CANYON COUNTRY — A score of players and coaches from the Santa Clarita Valley met in the Performing Arts Center at Canyon High School Saturday morning for the second annual Foothill League boys basketball media day.
The event, put together mainly through the effort of Canyon head coach Ali Monfared, gives players and coaches an opportunity to meet with the media and offer some insight on the league heading into the upcoming season.
Monfared started the media day event last year in an attempt to get the Foothill League and its players more exposure, modeling it after other area league media days like the Mission League.
“The other leagues that are bigger leagues than us, I don’t really feel their effort or their dedication, compassion, is any different than ours. I think that ours is as good as anybody,” Monfared said. “I’m trying to battle the narrative that you have to go to a private school and transfer all the time. I don’t think it has to be that way. Are you getting the gym time, the film time? I feel like Canyon offers all that and I think other programs in our valley do.”
The Santa Clarita area consists of seven public high schools: Canyon, Castaic, Golden Valley, Hart, Saugus, Valencia and West Ranch. The furthest school north, Castaic, which opened its doors in 2019, is roughly 12 miles away from the furthest school south, Hart.
Most of the schools are within minutes of each other, densely packed together. Players from different schools grew up together and played together in youth leagues.
Before the press conferences, the players mingled with each other and shared laughs.
Canyon’s Isaac Yuhico and Golden Valley’s Donovan Webb, considered by coaches to be two of the best players in the Foothill League, hung around late after the event and kept chatting.
“There’s a lot of schools out here and you can be a part of a great program at your local school and have success,” Monfared said. “My motivation is for the kids. There’s some high-level basketball going on here.”
“It’s the same thing playing against your brother. You want to beat them,” West Ranch senior guard Conner Peterson said.
Hart head coach Tom Kelly, who is entering his 26th season at Hart and 36th season overall as a head coach, put it simply, “This is a neighborhood league.”
Saugus head coach Alfredo Manzano is in his ninth year as the head coach at Saugus after spending his first three years as an assistant. He was also a student there.
Like Manzano, Monfared is coaching at his alma mater, returning this season with the program’s first-ever CIF Southern Section championship, which the Cowboys secured in triple overtime last year in the Division 2A finals.
Louis Fernando is entering his second year as head coach at Castaic and is confident about the direction the program is headed.
The team is more selfless this year, he said, whereas players on last year’s team were more concerned about individual stats than team success.
“I don’t have to coach ego and I don’t have to coach effort this year,” Fernando said.
Valencia’s Greg Fontenette is also starting his second year at the helm after spending the past several seasons as an assistant coach.
There are two new head coaches in the Foothill League, Desmond Carter at West Ranch and Scott Barker at Golden Valley. The Grizzlies’ previous head coach Chris Printz took the assistant principal job at Golden Valley, but will still help the coaching staff.
The 2025-26 boys basketball season starts in November with nonleague play and Foothill League action is set to begin on Dec. 2.