Finally, Friday’s SoCal Prep Legends Award Show is here, live on KABC 7 following the NBA Finals

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By Tom Hoffarth
The culmination of a celebrated Southern California high school sports season comes to another moment worth acknowledging — the first-of-its-kind televised awards show to recognize those who shined the brightest.
Friday night’s Southern California Toyota Dealers SoCal Prep Legends Awards show on KABC-Channel 7, airing at approximately 8:30 p.m. immediately after Game 4 of the NBA Finals, will spotlight nine categories, including the boys and girls athlete of the year.Rob Fukuzaki will host the live hour-long event from the ABC7 Glendale studios, with former Lakers star Norm Nixon and Tracy Murray, the ex-UCLA great and Lakers player who was the state basketball player of the year at Glendora High in 1989, also part of the broadcast combined with the popular SportsZone postgame show.
The staff of the Southern California News Group, spearheaded by executive sports editor Tom Moore, high school sports editor Fred Robledo and SCPL coordinator Tarek Fattal, selected the categories and finalists. They brought together an idea created by news group vice president of marketing Bill Van Laningham that launched as weekly prep spotlight award for readers of the 11 SCNG media outlets — the Los Angeles Daily News, Orange County Register, Long Beach Press Telegram, the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, the Daily Breeze of Torrance, the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, San Bernardino Sun, Whittier Daily News, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and Redlands Daily Facts.

Cheryl Fair, the KABC president and general manager who has been at the station for more than 20 years as an executive, calls this awards show the perfect marriage of the newspaper group, the TV platform and digital properties, giving exposure to the thousands of student-athletes of approximately 700 high schools covering the CIF Southern Section and L.A. City Section.

“This gives us all the ability to focus on this in a meaningful way and interact with all these young people who worked so hard,” Fair said. “We are all about creating great content in the community. We have some incredibly creative people on this project.”

KABC news director Rob Elmore notes that “every town is a sports town at the grassroots level and local high school sports is where it happens. This gives us all such a great opportunity to make a connection. We haven’t been able to do it on this level before. We want to take this to the next level and beyond, use this show as the start of something bigger.”

To make it more than just an awards presentation show, executive producer Edd Adamko has orchestrated special involvement with the Dodgers, Lakers, Rams, Sparks, Galaxy and other Southern California sports celebrities with surprised taped segments involving the winners.

Van Laningham’s inspiration for the project came several years ago in trying to tie together how the SCNG entities honored their local high school athletes each year beyond an all-area team or an all-star game.

“Local news and prep sports has always been the strongest component of our coverage in all our markets and we wanted to have that all come together in our larger footprint,” said Van Laningham. “I have also been impressed with how the ESPY Awards have been a very cool event, and how we might be able to replicate that in some way to make it special for the athletes and their families.

“Finding a TV partner was a key part of this project and it is incredibly fulfilling to get to this point where all the work and effort has come together. We are very happy how a station with the prominence of ABC7 has come on board and elevated this.”

Moore said the dozens of SCNG editors and reporters involved in the vetting process took the task seriously as a year-around task.

“Prep Legends has become a website, a social media channel, something we do 365 days a year, collecting high school video, voting for the athlete of the week — it has been a way to experiment in how to best cover the prep world and raise awareness of all that’s going on across Southern California,” said Moore.

“This is one of the best regions of high school athletes in the country and has produced people like Jackie Robinson, Billie Jean King, John Elway, Lisa Leslie. When you are picking athletes of the year from this region, you are looking at potential Hall of Famers.

“With the recent expansion of Orange County and Riverside, we can go forward to make this project a central part of elevating local coverage and being more innovative about how we cover this. I feel there is great anticipation for this show and all the exposure it gives everyone.”

The final piece to making the awards show happen was getting Southern California Toyota Dealers on board as a title sponsor.

“Once the campaign was a go, the Southern California Toyota Dealers were all-in,” said KABC vice president and sales manager Spencer McCoy. “They believe that honoring the achievements of these young athletes aligned perfectly with the dealer’s commitment to their local communities.”

Fair noted that airing the show in prime time on Friday night to capture the audience from the NBA Finals game audience was also done to showcase “the importance of this, to highlight these players. I had two daughters who played sports in high school and I know what it takes to support them with practices and games. When a kid excels, it’s an achievement for the whole family.”

The five finalists for the top awards include: • Boys Athlete of the Year: Chino Hills basketball’s Lonzo Ball, North Torrance football star Mique Juarez, Vista Murrieta track star Michael Norman, Santa Margarita swimming standout Grant Shoults and Arcadia cross country champion Phillip Rocha.

• Girls Athlete of the Year: Great Oak long distance runner Destiny Collins, Harvard-Westlake soccer and track standout Courtney Corrin, Chaminade basketball’s Valerie Higgins, Redondo volleyball’s Norene Iosia and Peninsula tennis’ Ena Shibahara.

• Team of the Year: Chino Hills boys and Chaminade girls basketball, Centennial football, Great Oak cross country and Santa Margarita girls soccer.

• Coach of the Year: Great Oak cross country’s Doug Soles, Brea girls basketball’s Jeff Sink, Chino Hills boys basketball’s Steve Baik, Chaminade girls basketball’s Kelli DiMuro and Taft girls soccer’s Walter Escobar.

Also honored will be the Game of the Year, Play of the Year, Best Individual Performance, and the Boys and Girls Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

The show will also recognize local schools that are involved in Special Olympics Unified Sports Program, which promotes inclusion. The annual Southern California Special Olympics Summer Games are Saturday and Sunday at Cal State Long Beach. Last July, ESPN and KABC were involved in extensive coverage of the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games in downtown L.A.

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