Pacifica Christian boys basketball coach Jeff Berokoff recalls that the school’s first team was somewhat inexperienced …
“One of our kids got the ball from the referee and instead of passing it inbounds he ran onto the court holding the ball.”
The Tritons program has come a long way, all the way to Sacramento to play in a CIF State championship game.
Pacifica Christian (27-9), a private school in Newport Beach with an enrollment of 279, will play San Joaquin Memorial (25-9) at Golden 1 Center on Saturday at 4 p.m. in the CIF State Division II final. Spectrum Sports will televise that game and all of the state basketball championship games live.
That first Tritons team in the 2015-16 season was, like the school’s enrollment in its first year of operation, made up of freshmen and sophomores. Berokoff was hired away from El Modena to take on the challenge of constructing a program from scratch.
David O’Neil, head of school since Pacifica Christian opened, recalled that interviews with job candidate Berokoff did not include much basketball discussion.
“We didn’t talk about Xs and Os,” O’Neil said. We talked about culture and about how best to work with kids.”
Pacifica Christian’s first game was a rough one.
“We lost to Tesoro by 89 or 90 points,” Berokoff said, “and Tesoro did not run up the score.”
The 2016-17 team was much better. Dominick Harris, a talented freshman, arrived and averaged 25 points a game. The Tritons went 24-5 and were placed in Division 6, the lowest division, for the CIF-SS playoffs and advanced to the championship game in which the Tritons lost to Carnegie of Riverside.
The next season Pacifica Christian made the playoffs again and lost in the Division 5AAA first round. After that school year Harris transferred to Rancho Christian, but his two years at Pacifica Christian made a difference.
“Dom committed to Gonzaga while he was with us and that helped spread the word about our school and our program,”…
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