LATIMES.COM/SPORTS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020D3
Desperate times call for
desperate measures, and
No. 1-seeded Chatsworth Sier-
ra Canyon was in a desperate
spot while facing elimination
Tuesday night.
Down by 11 points with less
than three minutes left
against Etiwanda in the Open
Division regional basketball
final at sold-out Cal State
Northridge, the Trailblazers
unleashed an intense full-
court press. The result was
stunning.
Ziaire Williams made a 16-
foot shot from the left side of
the free-throw line as the
buzzer sounded, completing a
13-0 surge and giving Sierra
Canyon a 63-61 victory as fans
and teammates stormed the
court.
“Oh man, we just have so
much heart,” Williams said.
“We just kept fighting. Our
coaches kept telling us, ‘Keep
going, keep going.’ Our bench
players came in and got some
big steals.”
Said Sierra Canyon coach
Andre Chevalier: “It’s been a
long season, and for them to
dig in like that and do this was
amazing.”
Etiwanda (30-4) appeared
to have the Trailblazers (30-4)
on the ropes. Leading 61-50,
the Eagles had taken charge
in the second half behind
Tyree Campbell, who scored
19 points, and Brantly Steven-son, who scored 15 points. But
Sierra Canyon went into des-
peration mode over the final
2:43.
“We just fell apart against
their press,” Etiwanda coach
Dave Kleckner said. “It was a
very physical, aggressivepress. We just didn’t handle it
well.”
When Brandon Boston
made a three-pointer from the
top of the key with 1:28 left, it
was 61-61. Sierra Canyon got
the ball back with 17.3 seconds
left. Williams got the ball in
the backcourt. Etiwanda still
had fouls to give but elected to
let Jahmai Mashack try to
guard the 6-foot-7 Williams.
He went right, briefly lost the
ball, then dribbled left and
made the winning shot. Amari
Bailey embraced him as he fell
away. Then others joined in
the celebration.
“I was mentally focused,”
said Williams, who finished
with 17 points. His fellow
McDonald’s All-American,
Brandon Boston, led Sierra
Canyon with 26 points.
For Etiwanda, it was a
stunning ending for a team
that lost three times to Sierra
Canyon and gave the Trail-
blazers three of their toughest
games all season.
Sierra Canyon advances to
play the winner of the game
Thursday between Sacra-
mento Sheldon and Oakland
Bishop O’Dowd for the state
Open Division championship
on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Gold-en 1 Center in Sacramento.
As a growing number of
sporting events ban fans from
attending competitions or
cancel events entirely be-
cause of the coronavirus con-
cerns, it remains to be seen
what will happen this week-end for the state champi-
onships scheduled for Friday
and Saturday.
As of Tuesday night, a CIF
spokeswoman said in an
email, “There are no changes
at this time to our current for-
mat. We’ll keep everyone up-
dated as the days progress if
there are any changes.”
In Division I, Los Angeles
Ribet defeated Altadena Ren-
aissance 45-31. Snookey Wig-
ington scored 15 points for Ri-
bet. In Division II, La Cañada
St. Francis defeated Eastvale
Roosevelt 53-44 with Andre
Henry scoring 17 points for St.
Francis.
In the Open Division re-
gional girls’ final, the Gator-
ade state player of the year, La
Jolla Country Day’s Te-Hina
Paopao, was unstoppable.
She scored 30 points to lead
Country Day past Los Ange-
les Windward 59-48. Fresh-
man Juju Watkins scored 15
points for Windward.
In Division II, City Section
Open Division champion Pali-
sades advanced to Saturday’s
state championship with a 51-
36 victory over Santa Monica.
Sammie Arnold and Demon-
nie Lagway each scored 12
points.HIGH SCHOOL REGIONAL FINALS
Williams puts Trailblazers in state final
By Eric Sondheimer
SIERRA CANYON’S Ziaire Williams, center, is
hugged after making winning shot against Etiwanda.Gary CoronadoLos Angeles TimesBASKETBALL
No. 4, Vicky Oganyan!”
