MILWAUKEE – At Riverside University High School, the girls soccer team is in a league of their own. 

What they’re saying:

“It’s very fun, very energetic,” said Hser Mu Nar, Riverside senior defender.

“We’re all pretty close, like we all get along pretty well,” said Eh Moo Gay Paw, Riverside senior forward.

As you can tell, the Tigers are a close-knit group.

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Many of these girls have played together since freshman year, but they have much more than soccer in common. 

“We’re another family,” said Eh Gay, Riverside senior goalkeeper. “Some of us are related. Some of us aren’t.”

Dig deeper:

Riverside has a pretty significant Karen population.

The Karen are an ethnic group who come from the mountainous region of Southeast Asian, mainly Myanmar, which is formerly known as Burma, along with Thailand. However, hundreds of thousands of Karen have fled their homes due to religious and ethnic persecution. 

“We come from all over,” said Eh Moo. “We come from like, either Burma or Thailand, and then we don’t really have a country of our own. I guess you could say like we come from like a refugee camp, so we’re like all over the place.”

For Eh Moo Gay Paw, Hser Mu Nar and Eh Gay, their families immigrated in the early to mid-2000s to Milwaukee with other Karen refugees to join an already growing Karen population in town. 

“I know it was tough for them,” said Hser Mu. “I remember my dad telling me on the way here, my mom was crying since she was leaving her hometown where she grew up and everything.”

“My parents, my mom grew up in the mountains,” said Eh Moo. “My dad was born in Burma. It wasn’t easy, but we had help.”

Years later, their love for soccer brought them all together, and now, the team boasts quite a few Karen. 

“It was easy since we spoke the same language, had the same background and culture,” said Hser Mu. “It was easy for me to get along with them and just be friends with them.”

On the pitch, speaking Karen is an added advantage.

“We all speak it,” said Eh Gay. “It does help us on the field as well because we can just yell out each other’s name.”

And it’s clear, this trio takes pride in who they are.

“At first, people would ask us like where we come from, who we are, what we speak,” said Eh Moo. “We’re not very known, so we don’t really take offense to it.”

What we know:

In turn, they enjoy teaching others about the Karen.

“I don’t have the actual flag, but this is what our flag looks like,” said Eh Moo. “There’s red, white and blue and there’s like a tiger because we’re called the tigers and it represents our school.”

“It has sunrays,” said Hser Mu. “The nine sunrays represent the nine different regions we come from and in the middle of the sunray, there’s a frog drum which is our traditional instrument.”

The girls also celebrate Karen New Year and go to summer school to stay connected to their roots. 

“If we stick more to our culture, there’s going to be more people that understand us and what we have gone through and our past,” said Eh Gay.

Consider their head coach Vincent Goldstein one of those people. 

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“I’ve learned a lot,” said Vincent Goldstein, Riverside girls soccer coach. “First of all, culturally, I know they’re people that are very vibrant. They’re a population of people that really enjoy soccer. Soccer’s really big among the Karen population. They’re a lot of my favorite students. They’re really good kids.”

That’s the beauty of being on a team because the assists come not only on the field, but also in life. 

“I would have a lot less life experience if I wouldn’t have met them,” said Goldstein. “Here at Riverside, we really embrace the Karen population. We want more of them to come here, so we do what we can to try to promote them and try to make this place welcoming to everyone, but including the Karen.”

And for these girls, their pact will be an everlasting one. 

Five-star offensive tackle Felix Ojo became the highest-rated Texas Tech commit in program history when he announced his pledge on July 4, three days after the institution of the House settlement’s revenue share model in college athletics.

Ojo (6-foot-7, 275 pounds) hails from Mansfield, Texas, where he plays for Lake Ridge High School. The highly-coveted prospect ranks as the top offensive tackle in the country and was entertaining major college football programs like Texas, Michigan, Georgia, Ole Miss and Ohio State, among others.

After officially visiting Michigan and Texas in June, Ojo shocked the football world by committing to the Red Raiders after signing what is believed to be the the largest revenue share NIL deal in history. The contract is worth $5.1 million over three years, according to Ojo’s agent Derrick Shelby of Prestige Management.

The “real question” surrounding Ojo’s pledge to Texas Tech centers around what he might have made before July 1, according to former Oregon and NFL tight end George Wrighster III.

“The real question is how much he got before July 1,” Wrighster wrote on X.

In addition to the $20.5 million that schools can directly allocate to student athletes this year, outside NIL deals totaling over $600, including those from booster collectives, are subject to the NIL Go clearinghouse ran by Deloitte and set up by the College Sports Commission.

Any additional funds that Ojo might have received before July 1 were not subject to disclosure.

