Prep Column: Orris shows you can win for losing

Barry Faulkner

While posting his second-highest win total in a distinguished

14-year varsity coaching career, Corona del Mar High boys basketball

coach Paul Orris, who this season became the career victory leader among

Newport-Mesa District coaches with 215, has become all about losing.

It has nothing to do with the 21-6 Sea Kings’ performance on the court,

but, rather, Orris’ liquid-fast diet. The plan had helped him shed 44

pounds in five weeks, through Friday’s 47-25 CIF Southern Section

Division III-AA second-round blowout of visiting Northview.

Orris said his recent plunge toward a desired weight of 240 pounds (he

noted he still has some work left to reach the goal) was brought on by a

problem with sleep apnea (interrupted breathing during sleep). He said

his doctor told him losing weight would help, so, he began ingesting five

shakes a day, drinking plenty of water and, for a rare treat, washing

down some chicken bullion.

His team is 7-2 since he began the regimen.

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Newport Harbor High Coach Larry Hirst, whose Sailors are the other

Newport-Mesa District boys basketball team still competing, also had a

little trouble sleeping over the weekend.

His insomnia, he joked, traced directly to flashbacks of the Sailors’

last meeting with Brea Olinda, which will host the Tars in tonight’s CIF

II-AA second round.

“You don’t have to remind me,” Hirst said of a 61-36 setback to the

Wildcats in a December tournament final last season.

“I watched Kyle Dodd (a senior star at Brea last season who hit 9 of 15

field goals and scored 24 points, en route to tournament MVP laurels in

the aforementioned romp) all weekend on TV against UCLA and USC,” Hirst

said of the guard who now starts for Arizona State.

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The CdM boys enter tonight’s III-AA quarterfinal against Notre Dame of

Sherman Oaks (at Estancia) two wins away from making their second

straight section title game.

But such an accomplishment would not mean playing in a big-time arena.

The III-AA final is scheduled Friday, March 3, at Loyola Marymount

University, making it the only title game among the section’s top eight

boys divisions not to be held at the Arrowhead Pond.

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The Corona del Mar girls soccer team opened its first postseason since

1992 with an impressive 5-0 thumping of Division IV visitor Orange

Lutheran Saturday.

But, lest the Sea Kings become too proud of their first-round supremacy,

it should be noted the 16 first-round winners in Division IV outscored

their opponents, 78-6, including 11 schools which posted a combined

victory margin of 58-0.

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Costa Mesa has won two games to extend its 11th straight trip to the

section girls basketball playoffs.

But that’s only the second-longest streak among Newport-Mesa basketball

programs, behind the 13-season skein recently extended by the Estancia

boys.