Girls’ Basketball: Maya makes it happen for Estancia against Mesa

The Estancia High girls’ basketball team posed for a team picture Thursday night on the home floor of rival Costa Mesa.

Assistant coach and program alumna Erika Soto asked if all of the girls were there.

“Everybody except for Maya,” senior Maddy Letterman said.

Senior point guard Maya Van Den Heever was finishing up a postgame interview with Costa Mesa TV. After she was done, she ran across the court, hurdled a couple of her teammates and slid into position in the front row for the picture.

The Eagles needed Van Den Heever in the photo with the imprint that she made on the first Battle for the Bell game. She led all scorers with 22 points and added five steals and two blocks as Estancia won, 55-35, to keep pace in league with Laguna Beach.

Estancia (13-6, 3-0 in league), ranked No. 13 in CIF Southern Section Division 4AA, plays at Laguna Beach in a first-place showdown on Tuesday night. First, the Eagles beat rival Costa Mesa for the fourth straight time. Estancia, the three-time defending league champion, won its 22nd straight league game overall.

Sophomore forward Finley Garnett had 13 points for Estancia, and senior Nefertiti Van Den Heever scored six and had four steals. Junior Delani Guyot, after scoring twice in the girls’ soccer team’s 3-0 win over Costa Mesa at Jim Scott Stadium earlier Thursday, scored five points and added four steals in the girls’ basketball Battle for the Bell.

“That’s commitment right there,” Maya Van Den Heever said of Guyot and junior Sammie Haynes, a soccer defender who also did double duty and scored a basket in the hoops game.

Early on in Thursday night’s game, it looked like the Eagles would have no problem with Costa Mesa (3-15, 0-3). Maya Van Den Heever was aggressive from the start, scoring 13 points in the first quarter as the Eagles opened up a 15-3 advantage. One of those points for the Mustangs was on a strange technical foul on Estancia senior center Sam Wagner, because her shirt under her jersey was black, not the same color as the jersey.

“She tried to tuck it out of sight, but it was under there still and [the referee] could still see it,” Estancia Coach Judd Fryslie said. “I think they were watching Sam the whole night after that.”

Fryslie watched as Costa Mesa, to its credit, did not go away. The Mustangs went on a 15-2 run of their own. They took their first lead, at 18-17, midway through the second quarter on a coast-to-coast layup by freshman Katie Belmontes. Then, after two free throws by Maya Van Den Heever, Mesa senior co-captain Katie Lawrence scored a put-back to give the Mustangs back the lead with 3:30 left in the half.

“It gets so loud in here, problems are hard to correct,” Fryslie said. “They can’t hear me. You can’t coach ‘em from far away ... we were doing one dumb thing after another during that stretch. It wasn’t very pretty.”

But the Mustangs wouldn’t score again in the half, and Estancia took a 30-20 halftime lead. Maya had 18 points in the first half, as Fryslie said that the team’s leading scorer Garnett maybe came out a bit nervous.

“I just had to score,” Maya Van Den Heever said. “I knew it was going to be really tough scoring tonight. Anything could have happened tonight, so I just worked my butt off.”

The Eagles earned more separation after outscoring the Mustangs, 15-1, in the third quarter. By the time Lawrence scored on a drive early in the fourth quarter, the Mustangs had gone more than 12 minutes since their last field goal.

The Estancia lead got as big as 30 in the fourth quarter.

“The third quarter was what killed us,” Costa Mesa first-year Coach Lauren Coleman said. “We just can’t come out like that, and that’s what we’re struggling with right now, coming back out the second half how we play the first half. And they were already up by 10 [at halftime], so when they scored a few more buckets, I think the girls kind of got down on themselves.”

One highlight for Costa Mesa was Lawrence, who had a team-high 18 points to go along with six steals and five blocked shots. Coleman said that her co-captain bounced back from a rough game Tuesday in a loss to Laguna Beach.

“I was very proud of her for that,” Coleman said. “It takes a lot of heart and courage to do that.”

Estancia will need heart Tuesday in its own game at Laguna Beach. Fryslie said it’s probably the hardest league game to play, and he would know. In 2012-13, when the Van Den Heever twins were freshmen, a loss at Laguna Beach was the only blemish on Estancia’s league campaign.

“It’s always hard to play there,” Fryslie said. “It’s them or us [to win league], that’s the way I look at it.”

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Orange Coast League

Estancia 55, Costa Mesa 35

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Est 17 – 13 – 15 – 10 — 55

CM 10 – 10 – 1 – 14 — 35

Est – M. Van Den Heever 22, Garnett 13, N. Van Den Heever 6, Guyot 5, Flores 3, Rosette 3, Haynes 2, Letterman 1.

3-pt. goals – M. Van Den Heever 2, Guyot 1, Rosette 1.

Fouled out – None.

Technicals – Wagner.

CM – Lawrence 18, Belmontes 4, Gomez 4, Filner 3, Aguirre 3, T. Crenshaw 3.

3-pt. goals – Lawrence 1, Filner 1.

Fouled out – None.

Technicals – None.