Across two days last weekend, Mira Costa High School won four CIF Southern Section championships. The boys volleyball team swept Loyola in three sets Friday night. Saturday morning, the boys lacrosse team beat St. Francis 9-8 to claim the Division 2 title. Saturday afternoon, the girls lacrosse team beat Santa Margarita 12-6 for the Division 1 title. And Saturday evening, the boys track and field team won the Division 1 title at Moorpark High by four points over Loyola — the program’s first CIF-SS championship in school history.
In volleyball, boys lacrosse, and girls lacrosse, Mira Costa’s title-clinching opponents were all private schools — Loyola, St. Francis, and Santa Margarita, respectively. The boys track championship was won at a multi-team meet, with Loyola finishing second in the team scoring. Across the three head-to-head finals and the section track meet, Mira Costa beat Loyola twice.
That detail was not lost on Mira Costa athletic director Mike Rosenthal.
“You beat all private schools,” Rosenthal said. “So it’s a huge accomplishment for the public schools and the public school system. Because in California, we play in the same championships as private schools. So it’s really neat to see that and push through and beat private schools.”
Private schools in California are not bound by district enrollment boundaries and, unlike public schools, can recruit student-athletes from across regions and offer financial aid — advantages widely understood to factor into the competitive landscape of CIF Southern Section play, which conducts its championships across divisions of competitive equity rather than school size.
The weekend brings Mira Costa to six CIF Southern Section titles for the 2025-26 academic year. The girls cross country team won the section title in the fall. Two weeks ago, the girls beach volleyball team reclaimed its section title from Redondo. The four weekend titles bring the cumulative count to a half-dozen — a remarkable year by any school’s measure, and an extraordinary one for a single public high school.
Rosenthal, a former NFL offensive tackle and Notre Dame All-American who became Costa’s athletic director in 2022, said the weekend was less about the championship count than what each program, and each kid, had to push through to get there.
“Girls lacrosse has been knocking on the door for the last three years and finally pushed through,” he said. “The team lost a heartbreaker at Marlborough two years ago, went undefeated and earned a number-one seed last year only to lose to Foothill in the playoffs, and this year finally beat Santa Margarita — a team they had lost to earlier in the season. It’s just incredible to see that group push through and win.”
Coached by Maddy Buss, the girls lacrosse program practices at 5:30 a.m. during January. Rosenthal is the one who opens the facility and turns on the lights for them.
He pointed to one moment, watching from the stands, that captured what the team had become.
“Lauren Fan is one of our players, and she makes three huge effort plays to turn the tide of that game,” he said. “It was all grit and hustle. That is what this is all about. Sports is about getting to a barrier and then working through it and pushing through. That’s what that girls team did.”
The boys lacrosse team, coached by Aaron Karsh, won its second CIF-SS title in three years — but this time as a four-seed rather than the top-seeded favorite they had been in their first championship run.
“This was a completely different team,” Rosenthal said. “A couple of these seniors were valuable contributors to that first title, but the last time we were the number one seed, so there’s pressure involved in living up to that. This group was a four-seed and just battled and battled and battled. It’s special to see them push through.”
The boys volleyball team, coached by Greg Snyder, took down a Loyola program that has been their bitterest postseason rival — and did it after replacing six players from last year’s national championship team, who all went on to Division I college programs.
And then there was the boys track and field team, coached by Moe Russell — a Mira Costa Class of 1996 graduate who has been coaching at his alma mater for 29 years, and who, until Saturday, had never won a CIF Southern Section championship.
“Mo is an institution,” Rosenthal said. “The first weekend I was here, and I got the job, he was in the weight room, and he and I sat and talked for an hour. Like, what can we do better? And just getting to know him over the years — he does so much for those kids, and those kids do so much for him, and pour into him, and vice versa.”
Rosenthal said that the bonds between his coaches are something he relies on personally as well as professionally.
“There’s coaches who I lean on every day for support, for advice, that I talk through problems with and get their opinions,” he said. “It’s an invaluable resource. Mo will cover me if I have something at night and I need a scoreboard turned on. To see him, and the emotion of him winning, in that team winning — it’s so special. And then the bond that he has with [hurdles coach Kelvyn] Gamble and [distance coach] Hunter [Johnson], it’s a tremendously close coaching staff and athletic department.”
He made a point to name two more.
“I’m also throwing in our trainers, Franklin Ortiz and Ryan Kunihiro,” he said. “Those guys go on the road with our teams to make sure those kids are healthy and supported. It’s a cumulative effort for all of us.”
As remarkable as the weekend was, much of Mira Costa’s spring season is not yet finished. The boys volleyball team began its state tournament defense Tuesday. The boys track team’s entire CIF roster — every athlete the program brought to the section finals — qualified for the CIF-SS Masters Meet next weekend, a step toward the state meet that distance coach Hunter Johnson called a first in program history. Baseball and softball are still in postseason play.
Rosenthal said the count of titles is not what the weekend was actually about.
“Take away the championships,” he said. “Take away the four championships this weekend, and the six this year. It’s about the personal relationships. These kids and these coaches go through a lot together over the course of the season. It’s just amazing.”
