Sailors aiming for more

The Newport Harbor High girls’ basketball team has no shortage of giants it will be trying to slay on its preseason schedule.

First-year coach Randy Larson said he wouldn’t have it any other way. So the Sailors have already played two senior-laden teams, in Santa Margarita and Aliso Niguel, in their first two games of the University Holiday Tournament.

On Tuesday, the Sailors (1-2 heading into Friday) will play a nonleague game at San Clemente, the defending CIF Southern Section Division I-A champion.

The scores aren’t necessarily important, but the experience is for a team that has no senior starters.

“We’re young,” Larson said. “We have to play the best so we can see where we’re at. Hopefully we can capture the vision against these teams. This is what we can aspire to do in the future.”

Larson takes over head coaching duties from Jennifer Thompson, who remains on as an assistant coach. He graduated from Newport Harbor in 1972, coached at Aliso Niguel for four years through 2006 and was the Sailors’ junior varsity coach a year ago. He said he hopes that one day Sailors girls’ basketball can be looked at with the same sense of pride as the Newport Harbor girls’ volleyball program.

“We need to learn how to win,” said Larson, who takes over a team that went just 5-17 a season ago, and 1-9 in the Sunset League. “We can’t lose our composure late in games. I’m working hard on the mental toughness.”

Newport Harbor has two returning starters in forwards Corinne Schnieders and Lindsay Anderson. Schnieders, a junior, and Anderson, a sophomore, are both 5-foot-8 and both team captains.

“I’m asking them to be leaders on and off the court,” Larson said.

Other returning varsity players include senior guard Malia Hohl and senior forward Kelly Thompson, who Larson said he’s counting on to bring energy off the bench. Six-foot sophomore center Maiquel McLeish, sidelined much of last season with a knee injury, is back contributing, as is junior point guard Christina O’Tousa.

Last winter, O’Tousa played both soccer and basketball for Newport Harbor, but this year she is only playing on the hardwood. She assumes point guard duties from program graduate Ivy Melo, who scored seven points a game and added four assists for last year’s Sailors. Melo, a second-team All-Sunset League honoree now playing at Irvine Valley College, was the only Newport Harbor player to earn such league honors a season ago.

“Christina’s a good athlete,” Larson said. “She’s not coming in with mud all over her like last year.”

Varsity players who contributed for Larson’s junior varsity team last year include forward Katey Thompson, and guards Nicole Jimenez, Coleen Mead and Yessenia Urquilla.

“It helps,” Larson said. “We’re running the same system, and they’ve helped with the transition.”

Junior guard Taylor Riley, who was at Newport Harbor as a freshman before moving to Texas last year, is back and also in the mix. Senior forward Regina Cuervo (elbow) and junior forward Jill Blackledge (knee) are currently nursing injuries.

The Sailors have plenty of size. Of their starters, Katey Thompson, Schnieders, Anderson and McLeish are all at least 5-8.

“It’s kind of like the old days of Kobe and Shaq,” Larson said, referencing the Los Angeles Lakers teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s. “We can go inside-out. We just need to get points out of five to seven girls. We don’t have that superstar who can come down every night and get 15 to 20 points.”

And although the Sailors have size, Larson is working on the toughness that may need to come with it to make noise in the Sunset League.

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or by e-mail at [email protected].