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COUSINS: Marcus Chinen (left) and Johnathan Watanabe have been keeping the Cerritos High basketball programs among the strongest in the CIF-Southern Section. Photo by Loren Kopff.
By Loren Kopff
Sports Editor | Follow X
February 5, 2026
In athletics at any level, the word family is used constantly, but at Cerritos High, it literally is a family affair when it comes to the boys and girls basketball programs. Not only are boys head coach Jonathan Watanabe and girls head coach Marcus Chinen among the most prolific mentors in the area, as well as the CIF-Southern Section, they are family members.
The two successful coaches are cousins and have combined for nearly 600 victories since the 2001-2002 season. Watanabe has produced 40 percent of the wins amongst the seven head coaches in school history and was the first 605 League champion at the conclusion of the 2018-2019 season. Since the league was formed, Chinen and Watanabe have won a league title in the same season three times, including this season. The other two came in the 2019-2020 and 2023-2024 seasons.
Chinen’s father, Lawrence, and Watanabe’s mother, Margo, grew up on the island of Oahu. They moved out to Southern California, and when the house next door to the Chinens went up for sale, Lawrence called Margo to try to purchase it. They bought the house and to this day, the families are still neighbors.
Watanabe has been the head coach of the Dons since the 2001-2002 season, except for the 2021-2002 season when Lance Convento took over the varsity team. Watanabe is in his 24th season as the head coach, one more than one of his mentors, Ian Desborough, who was in charge from the 1971-1972 season through 1986-1987 and again from 1995-1996 through 2001-2002 and is one of seven head coaches the school has had. Watanabe is the winningest boys head coach at Cerritos with a 371-301 record, which includes the 17-11 mark the Dons currently have as the playoffs begin next week.
“I think it started just by playing and then by watching my coaches kind of teach the game,” said Watanabe of his love for coaching. “One of my first coaches was Joe Getherall; he coached in the SEYO (Southeast Youth Organization) League, and he coached us from second grade through at least eighth grade and kind of built the foundation of discipline and structure. So, I kind of learned a lot from that.”
He has 76 more victories than Desborough, who he has routinely commented about over the years and credits him for how he has learned to be the head coach he is today. The two were co-head coaches for the 2001-2002 season.
“I coached my brother’s team and also in the SEYO League and just really developed the love for the whole idea of organizing drills in practices and starting to run different systems and learn different plays and structure,” Watanabe added.
Chinen is in his 12th season as head coach for the girls team and is the second most tenured girls basketball head coach in school history. He currently owns a record of 212-130, also the second best in the program’s history, trailing Ann Dena Sjoersdma, who coached the Dons from the 1983-1984 season to the 1988-1999 season and left with a record of 282-146.
Chinen recently won his seventh league title and will make his 12th trip to the playoffs, both top marks in the program’s history. His love for coaching the sport was nearly the same as that of Watanabe. He too started in the SEYO League, and his coaches put him in a situation where they strived heavily on structure and fundamentals.
“A lot of the things that we do here fundamental-wise is still going,” said Chinen. “Going through high school, and I played a little bit over here, my coach was Joey Yezbak and was the one who gave me the opportunity to play. I wasn’t the biggest kid out there … and I learned a lot from him. After that, and years [went by] and my [former] assistant coach Richard Villeza had a club team, and I started coaching club for a while. After that, it led into Holly Matchett, who asked me one year when I was doing cross country and track if I wanted to do a lower level.”
Matchett was Cerritos’ head coach for 10 seasons, compiling a 166-127 record. After her was Ariel Adams for two seasons before Chinen took over the varsity reins.
Chinen and Watanabe obviously have different styles of coaching, but the latter sometimes gets under the skin of certain opponents or certain coaches. For example, when facing a team where the stakes are high, he’ll yell out, “that’s one, that’s two,” in reference to the number of fouls the opposing team’s top player has. Or he’ll engage in some type of banter with the opposing coach if that person is complaining about the way Cerritos plays.
“Not on purpose,” joked Watanabe. “I’m just coaching our guys. I went to Cerritos, and I know that there’s this reputation at Cerritos that we’re trying to build; that we’re a good basketball program. I know that when I first took over, that was not the case, and Cerritos was not looked at as a basketball school. So, there’s always this battle for respect, and I think every time we step on the floor, I want to lead our guys to know that every time we step on the floor, it’s business.
“If I’m not leading that charge, I don’t feel like they have anyone to follow,” he continued. “I want to make sure that they understand this is important to me. It’s important to the school; it’s important to the program that we show up, and we compete every single game. So there is a little bit of fire there.”
Watanabe’s first year, in which he shared the duties with Desborough, the Dons went 12-15. The next season, Watanabe went 17-10 but would not have another winning season until the 2007-2008 season when Cerritos went 16-12.
After six first-round exits in his first nine years as the head coach, Watanabe finally reached the quarterfinals in the 2010-2011 campaign and won his first Suburban League title eight years later. One of the many highlights in his career came two seasons ago when the boys program advanced to its first CIF-SS divisional championship game where the Dons defeated Yeshiva University of Los Angeles.
This may be Watanabe’s 24th season as a varsity head coach, but he looks at it as 30 years because of the seasons he spent at the lower levels. He took a break in the 2021-2022 season and coached the freshmen team while Convento, a former Cerritos player and Whitney High head coach, was the varsity coach. He says it doesn’t matter what level you’re coaching at because coaching is the same whether it’s at the freshmen level, or junior varsity level, or even in the SEYO League.
