Quietly and without fanfare, Los Alamitos girls basketball coach Maya De Anda reached the 100-win career milestone in this year’s first league game, a 28-20 defensive victory over Corona del Mar on January 6, before the Griffins subsequently finished the season with a 20-8 overall record, an 11-1 league record, and a fourth consecutive Sunset Conference league title.
“Honestly, I didn’t know that I had 100 wins,” said De Anda. “During league, I try to stay focused on the next game, but it’s pretty cool to look back at what we accomplished.”
By the end of the season, De Anda’s seventh at Los Alamitos, her career record stood at 110-70. However, when she first arrived, victories were hard to come by.
“Los Al had a successful basketball program before I got here,” De Anda said, “but in my first year here, before I even started coaching, the team’s best players either graduated, transferred, or stopped playing. The girls played hard, but that first year we were only 5-20.”
The Griffins soon started winning, and in De Anda’s fourth season, 2022-23, Los Alamitos won the first of four league titles, which included three seasons of 20 or more victories and one season with 19 wins. Her overall record during that time is 83-33, a 72 percent winning ratio.
Her record for league games in that span is even better, 31-5, an 86 percent winning ratio.
Before coaching the Griffins, De Anda was an assistant coach for two years (2017-2019) at Vanguard University, her alma mater. She also was an assistant coach for one season at Pacifica Christian High School in Newport Beach.
After coaching the Griffins to a second straight league title in 2024, De Anda was chosen that spring to be the All-Star Coach for the North Team in the 57th annual North vs. South 12-Grade-All-Star game.
De Anda says she was fortunate to play for outstanding coaches in high school and college and she says those experiences prepared her to be a head coach.
“As a point guard, I had to know all the plays for every position,” De Anda said, “so I learned a lot from two great coaches.”
De Anda played at Huntington Beach High for veteran coach Russ McClurg, who has over 530 career wins, three Runner Up CIF finishes, a Division-4 CIF championship (in 1999, when he coached Calvary Chapel), and seven Sunset Conference league championships.
At Vanguard University, De Anda played for NAIA Hall-of-Fame coach Russ Davis, who has over 700 victories, five Final Four NAIA finishes, an NAIA National Championship, and 13 Golden State Athletic Conference championships.
As a player in high school, De Anda earned three first-team-all-league awards and two All-CIF awards. As a senior, she also won her school’s Marine Corp Distinguished Athlete Award for averaging 13.5 points per game and helping the Oilers (26-6) win the Sunset League championship and make it to the CIF Southern Section Division 1A championship game. Besides playing point guard, the 5’9” De Anda also played shooting guard and at times played at all five positions.
At Vanguard, she was a three-year starter and played point guard, shooting guard, and small forward while leading the team in three-point shooting each year. As a senior, she was the team’s second leading scorer, averaging about 10 points a game and hitting 66 threes as the Lions went 30-4, won the Golden State Athletic Conference championship, and made it to the Final Four at the NAIA National Tournament.
De Anda said, “I tell my players that if we can play together, play smart, and give our best effort, we can be happy with the results.”
