It is impossible in the space provided to include all of the Orange County highlights from the 2023-24 high school sports year.

Here is some of it …

• Orange County’s most dominating athlete this year might have been Newport Harbor senior wrestler Duda Rodrigues. She went undefeated for the second year in a row, winning everything she could through the CIF State Championships, where she pinned all of her opponents to win the 155-pound title. Rodrigues competed in high school wrestling for only two years, having moved to Orange County from Brazil before her junior year. …

• Also dominating this year was Santa Margarita swimmer Teagan O’Dell, who might turn out to be Orange County’s best girls swimmer since Janet Evans at El Dorado in the 1980s. O’Dell, a junior, swam county-leading times in five events. At the CIF Southern Section Division 1 championships, O’Dell won the 200 individual medley in 1 minute, 53.63 seconds, just shy of the national-high school record (1:53.38) she set at the 2023 CIF State finals. …

• Another likely near-future Olympian was JSerra senior Ryder Dodd, who scored 103 goals this year although he missed a few games while leading Team USA in scoring at the Pan American Games. …

• Dodd was selected as the male athlete of the year by the Orange County Athletic Directors Association. OCADA named Ocean View senior Isis Salazar the girls athlete of the year. Salazar competed in five sports this year. Two years ago, she scored a touchdown as a running back on the Ocean View football team. …

• The best athletic event of the year might have been Mater Dei vs. Servite boys volleyball match on March 13 at Servite. Mater Dei won the first two sets, Servite won the next two sets. In the decisive fifth set, Servite and Mater Dei traded match-point chances before Mater Dei took the set for the victory, 25-18, 25-17, 24-26, 23-25, 23-21. …

• Servite’s 27-20 overtime win over Long Beach Poly in the CIF-SS Division 2 football playoffs was a dazzler, too. Servite could have won it in regulation but an extra-point attempt went awry, Poly missed a field goal on the final play of regulation, and overtime’s final play was a Poly fumble recovered by Servite’s Brandon Mosqueda. …

Servite wide receiver Devan Parker, left,, wide receiver Quinn Rosenkranz, center, and running back Quaid Carr, right, celebrate winning the CIF-SS Division 2 quarterfinal playoff against Long Beach Poly in Norwalk on Friday, November 10, 2023. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Contributing Photographer)

• Another great football game was Mission Viejo’s 34-28 triple-overtime win over Los Alamitos in a nonleague game in September. …

• The most impactful news of the 2023-24 school year relates to what’s coming for the 2024-25 school year and beyond: teams in most sports will be placed into CIF Southern Section playoff divisions according to that season’s regular-season performance. That’s how it’s has been done for football the last two seasons. Now other sports will do the same, using ratings compiled by MaxPreps.com and others. …

• The second-most impactful news of the school year also relates to what’s coming in 2024-25: new league structures were approved by county schools in October. Included is the construction of the Crestview League boys basketball group that includes Canyon (22-8 last season), Cypress (23-7), Foothill (21-9), La Habra (29-5) and Sonora (20-9). Those five teams were 36-6 in their leagues last season. …

• In his first year as Mater Dei’s football coach, Frank McManus led the Monarchs to CIF-SS and CIF State championships. In April, the school’s administration decided it did not like the manner in which McManus was doing his job. Mater Dei hired Raul Lara, who coached Long Beach Poly to five CIF-SS championships. …

Mater Dei head coach Frank McManus, left, reacts while preparing to present the trophy to quarterback Elijah Brown, center, after the 2023 CIF Open Division high school football state championship game against Serra Saturday, Dec. 9, 2023, in Mission Viejo, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

• Brea Olinda sophomore Julia Teven started the track and field season struggling to clear 4 feet, 6 inches in the high jump. She ended the season by clearing 5 feet, 7 inches to finish in third place at the CIF State meet. That’s some pretty good progress …

• Aliso Niguel sophomore Jaslene Massey was a formidable middle blocker on the school’s girls volleyball team during the fall and this spring finished third in the shot put at the CIF State meet. She also is adept in the high jump and the long jump, and just might become a fine heptathlete some day. …

• Schools like Aliso Niguel, Mission Viejo and Trabuco Hills deserve applause for adding Unified track and field to their sports programs. Unified sports pair student-athletes with intellectual disabilities with a partner who is a student-athlete who does not have intellectual disabilities to form a tandem for competition. The CIF State Track and Field Championships this past season again included unified competition. …

• Corona del Mar senior Niels Hoffman won the CIF-SS tennis individual championship, becoming only the fourth county player to win consecutive CIF-SS boys individual titles in the sport. The CIF Southern Section has held boys tennis championships since 1922. …

Corona del Mar’s Niels Hoffmann, left, stands with runner-up Tyler Lee of Beckman after capturing his second consecutive CIF-SS singles title Thursday in Claremont. (Photo by Dan Albano, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• Trabuco Hills junior Holly Barker ran the second-fastest 3,200 meters in Orange County history. Her time of 10 minutes, 2.52 seconds at the Arcadia Invitational was the eighth-best time in the nation this school year. She was the county girls cross country athlete of the year in the fall. …

• Dana Hills junior Evan Noonan was Orange County’s only first-place finisher in an individual event at the CIF State Track and Field Championships where he won the 3,200 in 8:43.12. It was the third-best time in that event in county history. He is behind only 1970s greats Eric Hulst of Laguna Beach and Ralph Serna of Loara, and their respective times of 8:41.60 and 8:42.90 are converted from yards to meters. Noonan was the county boys cross country athlete of the year for the ‘23 season. …

• Fountain Valley’s boys wrestling program, led by county wrestler of the year Ryland Whitworth, won a CIF-SS individual tournament team championship for the second year in a row and for the fourth time in five years. With several non-seniors on this year’s team, including Hunter Jauregui and Chris Qureshi, it looks like Barons wrestling will be in good shape next year, too. …

• Girls flag football took off in its first year as an official CIF-SS sport. The sport has grown enough so that it will have CIF-SS championships next season. Newport Harbor, led by junior quarterback Maia Helmar, went 25-1. …

• Kevin Kiernan announced his resignation as girls basketball coach at Mater Dei. He coached the Monarchs to six CIF-SS championships and three state championships. Kiernan, one of the all-time great people in county sports, remains at Mater Dei as athletic director. Including his years at La Quinta and Troy, he is the state’s all–time leader in girls basketball coaching victories with 900. …

• Eric Borba resigned after 16 seasons as Orange Lutheran’s baseball coach. And what a way to go out. Orange Lutheran beat La Mirada in the CIF Southern California Regional Division I championship game. Borba’s teams had won some big tournaments, including three National High School Invitational championships, but had not won a championship that had the initials “CIF” on it until this year. …

Orange Lutheran head coach Eric Borba holds the championship trophy after his team defeated Corona during the championship game of the PBR Spring Invitational at Hart Park in Orange on Friday, March 8, 2024. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• Longtime Loara boys basketball coach Ed Prange died in November at age 59 of a heart attack. He was an excellent and dedicated coach, and one of the nicer people to coach the game. …

• Rich Boyce resigned as boys basketball coach at Edison. There was no smarter basketball coach in the county. …

• After 20 years of trying, JSerra boys basketball beat Mater Dei for the first time, 68-62 on Jan. 24, as senior guard Aidan Fowler scored 36 points for the Lions. …

• After the boys basketball season ended, Brandon Benjamin transferred back to Canyon after spending one season at Mater Dei. Benjamin, who will be a senior next year, was the county boys basketball player of the year at Canyon in 2022-23.

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