“Coaching is coaching, and you would think that after I coached varsity, I really thought that I could take a step back and kind of ease my way and the freshmen would be a little bit more relaxed,” said Watanabe of the 2021-2022 season. “Other than not having to watch film, it was just as fun and exciting at those freshmen games as any other team. I think it’s the joy of coaching; creating bonds with the players and the teams and seeing them compete and trying to get them to be better. Seeing the players evolve as players and people is the biggest joy.”
Unlike Chinen, who was recently recognized for picking up his 200th career victory, Watanabe went on to say that those milestones aren’t as important to him as winning championships are.
“We’re not here to win games; obviously you have to win games, but we’re here to win championships,” he added. “We schedule tough, and so there’s years where we’re struggling in the preseason, but it’s all to prepare us to get better and to try to make our players and our team the best we can be, and to ultimately win championships. You can win 20, 30 games in a season, but if you don’t win a championship there’s nothing to show. You want to ultimately strive to win a league championship, a CIF championship, a state championship. Those are goals to go after every year.”
Including this season, Watanabe has won at least 15 games a dozen times and has reached the 20-win mark three times. On the other hand, Chinen has won at least 17 games 10 times in his 12 seasons with two losing seasons. His record in the Suburban League and the 605 League is 104-19 with three seasons of an undefeated league slate. Oh, by the way, Chinen has reached the CIF-SS finals three times in the last four seasons, still seeking the program’s first title, and has two other trips to the quarterfinals.
“I agree with the same that John said; you’re there to build a program, you’re there to bond with these kids and have them have the greatest experience they can during high school,” said Chinen. “That’s the number one thing. We have to kind of sometimes think before we react to certain things that this is for them. This is to have fun. If they’re not having fun, somebody might quit. If they’re not having fun, they’re going to go out and tell someone, ‘hey, why do you want to go to Cerritos to play basketball?’ You have to have a balance in there.”
Both agreed that coaching at the same school where they attended is different than coaching at a school that you may not have as much knowledge of or didn’t attend. Before coaching at Cerritos, Chinen coached at La Habra High for a year and Kennedy High for another year. He says coaching at Cerritos means a lot because he’s giving back to the community and the school that took care of him for four years when he was a student.
“That’s one of the things that I think any student-athlete that comes to this school should look at in the future,” said Chinen. “We do have a lot of kids who come back and volunteer and want to come back to help, and I think that’s the greatest thing. I know we’re doing our job [as coaches] because they can pop up here and there.”
“I love my experience at Cerritos High School,” said Watanabe. “That’s what I want for these kids; I want them to have the full experience. Not just my players, but my students in the classroom. You see how many alumni come back to teach and coach at our school. But it’s to have them have that same feeling that I did coming into Cerritos and going like, ‘man, my four years was awesome.’ Not just the sports part of it, but going to dances, meeting friends and getting to know everybody. It was just an awesome experience.”
One of the best days in the school’s history came on Feb. 24, 2024, when Chinen and Watanabe coached their respective teams, back to back, in the CIF-SS Division 3AA and 4AA finals at Edison High. Chinen’s team fell to Oak Park High 71-41 while Watanabe was victorious over YULA 60-51. That season, the cousins combined for a 46-22 record, the best combined mark in the same season since 2017-2018 when they had a 44-13 mark.
“It was amazing to get to that point and be in that situation,” said Watanabe. “It was also one of those things not just doing it for our school, but for all those other schools and coaches. We always talk about doing it the right way. We don’t recruit; we just coach the guys who come into our doors and we just try to coach them up.”
“That was a fun night,” said Chinen. “It didn’t come out the way we wanted it to, but we had the opportunity to watch the boys get the job done. It was one of those years where we came in and the girls were locked in. They always asked every day, ‘what can we do, how can we get better, how are we going to shut this girl down or that girl down’ as the season went through the playoffs. When we got to the finals, we thought we were ready and prepared for that. It’s one of those things, I have to say, will be a memory forever. That was just one amazing night.”
Watanabe has coached well over 350 players in his 24 seasons and Chinen close to 200 in his 12 seasons. Asking them what their respective Mount Rushmore would be isn’t an easy task. But for Watanabe, it would be Evan Leonard, Tobenna Ozoagu, Joseph Vitug and Aaron Wright. If there was a fifth player, it would be Shay Pema.
For Chinen, it’s a lot harder because he has always had a one-two punch. But his Mount Rushmore would be Tatiana Fominyam, Alyssa Movchan, Onyeka Nwanze, and Minh-Thy Vo.
One phrase that has been used at the high school for over two decades is “The Cerritos Way,” which is defined as the dedication, discipline and determination that an athlete puts in. Watanabe says from the tryout meeting in the spring, they are to know that it’s just not something they can show up every now and then; they need to be fully committed. The players and parents sign a commitment contract saying, among other things, that the athlete is going to be at practices and games in the summer, during winter break, during fall league and on Saturdays.
“It’s a big commitment,” he added. “The coaches have to do it; I can’t decide I’m going to take off winter break and go on vacation with my family. At that point, I probably couldn’t coach because I need to have that same buy-in where I’m going to do the same thing that they’re going to do.”
While Chinen and Watanabe are far from cracking the top five, or even top 10, in coaching victories among CIF-SS coaches, they are keeping the Cerritos High programs among the strongest around.
If you want, I can also provide a list of exactly what was corrected (typos, commas, hyphens, quotes), but this version is clean and publication-ready as-is.
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