When we look back at 2024, it will be remembered as one of the finest in Los Gatos sports history. Los Gatos High School tends to dominate the local sports chatter, but uber-talented athletes and teams from every age level and division—youth, college and professional—-turned in praise-worthy performances.
In no particular order, let’s take a look back at some of the biggest stories of the year.
Wildcats’ championship winter
There are only five sports teams in competition during the high school winter calendar, and four of Los Gatos High’s squads—boys and girls basketball, boys soccer and wrestling—won league championships.
And three of the five LGHS winter sports teams—boys basketball, girls soccer and wrestling—were crowned Central Coast Section champions. For the second straight season, the girls basketball team ran the table and went a perfect 12-0 in Santa Clara Valley Athletic League De Anza Division action.
Led by the trio of Ashley Childers, Nicole Steiner and Claire Galbo, the Wildcats won every De Anza Division contest by double digits and earned a coveted berth in the CCS Open Division tournament in February.
The boys basketball team won its third consecutive league title and followed that up with a 58-54 win over Menlo-Atherton High in the CCS Division I championship game. Scotty Brennan had 16 points and 10 rebounds and Nolan Koch scored 15 points as the Wildcats avenged a loss to the Bears in the season-opener.
LGHS also had shining moments on the pitch. The girls soccer team won the program’s sixth CCS title—but first since 2014—in a 2-1 overtime win over Piedmont Hills High. The dynamic Macie Yannoni—the shortest player on the field—scored on a header in the 94th minute for the game-winner.
Caitlyn Simons recorded assists on both goals, the first a textbook diagonal pass from the right flank to a hard-charging Darcy Armstrong, who scored in the 33rd minute. The boys soccer team won the SCVAL El Camino Division championship and advanced to the CCS D-II championship match.
The Wildcats’ semifinal victory over Menlo School was a game for the ages, with LGHS prevailing in a marathon penalty kick shootout, 12-11. The first half featured three ties, three lead changes, furious back and forth action, and physical play that resulted in the head referee issuing a half-dozen yellow cards.
Keegan Mctighe proved clutch by scoring the team’s final two goals, including one in the 91st minute. Goalkeeper Leon Sarashki made two acrobatic saves in the PK shootout that helped lead them to victory.
Meanwhile, the wrestling team punished opponents on the mat, going undefeated in the SCVAL De Anza before placing a program record 12 wrestlers in the CCS Masters Finals—and all 12 medaled (sixth place or better).
EJ Parco won the title at 150 pounds, while Antonio Rodriguez (120), Joseph Pavlov-Ramirez (126), Timmy Murabito (138) and Lucas Pannell (157) earned second-place finishes in their respective weight classes.
Despite the absence of Dylan Pile—the defending CCS Masters Finals champion at 160 pounds—the Wildcats still managed to top 200 points in the Championships for just the third time in program history, good enough for a runner-up finish in the team standings behind national powerhouse Gilroy High.
In the CIF State Championships, Parco placed third and Rodriguez fifth.
Brennan goes off, then stays home
The game of the year—at least on the hardwood—had to be the Wildcats’ riveting 82-80 win over Santa Teresa High in the CCS D-I boys hoops semifinals in February.
Brennan went off for a career-high 31 points in front of a standing-room only crowd at Sunnyvale’s Fremont High. The contest featured 10 ties and an incredible 22—yes, 22–lead changes, the last coming on Brennan’s driving layup in which he spun and juked a couple of defenders in the lane, drew a foul and hit the ensuing free throw to give the wildcats a 81-80 lead with 19.3 seconds remaining.
“Honestly, I kind of threw it up and it went in,” he said. “I threw up a prayer. … I was thinking, ‘I hope this goes in. I threw it up there and it went in. Thank God.”
Brennan’s tour de force performance was magnificent enough. However, the family’s decision to keep their house in Los Gatos so he could finish out his senior year at LGHS was an equally seismic moment.
That decision had to be made because in January Brennan’s dad, Brent, had accepted the position to become the new University of Arizona head football coach. With Scotty being able to finish out his senior year at LGHS, the football team returned a player who became its starting quarterback and the boys basketball team returned one of the best playmaking wings in the CCS.
The Big(ge) Show
Any time a local baseball product gets called up to the MLB—AKA, the Big Show—it’s headline worthy news.
Enter Hunter Bigge. The 2016 LGHS graduate made his Major League Baseball debut with the Chicago Cubs on July 9 at Baltimore, pitching a scoreless inning of relief. Reality was better than a dream for the 26-year-old Bigge, a burly 6-foot-1, 205-pound right-hander whose path to the Majors has involved enough twists and turns to fill a Stephen King novel.
For the season, Bigge was injured, promoted, recalled, traded and optioned on four separate occasions. He finished the season in the American League after being traded to the Tampa Bay Rays on July 28.
Bigge started the season in the Minors but received the news of a lifetime when he was summoned to Iowa Cubs Manager Marty Pevey’s office on July 6.
“The last time I was told to go to the manager’s office, I was being sent down to Double-A (early in the 2023 season),” said Bigge, who graduated from Harvard University in 2021.
However, Bigge’s initial trepidation quickly turned into calm assurance.
“I knew I was pitching well, and in the back of my mind I sensed I might get called up to the big leagues,” Bigge said. “I walked into his office and my heart was racing. He said, ‘Pack your bags, you’re going to play for the Chicago Cubs tomorrow.’ I had a big smile on my face for five minutes. Then I started crying. It was an emotional rush. I’ve been playing baseball my whole life and it’s been a dream of mine to play in the big leagues. I’ve been thinking about that moment since I was 10 years old, so it was kind of cool to have it happen. It didn’t feel real.”
