Boys Top 20: Rocklin coach Steve Taylor has 499 wins going into game against Granite Bay
Five hundred is a big number in coaching with few fortunate enough to win that many games.
There’s a small list of such achievers on the Sacramento-area basketball circuit because to win that many requires years of commitment, some good teams and some luck.
On the boys front, Mike Wall of Folsom won his 500th career game last season, some of it from his tenure at Foothill in north Sacramento and most of it as the Bulldogs leader, where he took over in 2006. Wall was not locally born or raised but has become a vital part of this region for his coaching prowess.
His top players include Jordan Ford, a two-time Bee Player of the Year who starred at Saint Mary’s in Moraga and is on the Sacramento Kings/Stockton Kings rosters. Wall also coached his son, the relentlessly driven Jared Wall, who didn’t mind going through a wall for his coach.
Folsom is Bee-ranked 10th and again contending for the Sierra Foothill League championship.
Joey Rollings has accumulated more than 600 wins, a good many of them as boys coach at Sheldon of the Elk Grove Unified School District, where he has directed defensive-minded juggernauts that have won a string of championships since taking the post in 2009. Rollings was raised in hockey-mad Canada, coached for years in Arizona and later coached the Sheldon girls team to a CIF Sac-Joaquin Section crown before filling up the trophy case with boys banners and honors. His boys team this winter is ranked fifth in the region and in pursuit of another Delta League championship.
Lindsey Ferrell has won more than 500 games as the girls and then boys coach at Burbank of the Metro League. His boys team is 4-0 in league, ranked 14th by The Bee, and hosts No. 2 Monterey Trail on Friday. Ferrell is a Grant High product who became a fixture at 3500 Florin Road — coaches and athletes like to remind exactly where their school is located.
And there’s Rocklin’s Steve Taylor. He is sitting on 499 victories as his Bee top-ranked Thunder head into Wednesday’s Sierra Foothill League clash at Granite Bay with a milestone hanging in the balance.
Thunder players play hard for their coach because they like the man, and they get a kick out of his superstitions, such as sticking to Jordan sneakers and a polo shirt all season despite years of a shirt-and-tie look on game day. Rocklin is 21-0, the best start in program history for the Placer County school that opened in 1992.
Taylor grew up in the region, a key cog for the 1980 Roseville Tigers team that won a CIF Northern California Division II championship, a year before the state tournament was introduced. His mentors were coaches Paul Greco and Paul Gonzalez. He and buddies used to ride their bikes through fields that are no longer there, replaced by Rocklin High.
Taylor will insist that it’s not the coaches that win all these games. It’s the players who set the screens, score the points, box out and grab the rebounds. True, but it is the coaches who put the pieces together.
Stark, White leads section in wins
The winningest coach in section history is Dean Stark of small-school Sacramento Waldorf. With a 15-5 start to the season, Stark has amassed nearly 700 victories, a lot of it in relative obscurity, since taking over the tucked-away campus in Fair Oaks as a 23-year old in 1987. He isn’t slowing down anytime soon, having reached another section final last season with the same ingredients of effort and fundamentals.
Steve White coached boys teams in southern California before he took over as the Oak Ridge girls coach 25 years ago. He has 667 victories, the most for any girls coach in section history. Oak Ridge is Bee-ranked third and plays at Folsom on Friday in a girls/boys doubleheader.
Other all-time winners
The all-time boys leader in victories in California is Gary McKnight of Mater Dei of Santa Ana, according to CalHi Sports. He has 1,262 wins since taking over in 1983.
The Northern California wins leader for boys is Don Lippi with 914, starting in 1980 when he was at St. Joseph of Alameda, where he ended his career a year ago after various stops.
Ken Green of St. Mary’s in Stockton has 663 wins. He started his coaching career at Lodi in 1992 and has been at St. Mary’s, his alma mater, since 2003.
Mark Wudel has 638 victories, and he’s still active, having led Vacaville from 1989-2003 and Wood of Vacaville since 2004.
THE BEE’S TOP 20
Boys
Records entering Tuesday
1. Rocklin (21-0)
2. Monterey Trail (17-1)
3. Sacramento (15-4)
4. Capital Christian (12-7)
5. Sheldon (11-8)
6. Jesuit (12-6)
7. Franklin (16-4)
8. Del Oro (16-5)
9. Placer (18-2)
10. Folsom (11-8)
11. Whitney (14-7)
12. Inderkum (11-6)
13. Woodcreek (15-5)
14. Burbank (15-5)
15. Grant (11-8)
16. Laguna Creek (11-9)
17. Oak Ridge (13-7)
18. Kennedy (13-7)
20. Vacaville (12-5)
19. Union Mine (19-2)
Bubble: Antelope (10-9), Christian Brothers (10-9), Cordova (8-7), Cosumnes Oaks (12-8), Ponderosa (10-9), Rio Americano (9-7), Twelve Bridges (14-4), Vacaville (12-5), West Park (13-6), Wood (10-9).
