Basketball: ’81 over ’86

Joseph Boo

CORONA DEL MAR - After Corona del Mar High’s Class of 1981 beat the

Class of ‘86, 52-48, to win the 12th annual Jack Errion Memorial

Basketball Tournament, the players slowly sauntered over to the bench in

the wake of their annual hoops marathon.

“It feels good today, but it’ll feel bad tomorrow,” Class of ’81

member Dan Hess said.

There will be a lot of groaning heard on Sunday morning in the Corona

del Mar and Newport Beach area, especially from alumni of the Class of

‘81 and ’86. They played six games in eight hours on Saturday at Corona

del Mar to try to prove after all these years that they’re the best

basketball team in school history. At least for a year.

“There’s a lot of pride,” Class of ’86 star Jeff Fryer said. “CdM has

seen a lot of success over the years, and they won a lot of CIF

championships. They want to come out and prove that they’re the best

year.”

For the past 12 years, class pride and the opportunity to mingle again

with old classmates have brought former Sea Kings back regularly. Most of

the players in the 16-team field have participated every year, revisiting

past athletic glories, as well as CdM boys basketball Coach Paul Orris,

who has been with the Sea Kings since 1970.

“It feels good to see that CdM basketball meant enough to these

players to come back every year and participate,” he said.

One of the teams which did not compete every year, strangely enough,

is the Jack Errion champion, the Class of ’81. They only had three

players a year ago, not enough to field a team.

But with CIF Player of the Year (basketball) Jeff Pries, who led CdM’s

boys basketball and baseball teams, to CIF championships in 1981, they

built up a 19-point lead at one point and held on. Pries led ’81 with 22

points, and Steve Moore scored 11. Hess contributed seven points.

But it was their opponent, the Class of ‘86, which drew the attention

of spectators, and teenage girls in particular. That’s because Sugar Ray

frontman and rock n’ roll coverboy Mark McGrath was on the team.

McGrath, arguably CdM’s most famous alumnus, last competed in the Jack

Errion Tournament three years ago, when his band was an unknown punk

band. But when McGrath came back on Saturday, he was a internationally

famous singer filling the role of backup guard.

“Everybody knows who I am, but they don’t make a big deal about it and

that’s cool,” he said. “They still treat me like the hotshot runt I was

in high school.”

McGrath and Joseph Mitchell, known as McG, the director of the

upcoming Cameron Diaz-Drew Barrymore film version of “Charlie’s Angels,”

were public figures on the Class of ‘86, but it was Fryer who was the

go-to-guy on the team. He was a starter on Paul Westhead’s high-flying

1990 Loyola Marymount team that reached the Elite Eight with Bo Kimble

and the late Hank Gathers.

Fryer scored 20 points in the final game before heading off to Germany

and his pro team in Bergheim.

“It’s worth it just to be with the guys,” Fryer said. “We’ve been

playing together since the third grade. It’s great to come back. Every

year you look forward to it.”