Splaine is clutch
Tommy Splaine, a 2021 LGHS graduate, delivered a one-out single in the bottom of the ninth inning that clinched Arizona’s 4-3 win over USC in the Pac-12 Tournament championship game on May 25 in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Perhaps more impressive than Splaine’s hit itself was that the hardly broke sentence as he was dunked with not one but two Gatorade showers by his teammates during an on-field postgame interview that was nationally televised by ESPN.
“It means everything,” Splaine said on azdesertswarm.com. “I grew up an Arizona fan, diehard. Diehard Pac-12 fan. So this is a really big one for Arizona.”
Fin on world stage
Agata Fin, a 2024 LGHS graduate and current Cal Berkeley freshman, was a starting defender for Italy’s national team that advanced to the quarterfinals in the U20 World Lacrosse Women’s Championship Aug. 15-24 in Hong Kong.
A tournament-ending loss to eventual runner-up Canada on Aug. 21 did little to dampen Italy’s impressive breakthrough run, which included a second-place finish in Pool C.
“It was super exciting for us as an organization because we weren’t ranked coming in, and that was the first appearance for Italy in the U20 stage,” Fin said. “It was the furthest any Italian team had ever gotten. So, it was a really big deal.”
The best of the rest
In March, three teams from the Los Gatos Junior Basketball (NJB) program won national championships to cap a spectacular winter season.
Within the NJB’s top division, All Net, the Los Gatos fourth- and eighth-grade boys teams captured titles. The eighth-grade boys divisional team also won its respective national tournament championship.
May was a hugely successful month for LGHS sports. Karly Frangieh broke the school record in the girls 50-yard and 100 freestyle in the CCS Swimming Championships, notching automatic All-American qualifying times in the process.
She finished second in both events, clocking the 50 free in 23.40 seconds and the 100 free in 50.63 seconds. Notably, the previous LGHS recordholder in the 50 free was Karly’s older sister, Zoe, who is a standout on the Arizona State women’s water polo team.
The LGHS baseball team won a second straight SCVAL De Anza Division championship, winning the title on the final day of the regular-season with a 7-3 win over Los Altos High. Closer Anthony Andrews pitched 4 ⅓ innings of scoreless relief and Carter Johnstone went 2-for-3 with a two-run triple.
Meanwhile, the Los Gatos girls 4×400 meter relay team highlighted the Wildcats’ performance in the CCS Track and Field Championships. The team of Vanessa Leathem, Shea Elmore, Madison Kohli and Elise Greenstreet cruised—check that, blazed—to the finish in a personal-record of 3 minutes, 54.05 seconds, winning by three-plus seconds. Kohli also took third in the open 400 meters in a PR of 55.99 seconds to qualify for State in that event.
The boys lacrosse team limped into the CCS playoffs but finished strong, beating Palo Alto 12-10 to win the D-II championship. Jack Baldwin scored four goals, Luke Goddard and Zach Gouldrup had three goals apiece and Cullen Wood finished with two scores to help clinch the Wildcats’ first title in program history. Zach Otoupal, the two-time PCAL Gabilan Division Defensive Player of the Year, collected 13 ground balls and added two assists, while goalie Carter Paradice had 11 saves.
In June, the Los Gatos Rowing Club—led by Director Jaime Velez—continued to flex its muscle as a national powerhouse. In June, they sent a club-record 14 boats and 59 athletes to the National Championships in Sarasota, Fla.
In July and August, the Los Gatos Little League Junior All Star team’s remarkable season came to an end in the NorCal State Tournament. The core nucleus, which had been together since they were 8-years-old, were playing in NorCals for the fourth consecutive season.
They also reached this stage as under-11 All Stars, U12 Majors and U13 Intermediate, accumulating seven banners in the process. Hence, they affectionately became known as the Banner Boys.
In August, Monte Sereno native Nikki Dzurko watched from the stands as her U.S. Artistic Swimming teammates won a silver medal in the Paris Olympic Games. Even though Dzurko didn’t get to compete in the Olympics, she was instrumental in helping the U.S. team place in February’s World Championships in Doha, Qatar. Dzurko competed in the acrobatic routine, helping the U.S. earn one of two bronze medals in the event—the other came in the free routine—and secure a berth in the Olympic Games.
Meanwhile, history was made in the recently completed fall prep season which saw the debut of the LGHS girls flag football team. The Wildcats went 24-2 overall and 8-1 in the SCVAL, sharing the championship with Milpitas and Santa Clara.
In November, Wildcats’ distance ace Aydon Stefanopoulos nailed a personal-record of 14:51.8 to win his first CCS Cross Country Championship at the venerable 2.95-mile Crystal Springs course in Belmont. Stefanopoulos passed Piedmont Hill’s Yosef Berhan in the final 400 meters to win by 3.7 seconds in the boys D-II race, establishing the fourth fastest overall time of the day among all five divisions.
That’s 500-plus competitors, for those counting. On the hardwood, the LGHS girls volleyball team—the No. 15 seed in the CIF NorCal State Division I playoffs—stunned No. 2 seed Clovis West in four sets. Game scores were 25-18, 27-25, 22-25, 26-24.
Also in November, the LGHS football team made a stirring run in the CCS D-I playoffs before falling to St. Francis in the championship game, 27-7. To get to the final, the Wildcats had to best two other vaunted West Catholic Athletic League teams—Serra High and Riordan High—and did so in thrilling fashion.
