Rivals, Neighbors, Friends: One Night in Atherton

By Vytas Mazeika — Bay Area News Group
Menlo School and Sacred Heart Prep Share Unique Rivalry on Valparaiso Avenue
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ATHERTON — For De’Jeane Stine, the spirited rivalry between Atherton neighbors Menlo School and Sacred Heart Prep has played out as a tug-of-war for four years.

Tuesday night’s matchup at SHP, though, held special significance for the senior on Menlo’s girls basketball team.

“I’ve heard about this game all week in my household,” said Stine, whose younger sister Denise is a freshman at Sacred Heart. “It means more to me because my sister is there and we’re always about the ruling of Valparaiso.”

Separated by less than half a mile on Valparaiso Avenue, there is a unique quality to each clash between the Gators and the Knights.

It’s not like Giants-Dodgers, or even crosstown rivals Palo Alto and Gunn, which are located 4 miles apart.

“It’s always fun to play in a real rivalry,” said Menlo athletic director Kris Weems, who played men’s basketball at Stanford in the late 1990s and used the NBA power struggle between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors to emphasize his point. “LeBron (James) and Draymond (Green) are talking about is it a rivalry, is it not? This has to be, because we’re right down the street, all the kids grew up with each other. I think they have a healthy amount of respect for each other. I know the coaching staffs do across the board, so it’s just fun to beat your next-door neighbor in competition.”

Frank Rodriguez, assistant principal of athletics at Sacred Heart Prep, has learned a thing or two about the rivalry over the past decade.

“The kids all know each other — that’s a big deal,” Rodriguez said. “I think it’s a very friendly and respectful rivalry, and that’s what makes it special. Even though everybody wants to win, at the end of the game kids are shaking hands, hugging each other. It’s good stuff.

“And being down the street from each other adds that whole other element to it,” he added. “If you hang around the game, you’ll see, regardless of who wins, all these kids will be talking to each other. It’s a very passionate, enthusiastic rivalry, but everything is left on the floor or on the field. And I don’t think it gets any
better.”

Community Feel

John Paye grew up in this rivalry, playing football, basketball and baseball at Menlo before graduating in 1983.

He went on to play football and baseball at Stanford, before returning to coach younger sister Kate to three CIF state girls basketball titles.

Paye hasn’t lost to the Gators since 2013 during his second stint with the Knights, which means neither of his two seniors have tasted defeat — Stine, who clinched Tuesday’s 69-65 “road” victory with a steal plus two free throws, and point guard Sam Erisman, who accounted for 34 points and the go-ahead bucket on a baseline drive with 11.2 seconds left.

“For me, the biggest thing is that we’ve never lost,” Erisman said. “That’s what kept me going.”

But the final score didn’t tell the whole story.

It was more about the frenzied crowd that continued to stream into the stands, with parents seated across from both student sections, which were of the standing-room only variety.

“That was a real neat high school girls basketball game here in Atherton,” Paye said. “Growing up here, my sister Kate went through here, so that was a neat environment. So I congratulate Sacred Heart. It was a shame someone had to lose that game.”

“Kudos to both fans for coming out and supporting a girls game and bringing that kind of energy,” said SHP girls basketball coach Melanie Murphy, who also played basketball at Stanford. “That’s part of what makes basketball fun.”

Murphy was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., and reached the Final Four in each of her four seasons with the Cardinal, twice finishing as the NCAA runner-up.

This is her third year at the helm of the Gators, and the gravity of what’s at stake clearly dawns on her.

“It’s obviously a big game for the community — for us and for them,” Murphy said. “We’re right next door, so I think the rivalry is huge. And to be on the losing end of that, obviously it stings.”

It was the first taste for SHP freshman Charlotte Levison, a 5-foot-10 point guard who finished with a team-high 20 points in the loss, including four 3-pointers.

“This is my first time, so I didn’t really know what to expect,” Levison said. “But a lot of people came out, so it was really fun.”