“At the other guard, a 5-3
sophomore out of Temple
City, No. 12, Penelope Trieu!”
That the freshman is 21
years older than the sopho-
more can force a double
take, but one would have to
be informed first to realize it.
If you didn’t know, it would
be hard to figure, which is a
credit to Oganyan, Glen-
dale’s 40-year-old freshman.
Her age makes for a catchy
headline, but there’s much
more to the tale of Vicky and
the Vaqueros, who feel like
they’re on a march toward
the school’s first state cham-
pionship.
Oganyan wants only to
blend in, not to be a distrac-
tion. Tonight, she and her
teammates are wearing
Glendale’s home whites with
maroon and gold trim.
Oganyan sports black an-
kle-high socks under black
sneakers, and her dark
brown hair is pulled back in a
long ponytail. Aside from be-
ing the shortest player on
the team, she fits.
Watch closely and you
can pick out which of the
Lady Vaqs grew up during
the Reagan administration.
The daughter of Armenian
immigrants, Oganyan is the
lone Glendale player who
puts her hand over her heart
during the national anthem.
Then there’s the way she
plays the game — with the
know-how of a veteran
coach.
“Thank you, Vicky
Oganyan!” the P.A. an-
nouncer bellows after she
steals the ball under the
Glendale basket and flings it
behind her back to Trieu for
a layup.
“Bingo!” he says minutes
later when Oganyan makes a
three-point shot.
“Way to sacrifice your
body, 4!” a man yells from the
stands after Oganyan sets a
pick and gets bulldozed,
sending her to the floor.
Oganyan would do any-
thing to win, and now, as a
player, she has reclaimed
control over her destiny af-
ter so frequently feeling
helpless as a coach. The 40-
year-old freshman doesn’t
take any of the 40 minutes
for granted. In this way, she
stands out too.
But, despite the bombast
of her athletic director’s pro-
nouncement, Oganyan’s
performance here is not
some kind of circus act — al-
though she has become an
elite juggler, seamlessly
moving between her job at
Burbank Burroughs High as
an anatomy and biology
teacher and her position as
the girls’ basketball coach
and her now-resumed role as
college student, taking 12 on-
line credits per semester to
be eligible to play for Glen-
dale.
“I’m like, do you have
three of you, three clones?”
says Lar Chouljian, mar-
veling at her longtime friend
from the bleachers.
Chouljian and Oganyan
grew up playing basketball
together in the annual Ar-
menian summer tourna-
ment, and while Chouljian
went to College of the Can-
yons to play basketball after
high school, Oganyan did
not follow that path.
“I always thought she
should be playing college
ball,” Chouljian says. “I
mean, she looks like she’s in
her prime now, but if she was
21, she might have gone even
further, you know?”
This game against Col-
lege of the Canyons is a rou-
tine whipping for the Lady
Vaqs, 71-48. The P.A. guy
alerts the crowd that Glen-
dale has set a school record
for wins with 23.
Afterward, Oganyan
rushes to her car and high-
tails it to Burroughs, where
her day started 12 hours ear-
lier with biology class. The
first round of the Southern
Section playoffs is the next
night, and this will be a cru-
cial practice for her girls.
::The front desk reception-
ist at Burroughs escorts a
visitor down the hallway
toward Oganyan’s class-
room.
“We are so lucky to have
such a phenomenal teacher
and coach,” Linda Rosen
says. “She doesn’t ask them
to do anything she wouldn’t
do.”
Oganyan wants her large
rectangular lab-style roomto represent who she is, so
one wall is lined with news-
paper clippings and photo
collages comprising her 16
Burroughs teams, the girls
who have given her a pur-
pose but no Southern Sec-
tion or state titles to this
point.
In 2011, Oganyan led Bur-
roughs to its first league
championship in 33 years,
and they won six in a row
from there.
