March 5, 2020
TRAILBLAZERS! SIERRA CANYON SCHOOL
Basketball “Super Team” Leads the Nation’s Best HS Sports Program
90045 - Rock Pillsbury, the Athletic Director at Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, is the guest for episode 22 of Sports Stories with Denny Lennon (SSDL). Rock dropped by the 7428 Studio for an interview on January 30th. Through his hard work and careful planning, Rock has built an athletic program that is unrivaled in the country. Boys and girls teams in multiple sports win section and state titles each year in the highest divisions in the ultra-competitive California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section (CIF-SS).
Close to 600 schools compete in the CIF-SS alone, and close to a million student-athletes compete in the states ten sections. Sierra Canyon School, in a community north of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, has won 12 state championships and 15 section titles in the last 13 years. That is an astounding statistic in the talent rich region in which they compete. In basketball, both the boys and girls team won the 2019 state Open division, a first in CIF history.
This season, both teams secured #1 seeds heading into the CIF-SS playoffs. The girls team lost in the region quarterfinals to Windward School (Mar Vista) and their frosh phenom, Juju Watkins, who dropped 22 points. Incidentally, Watkins will be featured on episode 23 of SSSDL, when the Athletic Director of Windward, Tyrone Powell, is our guest.
The Sierra Canyon boys team won the section championship last weekend and has advanced to the region semifinals this weekend, where they will play another elite private school, Harvard-Westlake (Studio City). That game, to be held Saturday at Pepperdine University in Malibu, will feature, as Eric Sondheimer from the Los Angeles Times notes, a “parking lot filled with Teslas, Corvettes and Porsches”. It is Rock, as the Athletic Director, who has overseen the rise of the Sierra Canyon program. Rock expends his energy equally among boys' and girls' teams, lower and upper school. Rock shares his experiences on SSDL from his start in Texas to his landing in Chatsworth.
A recent article in New York Magazine by Reeves Wiedeman called Sierra Canyon “the most Instagrammed high school in America”, mostly due to its high profile boys' basketball team. The “super team” has played in eight different states this season to record crowds, and has appeared on national TV more often than some NBA franchises. Besides 7’3” junior Harold Yu from China, the team includes top recruits Brandon Boston and Zaire Williams. These two 6’7” all-Americans combine for close to 35 points and 30 rebounds per game. Bronny James and Zaire Wade, you may know their fathers, LeBron and Dwayne, combine for 6.5 million followers on Instagram.
It is Rock who keeps all of the teams, celebrity parents and high expectations in check. Watch and listen to how he builds relationships and maintains the priorities for the Sierra Canyon student-athletes. SSDL episode 22 is available now as a video podcast on YouTube, and an audio podcast wherever you listen.
Video Podcast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinlJjuZ_eg&t=3s
Website - Audio/Social Media Links : https://www.sportsstoriespodcast.com/
Associated link: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/sierra-canyon-basketball-team.html
Denny Lennon is the Host of the Video Podcast, “Sports Stories with Denny Lennon”