Head coach Joey McGuire and the Red Raiders have been extremely active in the NIL space behind the efforts of general manager James Blanchard and The Matador Club collective founder Cody Campbell.

Texas Tech, which hasn’t won more than eight games in a season since 2009, signed the nation’s top transfer portal class in the 2025 cycle before landing one of the top high school players in the country.

Former Tustin High football coach Myron Miller (left) is shown coaching during his final season in 2018. At right is junior DB Khalil Terry, who has been a starter since his freshman season and is one of the state’s top Class of 2027 recruits. Photos: Fernando M. Donado / For OC Sports Zone & @Tiller_Football / X.com.

This upcoming season’s team at Tustin High in Orange County looks loaded. If the algorithms work in their favor and the Tillers land in a winnable CIF Southern Section playoff division (not D1), some history could be achieved. We now have all the history figured out as Tustin’s all-time scores since 1922 have been digitized thanks to an order by a community member and thanks to the Cal-Hi Sports card collection compiled by the late Bruce McIntosh. Tustin’s history includes having been coached by the winningest head coach in CIFSS history and having perhaps its best team ever led by the current head coach at UCLA.

FOR A PAGE THAT SHOWS ALL SCHOOLS IN THE STATE THAT HAVE HAD THESE FOOTBALL HISTORY HIGHLIGHTS ARTICLES DONE, CLICK HERE.

Note: We hope you enjoy this free post. State football record lists plus all of our upcoming preseason all-section, all-county or all-area football team posts will all be for Gold Club members only. To join our team today, CLICK HERE.

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In the more than 100 years of football that has been played at Tustin High in Orange County, there’s been one perfect season and two CIF Southern Section championships. But my oh my have the Tillers been close to other championships and there’s been some championship-level teams, including two that were 13-0 and 12-0, that just came up short in the playoffs.

The first games in the Tustin archive are shown for the 1922 season. The school didn’t have that much football success until the 1940s. The 1943 team, in fact, that ended 6-0 after a 49-0 win vs Brea Olinda and coached by Russ Sullivan during World War II, is still the only unbeaten and untied team in school history. The Tillers also went 4-0-2 (5-0-2 counting a forfeit) for an unbeaten season in 1940. Later in the decade, Tustin captured its first CIF Southern Section title with a 20-13 win in the Southern Division championship over Vista. Teams in those days didn’t play as many games so it was a title team with a 7-2 final record.

UCLA head coach DeShaun Foster is shown during 2024 ceremony at Tustin when he was inducted into school’s Hall of Fame. Photo: tustintillerfootball / Instagram.com.

Still the most famous game in Tustin history and still regarded as one of the best in Orange County history was the 1997 CIFSS Division V championship when the Tillers were 13-0 and were facing 13-0 Santa Margarita of Rancho Santa Margarita. It was one of the first 13-0 vs 13-0 matchups in state history and it was a shootout of epic proportions.

When the dust finally settled, Santa Margarita had emerged with a 55-42 victory. Tustin senior running back DeShaun Foster still had a game for the ages with 378 yards rushing and six touchdowns. The problem is that Santa Margarita QB Carson Palmer did the same and finished with 413 yards passing and five touchdowns.

The Tillers (13-1) still ended No. 13 overall in the final state rankings. Foster set the state record at the time by scoring 59 touchdowns. It’s still No. 3 on the all-time state list. He also set the CIFSS single-season record with 3,398 rushing yards, but didn’t get the state record because a small school phenom from that same season up north, John Bordenkircher from Dixon High, had 3,416 yards. Foster’s single season total is still in the top 15 in state history.

Foster later enjoyed a career in the NFL as a running back and is now known of course as the head coach at UCLA. He was the 1997 Mr. Football State Player of the Year. Palmer, still perhaps the best high school QB we’ve ever seen in person, then went on to win the Heisman Trophy at USC and had a long career in the NFL. Check out his career numbers and they are in Hall of Fame territory. Palmer is going to be the head coach back at Santa Margarita beginning for the 2025 season.

Tustin had another 13-0 team that lost in a CIFSS final and that took place in 1990. It was not a shootout at all and instead came in a 7-3 defensive slugfest with Sunny Hills of Fullerton.

There also was a 12-0 team in 2012 that was looking to repeat as CIFSS Southwest Division champions, but the Tillers were upset in the semifinals, 35-34, by Villa Park.

In the 2011 season, the team won its second CIFSS title by downing El Toro of Lake Forest, 35-28, in the Southwest Division final. Those divisional finals were played at Anaheim Stadium as part of a doubleheader with the major division championship later in the evening. In that game, Edward Tandy came up with a 52-yard interception return touchdown that gave Tustin a 28-21 lead in the third quarter. Later, after a Treshon Broughton interception stopped El Toro from potentially tying the score or winning, Tandy was the one who rushed for a first down on a 4th-and-2 from the team’s own 23-yard line that clinched the victory.

