On the basketball court this past season, Sabrina Ionescu answered the bell like a boxer, dazzled like a performer on a high-wire act, and deconstructed defenses with the fluidity of a jazz musician. And if her numbers — 28.5 points, 9.7 assists, 8.3 rebounds, and 5.5 steals per game — don’t speak volumes, certainly the most recent pieces of hardware do: the MaxPreps National Player of the Year, and the Gatorade State Player of the Year. Throw in a 2016 NorCal championship, three NCS titles, a pair of Olympic medals, and the distinction of a top-five national prospect, and it’s no wonder a few lucky colleges are all waiting with baited breath for her collegiate decision.

But Ionescu doesn’t glow in all the accolades or seek out the national attention. It’s not that she’s unappreciative; as she acknowledges, “I don’t pay much attention to any of the awards, but any award is an award and I’m grateful for that.” It’s that she has only one goal: to see a “W” on the scoreboard. As a result, she has added one more award to her collection: Prep2Prep North Coast Section Player of the Year.

Ionescu was destined for basketball. Her brother nine years her senior played, which gave Ionescu the chance to play regularly with bigger, faster, and better players. Though it was fairly simple from there.

“I watched a lot of it, I enjoyed playing it, I played a lot, then I’m here now,” she says.

As far as basketball goes, she drew inspiration from multiple athletes.

“I just watched the game itself,” Ionescu says. “I learned a little from every one of them. I took different techniques from a variety of players.”

She also has a twin brother, Eddy, who’s made his own mark for the Miramonte boys.

Ionescu says her favorite part of the game is passing, and anyone who saw a few Miramonte games this season would understand. She’ll do whatever it takes to win. If she starts off with a little cold shooting, she’ll find her teammates for open 3-pointers and on cuts to the basket. If she’s shooting well, she’ll put up strings of shots from beyond the arc, on drives to the hoop, and on jumpers in between. She’s adept at drawing fouls, and converts them at a very high rate. In other words, she’s a huge asset if she’s on your team and a nightmare to guard if she’s not.

The Mats went undefeated up until the State Championship final versus Chaminade. Many elite teams fell victim along the way, and Ionescu says that in the regular season the three that stick out are Pinewood, Salesian, and SoCal giant Mater Dei. And though the postseason no doubt brought a higher intensity, for the most part Miramonte remained a steady ship.

“We didn’t change no matter what we were going into,” Ionescu says. “Our demeanor stayed the same.”

Ionescu graduates along with Keanna Delos Santos, Uriah Howard, and Jessie Wilson.

“We all played together for a long time,” Ionescu says. “(But) once you really understand the offense that we run, you’ll find that player whether you’ve played with them for 10 years or if you’ve played with them for one.”

One of Ionescu’s biggest cheerleaders is her coach, Kelly Sopak. He’s coached her since she was in fourth or fifth grade and she credits him as being “a mentor, a fatherly figure.” While Sopak experienced success before he came to Miramonte, at Northgate; before Ionescu’s arrival to the roster; and will continue to do so in the coming years, he knows what a special ride it’s been.

“It’s been a journey to say the least,” Sopak told Prep2Prep last month. “There has not been a day that has gone by in the last three years where I have not had some conversation to, for, or about Sabrina Ionescu.”

“He helps us grow as individuals collectively and on and off the court,” Ionescu says. “Once you have a connection like that it can’t be taken away.”

Castro Valley just had its best season in school history, and one man couldn’t be prouder of the girls who made that happen. That man is Jim Lemmon, the coach.

Now with nine years under his belt, the journey has not always been smooth. In 2012-13, the Trojans won just five games. Since then, Lemmon and company have steadily gotten better, winning 17 the following season and 24 last year. There may have been question marks coming as two key seniors graduated in 2015, but then over the summer Lemmon was at an airport when he received a most welcome surprise. He saw Nina Bessolo and her mom. And there he received the news that Bessolo, one of NorCal’s top players, was transferring from Valley Christian-Dublin to Castro Valley.

“I looked it up,” Lemmon says. “We were elated when we found out.”

Bessolo, Giana Wright, and Bailey Jones turned out to be just the key pieces that Lemmon needed to turn a very good team into a NCS Division I title-winning team. As a result of the team's success, Lemmon is the Prep2Prep North Coast Section Coach of the Year.

“Our talent level increased, our depth increased,” Lemmon says. “We worked hard in the offseason to improve our play.”

Castro Valley lost to Pittsburg in December, then to Bishop O’Dowd on January 13, and then the Trojans went on a tear that didn’t end until the NorCal Championship game against St. Francis-Sacramento.

Lemmon believed that the program was “trending up” even before Bessolo suited up for her first game, in January’s league opener. He calls Wright his “glue girl,” and she was especially important this year since the team didn’t have a true post following the 2015 graduation of Jenna Sparks.

“Whatever it takes to win is what she wants to do,” says Lemmon. “She can score more than she does, and she does more than the statistics show that impact the game in a favorable way.”

With Wright in place to attack the boards and do the little things, and Bessolo on the wing to frustrate defenses and hit shots from all over the court, the Trojans needed their promising young point guard to step up.

“She spent last summer working on her perimeter game,” Lemmon notes. “She’s helping create the winning environment that we want.”

With exciting speed and passing ability, and the tendency to go on scoring streaks, Jones gave the Trojans an offensive weapon that was hard to stop most nights. And just as Wright helped make up for the graduation of Sparks, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder in 2014-15, Jones assuaged the loss of Elena Woo.

“We coach them hard, very direct,” Lemmon says. “But we also have individual conversations all the time. We want them to understand how we feel about them as kids and people. You can’t treat them all the same, you’ve got to figure out which makes each kid go, which is probably the biggest challenge of all.”

It’s a challenge that Lemmon and his staff took to heart, and succeeded with. His assistants, like himself, come from a law enforcement background. Lemmon began coaching his own children in CYO and AAU, settled well into the community, helped out the varsity program, and was eventually named head coach.

With postseason now firmly in the rear-view mirror, Lemmon and his staff are about to prepare the girls in skill work and conditioning. The team’s success has already produced good things for next year and beyond: Castro Valley recently made a deal with Salesian to play a Foundation Game. But ultimately, Lemmon looks beyond the hardwood.

“What we want them to take away from this is to compete in the right way,” Lemmon says. “Right now it’s school, basketball, and academics. Later it will be jobs, relationships, and anything else they get involved in.”

Lemmon also aims for compliments from other coaches: “If another coach says ‘It’s unbelievable how awesome your kids play’ that’s the compliment we want.”

He recalls a time during summer league last year when he was trying to get Jack Kennedy to come help coach.

“I told him, ‘Jack, I think this team has a chance to win state.’ He said ‘Is this everybody?’ We were able to talk him into helping out.”

Whatever happens next season, Lemmon believes that this season’s success will spark something in the girls.

“Now that they’ve experienced winning, I think they’re hungry,” Lemmon says. “We want to show it wasn’t just a one-year thing.”

Minyon Moore

Myah Pace

Haley Van Dyke

Angel Jackson

Nina Bessolo

Uriah Howard

Sabrina Ionescu

Minyon Moore

Myah Pace

Keanna Delos Santos

Ny’Dajah Jackson

Haley Van Dyke

Mylah Andrada

Vanessa Cruz

Lesila Finau

Carolyn Gill