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By Loren Kopff
Sports Editor | Follow X
December 17, 2025
Three days before Valley Christian High visited La Mirada High, Hannah Burgoyne had the worst game of her high school career. The junior star who recently eclipsed the 1,000-point mark, was held scoreless in a 39-34 loss to Whittier High.
It was completely different against the Matadores as she bounced back to score 21 points, get nine steals and grab seven rebounds as the Defenders blew out La Mirada 43-19 last Friday. It enabled V.C. to get to seven wins in its eighth game, which is significant compared to the previous two seasons.
In Burgoyne’s freshman season, V.C. won its seventh game in its 14th contest as the team finished 9-17. Last season, it took the Defenders 16 games before posting its seventh win as the team concluded the season with a 10-16 record. The message that V.C. head coach Dan Leffler sent to his team following the team’s first loss was a simple one.
“It’s a basketball game, and we didn’t do what we needed to do to win that game at Whittier,” he said. “We made a lot of mistakes, so we wanted to minimize our mistakes [against La Mirada], and I think we did that for the most part. It’s a physical game, but my comment to them was, ‘hey, we have to have a really short term memory’, because it’s pretty early in the season. We were fortunate to win some games up to this point.”
While the Defenders, who began the season with six straight wins, are going in the right direction with an experienced team, the Matadores are going in the other direction with a first-year head coach in Sharae Moten, junior Jordin Shaw being the only returning player, no seniors on the team and no lower level teams.
La Mirada’s loss to V.C. kept the team winless through seven games, however three of those losses were by six, five and four points while the other four setbacks were anywhere from 18 to 53 points.
“Every game we’ve improved,” said Moten. “From me coming in late, it’s been a journey. We understand that we’re behind everyone else. So, just pushing through our adversity and the obstacles that we’ve already had…those close games are winnable for sure. But it just came down to who wanted it more.”
Moten, a former John Glenn High standout, is the assistant head coach for La Mirada’s cross country team and could not take over the basketball team until the fall season was over.
The Defenders scored the first six points of the game and before freshman Kaitlyn Suzuki scored her only points of the game to put the Matadores on the board. V.C. then went on a 12-0 run before sophomore Julianna Martinez ended the first quarter with her lone basket.
La Mirada scored back to back baskets twice in the second quarter, with junior Cyena Elmore getting her lone four points while Shaw and junior Charlize Parris added the other two baskets. By halftime, it was 28-12 and it was clear that the Defenders were on their way to their fifth win of over 20 points.
“Today was our third game this week; two of the teams were great matchups for us because we are young,” said Moten. We did play yesterday, so a lot of them were learning to fight through their fatigue and just pushing through and having that want to win. We had a lot of spurts where we did have that togetherness and that family unit sticking together.”
Even though V.C. was three of 13 from the field in the third quarter, Burgoyne and sophomore Molly Douglas continued to be effective in other ways than scoring. They combined to pull down seven rebounds and collect four steals in the stanza. While Douglas scored only six points in the game, she had 14 boards, six steals and four assists.
“Now that Molly is healthy, one of the goals for us is for everybody to have a role,” said Leffler. “And Molly very well knows her role, which is, ‘hey, I’m going to get rebounds [and] I’m going to play good defense. Molly has definitely stepped into that and obviously we’ve reaped the benefits of that because she can rebound and puts us in a good spot defensively as well.”
Senior Aniyah Peoples added eight points and four rebounds while senior Jaiya Lee and freshman Ariel Martinez each pitched in with four points as all the scoring came from the five starters. Burgoyne’s 21 points marked the fifth time this season she has reached 20 points and for her career, she has been held to under 10 points nine times.
“Obviously, Hannah’s kind of a rhythm shooter; her confidence is a big deal,” said Leffler. “I’m a little surprised, I’ll be honest, because she’s shot thousands and thousands of shots to prepare for these games.”
Shaw led the Matadores with six points and seven rebounds and is one of two players to have scored at least 10 points through the first seven games. She has reached a dozen points three times while Suzuki scored 10 points last Thursday against Garden Grove High. La Mirada also had 34 rebounds, the same as the Defenders, with sophomores Nadia Tamayo and Natalia Tamayo each grabbing five of them.
V.C. hosted Segerstrom High on Dec. 18 and will entertain Oxford Academy on Friday while the Matadores will welcome former Suburban League rival Glenn on Friday and go to Baldwin Park High on Monday before welcoming Torrance High the next day.
“I think we expected to be competitive,” said Leffler. “I didn’t expect us to be 6-0, which is great. We’ve played some not as tough teams in this first go-around just to kind of make sure that we can keep our morale high.”
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