Steve Pezzola led his Salesian Pride squad on quite a journey in 2013-14, and he’s our pick for North Coast Section Coach of the Year.

Sure, Pezzola had a bona fide star at his disposal in Mariya Moore. But whereas some coaches would ask her to score more and play her maximum minutes, Pezzola recognized that the team had to be a family first.

“We put ‘Open State Championship’ on the board,” says Pezzola. “I want them to own their actions, to be accountable to each other - if you practiced and played hard and took care of your teammates then there’s no regrets no matter the score or who wins and who loses.”

In January, the Pride lost at home to Bishop O’Dowd. The coach calls it a “watershed game.” Despite only losing by four, “we didn’t execute our game plan,” says Pezzola. “We had a team meeting (on the following Monday) and the girls would say, ‘We didn’t do that’ and saw what they did to catch up. If we played the same way we would lose some games, but the girls owned it, started fresh, and picked each other up.”

Pezzola played ball himself at Salesian and got into coaching early while being a lawyer by trade and pursuing a career in business consulting. After coaching his children’s teams, he joined the staff of St. Mary’s, where he was freshman coach for five years. He became the head coach at Salesian in 2009.

“We had three-hour practices twice a week that summer,” he recalls. “We made sure we had a culture change. If we ran the system right and worked hard, the wins would come."

With a fine 19-10, playoff-making year it “set the tone and other kids realized Salesian was a really good school.” The Pride was 10-14, 2-9 the year before.

Pezzola has seen an entire group go on a run that has seen a NCS Championship and three NorCal Championships. When asked to pick three words to describe his three best players, he said “facilitator, outstanding, and heart” for Mariya Moore; “improvement, focus, and strength” for Zoe Correal; and “defense, energy, and quickness” for Kian McNair.

McNair will be back for her senior season, but Moore and Correal - along with Deja Stallworth, Alana Horton, Taylor Crowder, and Isabell Ampon - are all set to graduate in a couple of months. Thinking about next year’s team, Pezzola said, "Kian will be a huge part of it. She and Minyon (Moore, Mariya’s younger sister) are both really gifted defensive players and stepped up offensively in the last part of the season. JulieAnne (Martin) is a really good shooter, and tenacious player.”

He expects Rayana Ross and Maya Williams (the latter was out all season with a torn ACL) to fill out the starting five. Moore is a once-in-a-generation talent, but Pezzola will get the most he can out of the roster, whatever it ends up being.

Also considered: Margaret Gartner, Carondelet; Mike Boles, Justin-Siena; Malik McCord, Bishop O'Dowd.

NOTE: We would like to thank our readers for all of the nominations you sent in for the season-ending NCS basketball awards. It is a daunting task to narrow down our selections to just the top few as we recognize there are lots of great players who make contributions on the court that are not necessarily well-documented but mean a great deal to the success of their teams. We salute all of the players that have made this a wonderful season of NCS basketball.