No. 1: Lady Trojans are state champs

Fueled with heart, driven by hope, achieved through hustle

Tasked with a daunting challenge, far from home and against a formidable opponent, the Oak Ridge High girls basketball team defied the odds last March to defeat Long Beach Poly at Bakersfield's Rabobank Arena and win the CIF state championship.

In doing so, the Lady Trojans joined the 2005 boys team in the school's history book. The boys team downed Santa Ana's Mater Dei for the Division II championship.

Even more impressive — the Lady Trojans  won in unchartered territory at the Division I level and unseated a Jackrabbit team that had won the previous four state championships.

Coming in, the pundits gave the Trojan girls little or no chance but in the end, Oak Ridge didn't just edge Poly it won convincingly 55-42 — the fourth quarter an endless parade of Trojans shooting free throws with the outcome all but decided.

"Poly is a great team — bigger, faster and stronger than us so we really had to keep our poise," Oak Ridge coach Steve White said at the post game press conference.

"We came in confident because everyone we've been playing has been a little better version than the team before so we had a game plan and knew the girls were very capable and could make adjustments. It was in believing we could do it ... these girls are very resilient and don't get rattled much."

After a scare in a close 42-38 section playoff win over Franklin at the Spanos center in Stockton, Troy's "Road to State" picked up steam at Arco Arena in a 64-50 win over two-time defending champ Kennedy for the D-1 section banner.

From there, Oak Ridge nipped Deer Valley in the Northern California Tournament opener on a basket with four seconds left and returned to Arco to upend favored Berkeley 52-42 in the finals to earn the trip south to Bakersfield. Last year, the El Dorado Hills team bowed out after a NorCal finals loss.

At Rabobank, the Trojans fell behind by seven points in the first quarter but battled back behind their leader, Sara James, who took over with 20 first-half points to get Oak Ridge back in it and lead 29-23 at the break.

Collapsing the defense in the middle, Troy forced Poly to the perimeter for repeated blanks. James, who is now a Cardinal on Stanford University's national runner-up team, finished with 26 points while Dakota McLarnan added 14 and tied a state finals record with four, three-pointers. Oak Ridge closed out the Jackrabbits with a 15-2 game-ending run.

The Trojans went 32-3 on the season. After James and McLarnan, the team had season-long contributions from Caitlin Welsch, Natalie Stone, Carly Bettencourt, Megan Griswold, Stefanie Walberg and Kristen Ramona.