been the fact that Ocean

View has not beaten a highly regarded team. Some of their losses have

been to Verbum Dei, Mayfair, Silverado and St. John Bosco.

The one game that he says his team lost and should have won came

against San Luis Obispo in the Arroyo Grande Tournament.

Ocean View has already sewn up another Golden West championship. It is

the fifth consecutive league crown for the school and the 11th in Harris’

24-year tenure, which includes two Empire League and four Sunset League

titles.

Harris’ teams have never failed to finish among the upper echelon of

any league standings. An amazing stat for the program is that since the

school opened its doors in 1976, Ocean View has never failed to qualify

for the CIF Southern Section playoffs. They are on their way once again

to the Big Dance, which begins next Wednesday.

Ocean View has reached the Final Four in postseason play in each of

the last four years, winning a CIF championship in 1998 and dropping the

2000 title game to Artesia, which later had to forfeit that championship.