Los Alamitos girls varsity basketball Head Coach Maya De Anda has been selected as the head coach for the 12th Grade All-Stars North team in the 57th annual “North vs. South” senior All-Star game to be played on April 27 at Cypress College.
Two of the 15 North all-stars will be De Anda’s own Los Alamitos players and co-MVPs of the Surf League: point guard Kayli Liew and center Kassidy Beach.
De Anda has been the basketball head coach and an English teacher at Los Alamitos for five years, and this season her team won its second consecutive Surf League championship, going undefeated in both Surf league (6-0) and Sunset Conference play (4-0), finishing with an overall 24-6 record, and making it to the second round of CIF playoffs in Division 2A.
For the All-Star game, De Anda selected as her assistant coaches Bianca Ziemann, head coach of Crean (19-7), Sara Brown, head coach of Canyon (23-12), and Ava Yale, her assistant coach at Los Alamitos.
“This is a great honor,” De Anda said. “It will be fun coaching all of these graduating all-stars from around north Orange County and working with these great coaches.”
Newly minted All Stars Beach (who has verbally committed to Westcliff University in Irvine) and Liew helped lead the Griffins to another league title this year, with Beach averaging 16 points and 9.3 rebounds and Liew averaging 14.7 points and 4.5 assists in six league contests.
For the full 30-game season, Liew averaged 12.1 points, 4.2 assists, and hit 45 threes while Beach averaged 12 points, 10.4 rebounds, and had 13 “double-double” games in which she had double figures in both points and rebounds.
The North and South All-Star rosters each have 15 players and are composed of top senior players from each league in the region. The April 27 event includes the girls game at 5 p.m. followed by the boys game at 7 p.m. It usually draws large crowds, including college scouts. The annual event is organized by the non-profit OCO Club and sponsored by Farmers and Merchants Bank.
Prior to coaching at Los Alamitos, De Anda was an assistant coach for two seasons at her alma mater Vanguard University in 2017-18 and 2018-19, where she had the honor to assist the late Lakers great Kobe Bryant in several coaching demonstrations of offensive sets that he presented to the Vanguard women’s basketball team.
“I learned a lot at Vanguard from Coach [Russ] Davis, and because I was an assistant coach there, I was able to be on the court with Kobe,” De Anda said. It was a great honor to learn from Kobe in person. He was such an influential supporter of women’s basketball.”
De Anda was a standout player at Vanguard from 2012 to 2017, playing for the NAIA- Hall-of-Fame coach Davis. A three-year starter, she played extensively at point guard and also shooting guard and led the Lions in three-point shooting in each of the three seasons. As a team captain in 2017, she was the team’s second leading scorer, hitting 66 threes at a 36% clip and averaging about 10 points per game as she helped lead the Lions to a 30-4 record, a Golden State Athletic Conference championship, and a deep run in the NAIA National Championship playoffs, making it to the Final Four.
In high school at Huntington Beach High, De Anda played for Coach Russ McClurg and was a versatile four-year starter and two-year captain playing mostly at shooting guard and point guard, but also at times playing all five positions. She earned three First-Team, All-Sunset-League awards and two All-CIF awards. In her senior season (2012), she was honored at her school with the Marine Corps Distinguished Athlete Award as she averaged 13.6 points per game to help the Oilers (26-6) win the Sunset League Championship and make it to the CIF 1A Southern Section Championship game.
A Scholar Athlete in high school and college, De Anda has Bachelor’s degrees in English and Psychology from Vanguard University, and a teaching credential in English and a Master’s degree in Coaching and Exercise Science from Concordia University.
“The senior all-star game is a special event,” said De Anda, “and we certainly want the all-stars to have fun, but we also want to win.”