SGV/Whittier Prep Sports Zone: Escarcega on Preps - San Dimas Falls in CIF Southern Section Final, But Coach Ketterling’s Legacy Continues
Aquinas establishes its dominance with a 59-41 win over the Saints in Div. 3A final.
San Dimas was waiting to enter the court for their CIF Southern Section final against Aquinas. (Escarcega)
ONTARIO – For the past two days, you’ve experienced what it’s like to win a CIF Southern Section Basketball through the eyes, emotions, and feelings of those in the moment.
You’ve experienced Kenny Phan’s sheer elation for a school (Mark Keppel) and two cities (Monterey Park, Alhambra) that needed an uplifting. When I asked him how the taco truck experience was when they arrived back at their school from their historic win, he said, “Sure tastes a lot better when you’re CIF champs.”
You’ve been to the mountain top with Joel Simonds, who helped make history for California High School by taking the long, demanding road. When I asked late Saturday night how things were going, he said, “Just had a couple (of refreshments) at a pizza spot and (just) got home. Simple.”
But there is also another side to Championship Saturday. It’s the side of the team that comes up short. Try as they might, the result was not what they were looking for. Behind the hugs and tears on one side is the cold, harsh reality that comes with a loss.
If there is one word that can punctuate the moment, it’s this:
Sympathy.
The CIFSS has tried to smooth out the moment by changing the phrase of the second-place plaque from “Runners Up” to “Finalists.” Try as they might, the pain is fresh, and disappointment doesn’t lessen.
One area team that experienced this disappointment was the San Dimas boys basketball team. Here is their story.
If there is a city in the San Gabriel Valley that resembles Middle America, it’s San Dimas. The latest census figures assign the city a population of 33,000, which is on par with cities in the Midwest such as Bettendorf, Iowa, and Hutchinson, Kansas.
It’s a town where everyone knows each other. You won’t find a major sports complex in this city. The only venue that calls San Dimas home and gains the most visitors is Raging Waters (and you really don’t want to go there in the winter).
If there is one thing that brings the town together, it’s the local high school – San Dimas High School. If you win in this city, chances are you won’t have to pay for a meal at the local restaurant establishments around town. You become a local hero.
Nothing brings this town together more than high school sports. The obvious example is the annual Smudge Pot game against Bonita High School from La Verne, their adjoined neighborhood rival. The game is a prime example of what Friday Night Lights is all about. Consider it one of the valley’s versions of UCLA vs. USC.
Want an example?
I present to you the current boys' basketball coach at San Dimas High School, Jeremy Ketterling. The mild-mannered face of San Dimas basketball is an alum of Bonita High School.
As you can imagine, his high school friends these days give him more than a few strange looks.
“I loved my time at Bonita, but yeah my friends continually ask me, ‘How can you coach over that school?’” Ketterling said last week on our podcast. “It took a lot for my dad to wear a San Dimas basketball sweatshirt. But we are all good these days.”
It’s not as if Ketterling didn’t attempt to become the boys basketball coach at his alma mater. After doing the requisite work of being a lower-level coach (he was the freshman and JV coach at San Dimas HS), he applied in back-to-back days for the jobs at San Dimas and Bonita in 2014.
“I didn’t get the job, and it hurt some,” Ketterling said.
It wasn’t as if he lost the competition to anyone that would be considered a stiff. Gordon Hamlow was hired as coach at San Dimas, and Tim Godley was pegged for the Bonita job.
“When (Hamlow) got the job, I was like, 'Ah, I don’t want to work for this guy,’” Ketterling said. “We became friends, I became his freshman coach, and he was a great mentor to me. (Hamlow) knows everyone. He and his father (Cliff). They are coach (Mike) LeDuc disciples. The South Hills job came open, and (Mike) LeDuc’s son was the AD (Matt) at South Hills, and I applied. And I know that Gordon has some nice things to say, and that’s how I got my first varsity job.”
