Year-end countdown to showcase Orange Belt's best

So now that all six All-Star games are over, we can officially close the book on the Orange Belt sports year.

But it surely had its moments.

Just by the sheer numbers, this region showed its talent to the rest of the Valley.

Fifteen teams won league championships, 11 players notched league MVPs, four teams were Valley runner-ups and two earned championships.

In the individual sports, athletes like Katie Fry, Kris Kennel, Micky Phanthavong and several others matched their skills against California’s best. And in a state where they don’t break up their championships into divisions with athletes from similar-sized schools, that’s saying something.

Porterville sported a region-high seven league champions. Both its tennis teams went undefeated with the boys earning their sixth straight title and the girls grabbing their crown back from Monache.

No Porterville team was able to get a Valley title, but the boys’ golf and girls’ basketball teams made valiant efforts. 

Both Panther teams ended their seasons south of LA, with the girls’ basketball team lost to Irvine’s Woodbridge squad in the Division III state playoffs while the Panther golf sextet’s amazingly long run concluded in Murietta.

Monache didn’t fare as well as its rivals did in the regular season, notching just one league title, but its boys’ water polo team came through when it counted, winning its third Valley crown in four years.

Marc Wolfe and Kimber Methvin both ran away with EYL MVP honors and Methvin parlayed her success into a D-I scholarship at San Jose State.

The Monache-Porterville rivalry was the best high school rivalry I’ve seen in my young career. Every game was well-attended — the girls’ basketball games were both better attended than all of the playoff games the Panthers played in — and in most cases, the two teams were evenly matched.

Well except for in the second half of the Granite Bowl where the Panther football team exacted nine years worth of frustration out on its rivals, winning 50-26.  

Two games in particular stood out and both involved a lot of the same people.

In January, the younger Marauders girls’ basketball team pushed the senior-led Panthers to the brink and even led by 13 points in the third quarter. But Alex Shew, in the first of her virtuoso games, spent much of the second half at the free-throw line and got her team back into it. 

Noel Garcia hit the apparent game-winning free throws in the final 10 seconds, but in what got this game to classic status, Beth Reed did her Alex Shew impression, forcing Porterville to foul and sent the game to overtime. The Panthers would outlast the depleted Marauders in OT and carried that momentum to the Valley finals. 

Four months later, Chandra Jones, who was one of the Marauders who didn’t foul out in the basketball game, and the Monache softball team got revenge, overcoming a 7-1 deficit to win 8-7 on Porterville’s senior day. 

Jones scored the winning run in the ninth inning, but Jade (sorry I called you Jane on multiple occasions) Genoud’s single got Katelyn Ogas to third base for a chance to send it into a 10th inning. But Monache survived and preserved its comeback in the best softball game I’ve ever seen.

Up north, the OB’s resident volleyball dynasty got its fifth title in seven years. Alana Montgomery’s bunch pasted Tehachapi in the Division III finals, capping a dominant playoff stretch that saw the Monarchs outscore their opponents 9-0. 

Porterville College volleyball coach Dale Henderson is probably salivating over getting two key members of that team — Sabina Lopez and Evan Dillon — to line up with Olga Velasquez and Laura Lopez on next year’s Pirate squad.

Exeter’s football team wasn’t too bad either, starting the season 9-0 behind Nevada University-bound running back Cameron Loeffler.

While the Monarchs and Marauders had teams reach the summit, the most consistent school was probably Lindsay. 

They had sort of a renaissance year that ended with three ESL titles, five league MVP awards and a sophomore (Diego Medina) accepting a soccer scholarship from Massachusetts private school Northfield Mount Hermon. 

To properly honor the best the Orange Belt had to offer this year, Jason and I got together and came up with two lists: the top 10 players and teams from the 2008-2009 seasons. 

So starting next week, we’ll show you which players we thought were most important to their teams and which teams were a cut above the rest.

It was a very long conversation that encompassed every sport, but we felt these athletes deserved the time.