Putting the Falcons on the map

Midway through the afternoon inside the tiny Crescenta Valley High gymnasium, Ed Goorjian would gather his athletes around in a huddle following a practice with son Greg not too far away bouncing or shooting a basketball.

It became almost a common occurrence throughout the years. The Crescenta Valley boys’ basketball team would routinely roll up victories and make lengthy postseason runs with a star-studded cast that would eventually move on to bigger things on the collegiate stage and in the working world.

What Ed yearned for was the possibility of continuing to build the tradition he started with the Falcons in 1960 and see it through with Greg on the floor at guard helping spur the Falcons to further prominence.

In time, that prospect became a reality for Ed and Greg, each of whom are among 12 former Falcons standouts to be honored in the first class of the Crescenta Valley High School Athletic Hall of Fame at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Chevy Chase Country Club.

“I started a program up in 1960 that just had sophomores,” said the 82-year-old Ed Goorjian, who has resided in Oceanside since 1989. “The second year, I had no seniors and then we had seniors in the 1962-63 season.

“When we started the program, we had kids who worked hard all of the time. We continued that through the years. Someday, I wanted to see Greg on the team and working hard just like the previous players did.”

Father and son were more than just footnotes in the program.

Goorjian compiled a varsity record of 328-103 (.761 winning percentage) between 1962-78 at Crescenta Valley, leading the Falcons to seven league championships with top players that included Allen Holmquist, Gene Sutherland, Gordon Tope, Troy Jones, Bill Boyd, Bob Trowbridge, Brad Holland and sons Brian, Greg and Kevin.

Greg, who averaged 43.4 points per game — without the aid of the three-point shot — during the 1977-78 campaign, turned out to be one of the greatest scorers in the history of high school basketball in California.

In 1978, he was named CIF Southern Section Division 4-A Most Valuable Player, as he scored an amazing 1,259 points. In three years on the Falcons varsity team, Goorjian scored 2,506 points, which ranks among the elite in the history of the CIF Southern Section. Goorjian went on to play at three colleges — Arizona State, UNLV and Loyola Marymount. He would later go on to earn All-West Coast Athletic Conference honors at LMU.