Greeting visitors and fans who enter into the Large Gym are lines of shelves containing trophies, banners and retired jerseys. On the wall, tables with names that date back to the 1970s fill leaderboards that proudly show athletic accomplishments at the school
Among them are most career points scored (‘79 grad Randy Arrillaga 1,954 for boys and ‘13 grad Hannah Johnson 1,105 for girls), most rebounds (‘05 grad Danny Wallace 1,017 for boys and Hannah Johnson 897 for girls) and countless other categories for both individual athletes and teams.
“It’s a nice thing for our program to take a look at its history and sets goals for people for new people to go up on the board,” said former girls’ basketball and current softball coach Mike Davey.
For senior shooting guard Kyle Yu, a captain of the varsity basketball team, the leaderboards serve as a form of motivation.
“I've always strived to get better and be on the leaderboard,” Yu said. “It makes me want to score more. Trying to score double digits every single game was my goal.”
Yu will graduate accomplishing exactly that; a top player on the team, he has managed to break top 12 in Falcon career points.
The basketball leaderboard was created four years ago, and other leaderboards followed, such as softball and track.
In order for Davey to put together the leaderboards, months of research was conducted using past yearbooks and school records. Despite the complexity of the project, Davey said that he was able to complete the task due to ample help along the way.
“It’s really hard to get all the information, and was a lot of luck,” Davey said. “Part of the good fortune I had was being in the basketball program for 25 years.”
A few years ago, Davey said, 2016 alumna Eleni Spirakis made the rebound board as a junior. Since she was also on pace to making the shooting record, Davey encouraged her to shoot more and not just rebound.
Football coach Tim Lugo said he is planning to do a leaderboard for football this year as well. Because he is in the process of compiling all the records of past teams, he hopes that the board can be finished by the start of next season.
“Just having a little bit of history in your program,” said Lugo of his goals. “Recognizing what people have done in the past, and having a little pride in what you have done too.”