Sea Kings not so small

There wasn’t a teary eye in the joint.

As the Corona del Mar High girls’ tennis team won the CIF Southern Section Division I championship last November, nobody broke down.

There were smiles and laughs, sure, but nobody cried tears of joy for the Sea Kings, undefeated all season.

After all, they expected to win.

CdM ranked as the top team in Division I from start to finish. The team, coached by Brian Ricker, never really came close to losing. And, after that 24-0 season, the Sea Kings, as they did five times during the year, placed their reward in the basketball gym.

Not a league championship banner, but a CIF title banner.

Many high schools put up league championship banners in their gyms as a way to show their athletic accomplishment.

No disrespect to the rest of the Pacific Coast League, but Corona del Mar High doesn’t do that. The Sea Kings only put up CIF championship banners and state title banners.

As it is, the available wall space of the gym is getting smaller and smaller. And, there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight.

Last year, 2006-07, was another banner year for the Sea Kings. CdM won CIF Southern Section titles in girls’ tennis (Division I), girls’ cross country (Division III), boys’ basketball (Division III-A), boys’ volleyball (Division II) and girls’ track and field (Division III). The girls’ cross country team, led by longtime coach Bill Sumner, also won the CIF State Division III title.

The five CIF Southern Section titles were the most in the entire section, and tied the CdM school record set in 2000-01.

“It’s not just one sport; it’s the whole spectrum,” said Paul Orris, CdM’s athletic director and former boys’ basketball coach. “Corona del Mar High is a special place in Orange County. Across the board in Orange County, I don’t know of another school that’s come close to what we’ve able to do.”

CdM has an enrollment of 2,182 students, but that includes the seventh and eighth-graders at the junior high. Whittle the enrollment down to just grades 9-12, and the Sea Kings won five CIF titles last year with just 1,453 students.

How do they do it?

The coaches play a big part. And it doesn’t hurt to be in an affluent community.

Amid the success, the athletes also thrive in the classroom. They’ll also be gearing up to meet the standard once again this year.

Today, the Daily Pilot features the coaches and the academic success.

THEY CAN COACH

Stability can be extremely important in an athletic program. Former Daily Pilot sports editor Roger Carlson noted that for a roughly 40-year period from 1967 through 2006, CdM had just two athletic directors — Ron Davis and Jerry Jelnick. Davis, who served as athletic director from 1967-89, was the one who started that tradition that CdM teams would only hang up their CIF title banners.

The Sea Kings were also blessed with a principal during the 1970s and ‘80s, Dennis Evans, who made athletics a priority. Evans is now the director of credential programs at UC Irvine.

Davis and Evans were in place when Bill Sumner came to CdM. Twenty-five years later, Sumner’s cross country and track teams have won 14 CIF Southern Section championships and eight CIF state titles.

“They said, ‘We want success; tell us what you need to do that,’” Sumner said. “Then you just make progress every day. For 20 years, if you make progress every day, it’s pretty cool isn’t it?”

As there are fewer teaching positions open in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, many of the coaches, like Sumner, are off-campus. Sumner, Aaron Chaney (girls’ water polo) and Tim Mang (girls’ tennis) are also examples of coaches who have an established program despite not having an on-campus teaching position.

Mang was a teacher at Edison High in Huntington Beach for 30 years, and a tennis coach there for 18, before coming to CdM.

“A lot of those teachers have families,” Mang said. “But coaching is a big commitment; you’ve got to be pretty dedicated. If you’re a teacher, then you just give your grades and it’s ‘See you next year.’ If you’re a coach, you get your record in the paper and it’s pride. You want to do well.”

“But it’s tough for walk-on coaches because of the hours, and trying to coordinate everything without being on-campus.”

Of course, not every coach is off-campus. Some of the notable coaches who also have teaching positions include baseball coach and English teacher John Emme, who led his team to the second round of the CIF Southern Section Division III playoffs, and football coach and science teacher Dick Freeman, whose Sea Kings upset rival Newport Harbor last year and advanced to the Southern Division quarterfinals.

Other on-campus coaches at CdM include boys’ basketball coach Ryan Schachter (resource specialist), girls’ basketball coach Mark Decker and softball coach Laura Mayberry (both history teachers), girls’ soccer coach Bryan Middleton (health), boys’ water polo coach Barry O’Dea (English) and golf coach Mike Starkweather (science).

“If I had a choice, I’d have my whole staff be on-campus because that way the coaches have a better connection with the whole school,” Orris said. “Realistically, that isn’t going to happen, so the alternative is to have highly respected walk-on coaches who have been there a number of years. They know what works and what doesn’t work.”

Many of the coaches also let the programs work together. For a school that wins as much as the Sea Kings do, players who play more than one sport are common.

Boys’ volleyball coach Steve Conti said on his 2005 CIF championship boys’ volleyball team, four players — Tom and Kevin Welch, Chris Riley and Austin Brawner — were three-sport athletes.

“Then I had three or four more two-sport athletes,” Conti said. “You don’t always think you’d get as many football players who play volleyball, but you get quite a few.”

But whatever the reasons may be, the coaches continue to stay. And, more importantly, the Sea Kings continue to win.

“It’s as good as it gets,” Sumner said. “I know that’s a Jack Nicholson movie, but they could do one about Corona del Mar, too.”

CLASSROOM SUCCESS, TOO

Part of the goodness is, of course, the thrill of victory.

For as esteemed as Corona del Mar High is in athletics, the school is also very well-known for its academics. In the most recent data from 2006, CdM had an Academic Performance Index (API) of 866. Among high schools in Orange County, only Troy of Fullerton (924) and University of Irvine (888) had better scores.

Troy’s score, however, includes roughly 70% of its students who are involved in its “Troy Tech” magnet program.

With the Sea Kings’ grades, it’s not surprising that the athletic program reaps the benefits. Corona del Mar student-athletes seem to focus just as hard in the classroom as on the field, and confidence ensues in both arenas.

“At CdM it’s cool to be good at sports, and it’s cool to be smart,” Ricker said. “It’s not something you have to try to hide.”

Ricker would know. He said he had five seniors last year with a 4.2 grade point average or higher: Brittany Ngo, Miranda Young, Hayley Young, Kelly McKitterick and Michelle Atkins.

The Sea Kings’ baseball team last year was also named the CIF California Academic Champion, after CdM posted a 3.61 cumulative GPA, the highest in the state for baseball.

CdM baseball, boys’ volleyball and girls’ water polo teams were also honored as winners of the CIF Southern Section Academic Awards, for posting the highest cumulative GPAs in college preparatory classes during the first semester of ‘06-07.

Sumner, meanwhile, wasn’t left out. He saw two of his top graduating seniors — Sarah Cummings and Hilary May — go Ivy League to Princeton and Harvard, respectively.

“Most kids want to win and they want to get good grades, which is also winning,” Sumner said.

That attitude doesn’t surprise Carlson. Now retired, Carlson saw a lot of those Corona del Mar championships in his tenure at the paper from 1968-2003, which included 15 years as sports editor.

“The kids come from families that are winners,” Carlson said, “business-wise and professional-wise. As freshmen, most Corona del Mar kids usually have a leg up on the competition. They’ve had a lot of advantages.

“Corona del Mar has always had an edge. It’s almost like DNA rubbing off. Even when they were underdogs, they seemed to have this edge.”

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or at matthew.szabo@latimes.com.