Going for it on that type of play was typical of when the Tustin program was led by head coach Myron Miller. He was the one who used primarily a double-wing rushing attack to put up huge offensive totals. Miller was Tustin’s head coach from 2005 to 2012, then stepped back when he became athletic director in 2013. He came back to be the head coach from 2016 to 2018 and since then Anthony Lopez (a previous assistant under Miller) has been the team’s head coach.

Miller’s team in 2001 posted on-the-field wins of 92-0 over Ocean View of Huntington Beach and 78-7 over Saddleback of Santa Ana. Both of those league wins, and a third one, however, were later reversed to forfeit losses and the team’s official 4-6 record (we list it 7-3 on-the-field) was not enough to get it into the CIFSS playoffs.

Tustin’s head coach from 1984 to 1992 was the legendary Marijon Ancich, who is more known for his many years at St. Paul of Santa Fe Spring. His son, Dusan, was the head coach at Villa Park when it beat Tustin in the 2012 playoff game. Marijon, who died in his early 80s in 2018, retired at St. Paul after the 2005 season with 344 career wins. That is still the coaching wins record for the CIFSS and is still second in state history, trailing only the 399 by Concord De La Salle’s Bob Ladoucuer (1979-2012).

Ancich was the head coach of the 1990 team that lost to Sunny Hills in a CIFSS final and his team in 1991 also fell in the 1991 CIFSS D6 championship. In that game, the Tillers lost to Valencia of Placentia, 27-7, a school that they ironically have dominated over the years.

Lopez got his first taste of taking a tough CIFSS playoff lost just two years ago. The Tillers posted a 10-0 regular season but in their first CIFSS D3 playoff game they lost 34-33 on a last-second field goal by Warren of Downey, which would go all the way to the title game where it lost, 24-21, to St. Bonaventure of Ventura.

Last year’s squad at Tustin kept up the momentum with a 9-2 record and won the first-ever Delta League title. That team also was in the CIFSS D3 playoffs, but lost in the first round, 30-13, to Loyola of Los Angeles.

This year’s team must replace graduated running back star Eimesse Essis (1,807 yds, 20 TDs), but has a plethora of returning talent, especially on defense. Juniors Taven Epps (LB) and Jon Ioane (DL) are both getting D1 major college interest. Junior Khalil Terry (DB) led the team in interceptions with four and had 52 tackles and also is a big-time recruit. Jeremiah Williams (6-1, 300) also had 16 tackles for loss and is yet another from the team’s junior class who is highly coveted by colleges.

Here are some other Tustin High football records that the school now has in its possession courtesy of this archive initiative:

DL Jon Ioane (6-3, 290) also played quarterback for Tustin as a sophomore during the 2024 season. Photo: @Tiller_Football / X.com.

WIN-LOSS RECORDS FOR EACH DECADE
(Starting in 1920s)

1920s 23-37-2

1930s 46-37-10 (+1 forfeit)

1940s 51-18-3 (+2 forfeits)

1950s 47-39-5

1960s 43-41-6

1970s 19-64-6

1980s 47-56-2

1990s 76-43-1

2000s 75-46-0 (-3 forfeits)

2010s 77-44-0

2020s 33-17-0

REPORTED ALL-TIME RECORD ON THE FIELD ENTERING 2025 SEASON

537 WINS, 442 LOSSES, 37 TIES (counting forfeit wins & losses, three each, the record would be 540-445-37)

Longest Win Streaks

21-0 Last 8 of 2011, First 13 of 2012
13-0 First 13 of 1990
13-0 First 13 of 1997

Longest Losing Streaks

0-18 Last 5 of 1970, 0-9 in 1971, First 4 of 1972
0-14 Last 6 of 1993, First 8 of 1994

Most Points Scored Single Game

92 Vs Ocean View of Huntington Beach (0), 2001*
*Later changed to forfeit loss.
82 Vs Santa Ana (19), 1996
82 Vs Western of Anaheim (7), 2014
81 Vs Ocean View of Huntington Beach (22), 2000
78 Vs Ocean View of Huntington Beach (7), 1999
78 Vs Saddleback of Santa Ana (7), 2001*
**Later changed to forfeit loss.
76 Vs Magnolia of Anaheim (26), 2007
75 Vs Buena Park (20), 2010
74 Vs Dana Hills of Dana Point (14), 2015
71 Vs Foothill of Tustin (28), 1998
71 Vs Santa Ana (7), 2000
71 Vs Westminster (0), 2000