Her biology and anatomy
students have no problem
dissecting Oganyan’s di-
vided brain.
To the right of her desk
hang two posters. One is of
Spud Webb, known for being
able to dunk a basketball de-
spite being just 5 feet 7.
The other is of Albert
Einstein, known for devel-
oping the theory of relativity.
There are street signs for
“Basketball Blvd.” and
“Science St.”
But, for as much as
Oganyan can teach her kids
about a medulla oblongata,
science is a means to an end.
Teaching keeps her young
and gives her a steady job so
that she has the freedom to
obsess about basketball.
She has a small hoop
hanging by her desk, and
sometimes, she will offer ex-
tra credit to students who
can make a shot after an-
swering a question. “Most of
my kids in these classes
can’t shoot, so they never
make it,” she says.
Oganyan wasn’t born
with a shooter’s touch either.
Her father, Vrej, taught her
to play chess, and she be-
came an advanced tactician
for her age. She played the
piano too. These activities
made sense to Vrej and
Vicky’s mother, Marina. Af-
ter all, they chose to leave
their positions as a music
school principal and doctor,respectively, in Yerevan, Ar-
menia, to give their eventual
children more opportunity
in America.
Sports were an after-
thought in the Oganyan
household, but, around 10
years old, Oganyan found
basketball.
“I was a Bulls fan,
Michael Jordan,” she says. “I
would watch every game,
then go downstairs and try
to imitate some of the
moves. We didn’t even have a
basket. We had a garage with
pipes and stuff, and I’d use a
tennis ball to try to dunk on
the pipes.”
To Vrej, it felt like in the
snap of a finger his little Vic-
toria was playing way less
chess.
“At the beginning, we
were telling her, ‘You like
basketball, but it’s not for
you,’ ” Vrej, 74, says. “She’s a
little short. Usually, basket-
ball players should be a little
longer. She’s telling us, ‘It’s
OK, I will play good and then
you can see that,’ and really
she played very nice.”
When the time came to
make a decision about col-
lege, Oganyan knew she
wanted to continue playing.
She would have to go to a
junior college, though, and
her parents wanted her at a
four-year university.
Vrej does not feel today
that he and Marina forced
her to attend Cal State
Northridge and give up
basketball. “To them it
might not feel like they gave
an ultimatum,” Oganyan
says, “but when they talk
about something, it is an ul-
timatum.”
Unable to play, other
than in the Armenian
league, she became an as-
sistant coach. By 24, she was
the head coach at Bur-
roughs. In 2016, she joined
Joel Weiss’ staff as an assist-ant at Glendale College too.
She got to recruit some of
the best prep players in the
area.
Tess Oakley-Stilson
played for a club team that
Oganyan coached, and
Oganyan wanted her at
Glendale.
“I was in that position
where I could either go to UC
San Diego and not play
basketball but go to a good
school that I wanted to go to,
or I could come here and
play basketball,” Oakley
Stilson recalls. “She told me
that she had the opportuni-
ty as well, and she chose to
just go to school and she
kind of let go of her basket-
ball dream, and that she
really regretted that.”
Oakley-Stilson chose to
play for the Lady Vaqs. A
sophomore now, she is con-
sidering playing for a bigger
school next year.
Oganyan was busy con-
vincing others to not make
the same mistake she felt
she had made. But what
about going back in time and
righting her own wrong? It
was always in her mind — a
“buzz in the brain,” she calls
it — that she had never used
her college eligibility. And,
now a part of Glendale prac-
tices and pickup games, she
could see that her skills were
still sharp.
Last summer, she began
to confide in friends that she
was thinking of playing.
Soon, she would tell Weiss
the good news: His top as-
sistant was now his point
guard.
::Oganyan’s days are
a three-change-of-clothes
blur, a constant-GPS-check-
ing challenge.