Valpo Bowl

SHP football coach Pete Lavorato, who also acts as a girls basketball assistant, has witnessed these duels for 14 years.

The authenticity of the passion involved tends to come down to one factor — geography.

“That’s obvious, we’re neighbors,” Lavorato said. “I think all the kids know each other from growing up in the same neighborhood, maybe the same Pop Warner teams or youth basketball teams. And then they make their choices. Families know each other and that’s a big part of it. And we’re very similar in terms of the types of schools we are — smaller, private schools.

“I think we have a rivalry with M-A or public schools, but all the variables are there to have an unbelievable rivalry.”

The football rivalry often plays out at a neutral site. It’s named the Valpo Bowl, and it’s a date circled on the calendars of anyone who attends either school.

“Sometimes the dynamic changes,” Lavorato said. “Maybe they’re favored, maybe sometimes we’re favored, but really, honestly, I’ve found that in football anyway, it doesn’t matter who’s favored. It’s just that one game.”

Bragging rights matter, but at the same time it’s important not to define one’s season on the outcome between neighbors.

“We have to always encourage our kids to be really careful that you don’t measure your season on just beating one team,” Weems said. “You measure it by how much better you got over the course of the season, and then beating that rival makes it even better.”

Streak Ends

Menlo boys basketball coach Keith Larsen learned all he needed to know about rivalries as a member of the West Catholic Athletic League.

Or so he thought.

“I’m a Serra guy, so we went against S.I. [St. Ignatius] and against St. Francis and we knew how important that rivalry was — but we didn’t really know them,” Larsen said. “When you are two blocks away, you grow up with these guys, you go to school with these guys, you do stuff with these guys. So it’s more of a rivalry because they know each other so much, so I’m starting kind of get a feel for it.”

In his previous five tries, Larsen came up short against the Gators.

That streak came to an end Tuesday night, as the Knights reclaimed superiority with a 62-45 triumph.

“We knew this was our defining game for the first half of this league season, and we were so ready to play,” said Menlo junior Riley Woodson, a 6-6 forward who pounded his way to 26 points and 14 rebounds. “And it’s great. The guys are extremely happy that we could get coach’s first Menlo-SHP win.”

The moment proved a little too big for the Gators, who have only two seniors on the roster.

“I think playing in front of all your friends and family, that should be fun for everyone,” SHP boys basketball coach Tony Martinelli said. “I told the guys this is why you play high school basketball — it’s nights like this. We just didn’t answer the bell, and that’s the frustrating part about it.”

Sportsmanship

The exclamation mark came midway through the third quarter, when Woodson grabbed a rebound, dribbled end-to-end and finished with a one-handed flush to open a 20-point lead as the crowd turned delirious.

It was his second dunk in a matter of less than a minute, but when he went up for another slam with 1:50 left in the game a hard foul brought Woodson crashing to the floor — a particularly scary sight, considering he sat out last season for precautionary reasons after suffering a stress fracture in his back.

Initially ruled a flagrant foul, the referees conferred and agreed to call it of the personal variety.

“Next, when I’m shooting the free throws, at least three (SHP) guys came up and said, ‘Nice job, sorry about that,’ ” Woodson said. “The guy even came up and apologized, and that just made my day. The game was great, but just seeing that even though we’re rivals, that we can still respect each other. I feel like we just go out there and play basketball.”

“The rivalry part of it, that’s all between the lines,” Martinelli said. “But in the big picture of all this, outside of basketball, these guys see each other out socially and they all live in the same area, so there is no animosity that way. The respect goes both ways.”

“Not a lot of trash talking before or after the game on social media,” Rodriguez said. “It’s just the kids coming out to play, and it’s kind of old school that way.”
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Sacred Heart Schools Atherton

Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton

150 Valparaiso Ave
Atherton, CA 94027
650 322 1866
Founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart, SHS is a Catholic, independent, co-ed day school for students in preschool through grade 12