SoCalHoops High School News

High School Team Preview:
Rancho Alamitos HS--(Nov. 26, 1999)

Rancho Alamitos High School  is located in the City of Garden Grove and is part of the Garden Grove Unified School District.  The school has an enrollment of 1650 students, which would place it in Division II-A or II-AA (depending on whether current enrollment figures are used this year) for purposes of playoffs.   The Vaqueros have been picked by the Orange County Register in it's preseason league preview to finish fifth in the Garden Grove league, right where they finished last season.  This season, the Register has picked Bolsa Grande, Pacifica, Los Amigos, and Santiago, in that order to finish ahead of them, and only La Quinta and Garden Grove are picked to finish lower. 

This team preview, like the rest of the Garden Grove League team previews, is admittedly short in length, and it's also short on much analysis or substance when it comes to the players listed on each team's roster.  We have not spoken with third year head coach Dave Kirksey, since, as we've said many times before, we simply don't have the resources to physically speak with every single coach of every team in the Southern Section prior to the start of the season in order to get these previews out before play starts.  There are more than 500 schools in the Southern Section alone, and we just can't talk to everyone.  We'll continue to do previews and issue updates on teams during the season, but for now this will have to do.  Thankfully though, even if it's not much, we still rely greatly for information on teams like Rancho Alamitos on the traditional media, such as the LA Times and the Orange County Register.  The information in this short preview came mostly from the Orange County Register preview of the team published on November 25, 1999, which was compiled by Curtis Zupke,  and on information contained in the Times preview articles published on November 23 in the OC Edition of the Times as compiled by Paul McLeod and Peter Yoon. And while it's not much, it's all we've got.

Third year coach Dave Kirksey, who has compiled a won-loss record of 13-42, has probably gotten used to losing more games than winning, to the extent anyone ever gets "used" to losing.  Overall last season, the team finished 10-16, and only 3-9 in league, and frankly, we're not exactly clear about why the Register picked the team to finish as low as this year as they have, because the Vaqueros do return three starters, and have more depth overall than they did last year.  Still, they lost Willie Montgomery to Bolsa Grande, and that will make it difficult for them to generate offense because he was their leading scorer. But they'll still do alright. Here's what the LA Times wrote in it's preview of the team in the Nov. 23 Orange County Edition of the paper: "Despite the transfer of Willie Montgomery to Bolsa Grande, the Vaqueros have good depth. They return senior starting guards Omar Pryce (nine points, five rebounds) and Cuby Vantich (12 points, four assists) and junior forward Duane Nix (five points, six rebounds). Guards Paul Seyler, Nick Le and forward Dien Nguyen, all seniors, are returning lettermen.  Again, neither paper published the entire rosters, but here's what we know:

The season gets underway next week, and they've got the usual round of preseason tournaments, not overly tough, and in fact they'll face some Division IV and V teams at the Valley Christian Tournament, but will still have their hands full. Compared to the rest of the league, they actually have decent size, and might do better than many have predicted.  Here's a look at the season schedule for 1999-2000 for the Rancho Los Alamitos Vaqueros.

 
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