On this day, she will teach
all morning, host her Bur-
roughs team for a lunch inher classroom for a last-min-
ute film review, drive to
Glendale for practice and
weights, and then it’s 90 min-
utes at rush hour to Ventura
for a playoff game at St. Bon-
aventure High.
“She likes it too much,
basketball,” says Vrej, who
lost Marina to colon cancer
in 2006. “For her, that’s the
No. 1, everything coming af-
ter basketball. Sometimes I
tell her, ‘Where’s your per-
sonal life?’ She tells me,
‘That’s my personal life.’
What can I tell her?”
There is another exist-
ence out there. Career. Kids.
No basketball. The way
Oganyan sees it, why should
she have to choose that hus-
tle over this one? “I don’t feel
like following a specific soci-
etal expectation,” she says,
“like there’s only one right
way to do it. I think the way
you make yourself happy is
doing things that you love.”
Weiss realized Oganyan’s
passion for the game was
unique the moment he met
her. He has enjoyed coach-
ing her as a player this year,
but he sees her coaching ca-
reer as “limitless” because of
her natural way of relating to
young players.
As a point guard, she is
averaging 6.0 points, 6.6 re-
bounds and 3.8 assists in 32.7
minutes, but her impact
goes beyond numbers.
“I always feel so much
more secure when she’s on
the floor,” Oakley-Stilson
says.
::As Oakley-Stilson talks,
Oganyan is on the road to
Ventura, where she will take
Burroughs into battle.
The first half does not go
according to plan for Bur-
roughs, and Oganyan lays
into the girls in the locker
room during a six-minute
tirade. “Tomorrow, if you
lose, there is no more basket-
ball tomorrow!” she
screams. “There is no tired
right now.”
No more basketball to-
morrow is Oganyan’s great-
est fear. Her players find it in
themselves to play more like
their coach in the second
half, coming from behind to
win 51-48 in overtime.
Burroughs would go on to
win two more games, mak-
ing the Southern Section
semifinal and qualifying for
state for the first time in pro-
gram history. But the Indi-
ans would lose the last two
games they play, leaving
Oganyan gutted.
“Am I the only not-nor-
mal person who cares and is
depressed over losing?” she
writes in a text message. “I
still can’t live with knowing I
could have done a better job.
I’m not sure why I take it so
hard, but ever since I played
in high school losing made
me cry and losing big games
like this playing or coaching
just crush me.”
The weekend would
bring more heartbreak.
Glendale lost to Palomar
College, in the second round
of the state playoffs. But
maybe this year was only the
start of the dream. The hope
around the program is that
Oganyan will be a 41-year-old
sophomore.Student-athlete-coach is jumping through hoops
[Oganyan, from D1]
A BIOLOGY AND ANATOMYteacher at Burbank Burroughs High, Vicky Oganyan also coaches the girls’
basketball team and takes online classes at Glendale College, while coaching and playing point guard.Brian van der BrugLos Angeles Times‘I mean, she looks
like she’s in her
prime now, but if
she was 21, she
might have gone
even further, you
know?’
— Lar Chouljian,
a longtime friend
of Vicky OganyanRegional finals
Tuesday’s scores from Southern California
basketball regional championship games:
BOYS
Open
Sierra Canyon 63, Etiwanda 61
Division I
Ribet Acad. 45, Renaissance Acad. 31
Division II
St. Francis 53, Eastvale Roosevelt 44
Division III
Arroyo Grande 79, Burbank Providence 69
Division IV
Bakersfield Christian 57, Palisades 43
Division V
Eastside 53, Los Angeles Roosevelt 48
GIRLS
Open
La Jolla Country Day 59, Windward 48
Division I
Rosary 55, San Diego Cathedral 48
Division II
Palisades 51, Santa Monica 36
Division III
Paloma Valley 60, Peninsula 48
Division IV
Lancaster 46, Ontario Christian 36
Division V
E. Bakersfield 56, San Diego Madison 42