Even though he didn’t have a .500 or better record at South Hills, he quickly learned how important it was to be an on-campus coach. He was still teaching at San Dimas and making the daily trek to the West Covina-based campus. In his final year at South Hills, he was 8-18. However, the foundation he built played a significant role the following year when Jelani Gardner became coach, and the team went 15-15.
And why did he leave South Hills in 2018? It was a domino effect. Mike LeDuc left Glendora to become the head coach at Damien High School. Gordon Hamlow left San Dimas to take over for LeDuc at Glendora. This meant there was another opportunity for Ketterling to get the job at San Dimas. “I was nervous,” Ketterling said. “I know that I had some good support from (football coach) Mark Holman and (baseball coach) Mike Regan and Coach Hamlow, who had put in a few words.”
As the axiom goes, the third was the charm. And how did Ketterling find out that he got the job?
Photo: Ketterling Family
“I remember coming home and seeing my son and wife get this whiteboard for the kids on the first day of school. And I got home, and it said, “Congrats, Saints Head Coach Daddy!.”
Since that day, Ketterling has not looked back. In his last three seasons, the Saints have won 20+ games a season. And despite the fact that they moved to a new league (thanks to Competitive Equity) and an unfortunate outcome early in the season (losing to Los Altos after a huge first-half lead), 2025 was becoming a season of the ages for Ketterling.
The Saints, placed in Division 3A, were seeded sixth in the playoffs, which means their appearance at the Toyota Center in Ontario on Saturday in a sectional final against #4 seeded Aquinas was one of the least surprising matchups of the weekend.
Remember the part about being a local hero if you hit it big in San Dimas? Ketterling found out personally after last week’s 74-65 home semifinal win over Norte Vista.
“After our win last week, I had 96 text messages from everyone congratulating me and telling me how proud they were of the team,” Ketterling said.
Rita Kear and San Dimas girls basketball coach Gary Jackson (Escarcega)
This explains why it must have felt a bit empty if you were in the city on Saturday morning. Most of everyone was on hand in Ontario for the historic sectional final. Mayor Emmett Badar and Bonita Unified Superintendent Matthew Wien were in attendance, along with coaching colleagues Holman and girls basketball coach Gary Jackson and the recently retired Rita Kear (who we call the first lady of San Dimas HS).
San Dimas coach Jeremy Ketterling with his son Keenan before Saturday’s CIFSS D3A final. (Escarcega)
As if that was not enough, his son Keegan is by his side at every game with a clipboard and a stat sheet – “he’s good,” Ketterling said.
Life is good these days for Jeremy Ketterling.
On a Saturday morning in Ontario, that was about to change.
The background is one thing to remember when you play in an arena like the Toyota Center. It’s unusual. Instead of the usual high school background that most players are used to, it takes more than a few minutes to gain a comfortable visual perspective. The vast openness of the “end zone” sighting has stopped more than a few elite players from having outstanding performances.
If you have a player who can adapt to the atmosphere, consider it a gift from the basketball gods. Throw in a 7-foot player, and you can understand why San Dimas coaches gave more than a few worried looks throughout the week as they tried to prepare for Aquinas HS.
Aquinas came into Saturday’s final with a chip on their shoulder. It comes from their head coach, Daryl Pegram. His no-nonsense coaching style is a throwback to the early years of coaching. Either take to the hard coaching or go somewhere else.
“We talk about the 3 P’s all the time,” Pegram said. “They are Prayer, Preparation and Performance. If we do all three of these during the week, we can say confidently that we have put ourselves in a position to win.”
It’s also good to have a 7-foot player who plays both the perimeter and the low post at a high level in Jumma Kitendo. To say that Kitendo has been a gift that keeps giving is quite an understatement.
And he’s only a sophomore.
“It’s all about confidence with (Kitendo),” Pegram said. “I don’t want to get deep into it, but the last school he attended gave up on him. He can be any type of player, and his future is very bright.”
Throw in the scoring guard combination of LJ Hall (14.6 PPG) and Malachi Jones (11.2 PPG), and you can see the daunting task in front of Ketterling and the Saints.