Biggest Wins

92-0 Vs Ocean View of Huntington Beach, 2001*
*Later changed to forfeit loss.
82-7 Vs Western of Anaheim, 2014
78-7 Vs Ocean View of Huntington Beach, 1999
71-0 Vs Westminster, 2000
71-7 Vs Santa Ana, 2000
64-0 Vs Brea Olinda, 2008
82-19 Vs Santa Ana, 1996
63-0 Vs Huntington Beach, 2009
60-0 Vs Canyon (Anaheim), 1997

Most Points Allowed Single Game

69 Vs Canyon of Anaheim (6), 1983
57 Vs Los Altos of Hacienda Heights (25), 2003
56 Vs Alhambra (0), 1923
56 Vs Trabuco Hills of Mission Viejo (16), 2022
55 Vs Santa Margarita of Rancho SM (42), 1997
52 Vs Palm Desert (27), 2022

Biggest Losses

69-6 Vs Canyon (Anaheim), 1983
56-0 Vs Alhambra, 1923
49-0 Vs Servite (Anaheim), 1995

Remember, any school in the state can have this research finished in a customized fashion in return for a reasonable fee. For details, CLICK HERE.

Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports

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WEST ORANGE, NJ — In its third year of existence, the West Orange High School Mountaineers girls flag football team finished with its best season yet. 

As flag football continues to rise in the state, from just eight schools in 2021 to nearly 200 schools this year, girls flag football has seen a huge growth in skill, competition and coverage. West Orange has now solidified itself as one of the top programs in the state.

The girls accomplished some amazing feats this season. They won their first division championship, going 5-0 in the Super Football Conference–Freedom Division, outscoring opponents, 124-25. 

In total, the Mountaineers, under head coach Andrew Mazurek, finished with a 7-2-1 record. They had their first-ever playoff victory when they defeated Passaic County Tech, ranked No. 11 in the state at the time, 34-0. West Orange would go on to lose in the SFC semifinal game to No. 10-ranked Newark Central in double overtime, 6-0. 

The Mountaineers finished with an impressive No. 15 state ranking by NJ.com to end the season.

The team also had many great individual performances. They had five players selected to the All–North Jersey Team. They are senior captain wide receiver/linebacker Camaya Jean Louis; junior wide receiver Nola Duncan, sophomore quarterback Elianna Denis, sophomore running back/LB Shanise Barrino and sophomore linebacker Jacinya Garner. 

In addition, Jean Louis recently had her college signing day, becoming the first flag football player from West Orange to commit to play in college. She will be continuing her athletic and academic career at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. She also finished her amazing high school career as the first player in the state to finish with more than 100 tackles (flag pulls) and 100 receptions. 

Jean Louis and Duncan also were selected to play in the Phil Simms North/South All-Star Game last month.

Garner and Duncan also were named to the first-ever All-State Team by NJ.com. Garner was among the seven best defensive players in the state to be selected to First Team All-State. Garner finished the season with 65 tackles (flag pulls) and 23 sacks. In her first two seasons, she has totaled 106 tackles and 39 sacks. Both marks are among the best in the state. 

Duncan has been one of the best receivers in the state over the last two seasons. She has 101 receptions for 1,377 yards and 18 touchdowns. She was selected to the Second Team All-State Offense.

In more exciting news, Garner and Barrino are members of the New York Jets’ Official Flag Club Travel Team, called ELITE. They went through an extensive tryout in the spring to be selected as inaugural members of this prestigious club. ELITE features top high school players from New Jersey and New York. Their mission is to support, elevate and empower girls flag football by giving young athletes the opportunity to connect with the Jets team and experience football at a more professional level. The team uses the Jets’ facility in Florham Park to practice and prepare for games and is supplied with top-of-the-line gear and resources. The resources provided will develop girls flag football, provide pathways to college scholarships and support opportunities for the USA National team, as girls flag football becomes an Olympic sport in 2028. 

Follow the Mountaineers: @wo_flagfootball, and the Jets Flag Elite: @nyjetsflagelite on Instagram.

West Orange HS

2025 statistical leaders

OFFENSE

• Elianna Denis: 1,521 passing yards, 18 touchdowns.
• Shanise Barrino: 517 rushing yards, 181 receiving yards, 9 TDs.
• Nola Duncan: 674 receiving yards, 9 TDs.
• Olivia Masse: 305 receiving yards, 3 TDs.
• Camaya Jean Louis: 224 receiving yards, 2 TDs.

DEFENSE

• Jacinya Garner: 65 tackles, 23 sacks, 1 interception.
• Camaya Jean Louis: 44 tackles, 7 sacks, 5 INTs.
• Shanise Barrino: 28 tackles, 10 sacks.
• Luana Denardi, sophomore: 21 tackles, 5 sacks, 4 INTs.

Photos Courtesy of West Orange HS head girls flag football coach Andrew Mazurek

  West Orange High School girls flag football