San Dimas did have some scoring threats in Luke Chavez, Jeremiah Garzon, and Nathan Yearout. Still, as the pregame shooting drills were ending before tipoff, you had a feeling that San Dimas was like a golfer at the Masters needing a perfect round to win the event on the final day.
As the saying goes, hope can only take you so far.
San Dimas did its best to stay close in the game's early stages. The first quarter ended in a 9-9 with both teams playing a physical style of play that many are not used to in a sectional final. Maybe Mark Holman was correct in saying that the game was “going to be a war.” But it didn’t take long to notice that Aquinas was one step ahead of San Dimas on both sides of the court.
The bubble seemed ready to burst for the Saints – and in the second quarter… it did.
Aquinas outscored San Dimas 22-6, and it could have been a lot worse. The Falcons were slipping into Saint passing lanes and intercepting passes, winning the battle for contested possessions. During a San Dimas timeout, Pegram chest-bumped his players and said, “Good job.”
Ketterling knew that his team was in trouble and stood there, arms folded, looking like someone trying to solve this puzzle analytically. It was an unsettling position.
“We knew who they thought they were,” Ketterling said (channeling his inner Dennis Green line from the Arizona Cardinals football team). “They play very good defense, and it was tough on us. They’re very physical. The first quarter was tough because it was back and forth, and we got a bit shook in the second quarter.”
And while most teams would have felt sorry for themselves and may have thrown in the white towel, that is not how a Jerry Ketterling-coached team goes about their business.
In the initial stages of the third quarter, the Saints were evidently in for the fight. They trimmed Aquinas’ lead to 37-28 (thanks to a couple of clutch three-point baskets from Angelo Fares), but as the quarter was drawing to an end, it was clear that the Falcons had too much athleticism for San Dimas to handle.
Time was running out on San Dimas, and much like the final nine holes on a Sunday at Augusta National, the birdies were nowhere to be found.
The Saints made one more run in the fourth quarter, trimming Aquinas’s lead to 45-38, but that was it. Aquinas finished the game on an 11-2 run and earned a sectional title with a 59-41 win.
Always looking for something to challenge his players, Pegram looked at the stat sheet in the post-game presser and said, “I’m not happy that we gave up 41 points. Our goal is to limit teams to 40 or fewer points.”
There’s one sentence that corroborates with that quote: standards and expectations.
(Escarcega)
The scene at the end of the game is always the same—one team jumping up and down on one side of the court, disappointment and sadness on the other.
Losing a CIF Southern Section is like getting a B on your semester final after thinking you got an A. For some, it’s like breaking up with your girlfriend. The sting hits your soul, and you cannot do much about it.
As the Aquinas players received their t-shirts and championship patches, all the San Dimas players could do was stare blankly at the basketball court. Some buried their heads underneath their jerseys, knowing they had given everything but had come up short.
There was Jack Nance, the always omnipresent Assistant Principal, comforting the players. There are no basketball clinic sessions on how to handle losing a CIF Southern Section championship game.
As always, Ketterling handled the moment the way he was trained—with class. In the post-game presser, he held his head high and mentioned his pride in his kids.
As the players came off the court, they walked through a human tunnel formed by the school’s cheerleading group. Most of them held back tears as they looked up to the ceiling. The last person to make the walk, wearing a black Los Angeles Dodgers World Series championship cap, was Keenan Ketterling.
There were no tears for him. He’s a coach's son and knows that his time will come.
The final person to walk through the tunnel was Jeremy Ketterling. There were no tears, just an expression of disappointment that he didn't get the job done on one of high school basketball’s most prominent stages with many of his mentors watching courtside.
But as he entered his house on Saturday afternoon, one obvious thing was clear: As the whiteboard said on that faithful day, he is the head basketball coach at San Dimas and will be there for a good long minute. He will handle this disappointment the only way he can—with an unrelenting work ethic.
It’s the only way he knows.