It was a rainy night in Coronado late in the season, and I walked up to Leo Hawkinson and asked him, “How tall are you, really?”
The Vikings were warming up on a court adjacent to the main gym floor at Coronado High, waiting for Senior Night introductions to be completed. Hawkinson, half a head shorter, looked right in my eyes and, with a straight face, said, “I’m 5 feet 11 inches tall.”
Having covered La Jolla the whole season, since an epic 10-game win streak to open the season, I replied, “There’s no way you’re 5 feet 11 inches tall. You’re 5 feet 8 inches.”
The team lists him as 5 feet 8 inches tall on MaxPreps, but no matter. It is this playfulness, this confidence, what turns out to be a powder keg inside a compact frame that has helped light the fuse of excitement and hope for Viking basketball fans this season.
After the 10-game skein, four more wins after a pair of losses to stand 14-2 one game into City League play had coach Paul Baranowski’s 2024-2025 squad on top of the world. And their leaders, their gamblers, were the newly-matched pair of 6 feet 3 inches tall guard Brody Sessa, a junior, with Hawkinson, another junior, and a transfer from St. Augustine.
Students turned out in droves, sitting in the front row of the stands in the venerable “Big Gym” on campus, when La Jolla’s version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came out with guns a-blazing and knocked off Coronado, 58-57, in a league cliffhanger Friday, Jan. 24.
This came after a nail-biter on the road the previous Friday, Jan. 17, when the same formula won out against Canyon Hills: Sessa and “Hawk” clawing and scrambling for each loose ball, Brody going coast-to-coast on swooping layups, Leo popping a mid-range fall-away jumper after a back-to-the-basket, right-left-juke-and-lay-up.
Equally game were seniors Eyal Amsalem and Seigo Lavinsky, not long but likewise hungry, to provide some leadership and equilibrium on the roller coaster ride of league play when it hit some snags. Asked about the Vikings’ competitiveness and penchant for diving for loose balls, Amsalem answered, “That’s how we practice. That’s how coach (Baranowski) teaches us to play.”
In the first Islander game, production was more in line with earlier in the season—Sessa checking in with 19 points, Hawkinson 15 as they propelled the red-and-black with scoring averages of about that through the first half of the season.
Added power and muscle came in the front court, with 6 feet 6 inches tall senior Lance Braga and blossoming newcomer Carson Diehl, a 6 feet 2 inches tall jumper, combining on the boards. Braga, whose father grew up in Brazil, led the Viking unit with 22 points in the win over the Rattlers. Diehl had some big moments in midseason when he not only snagged several rebounds but also tapped some opposing shots away with an intimidating and surprising presence in the paint.
Sessa, after another close win over Canyon Hills, 43-39, Jan. 31, said, “We had to play a lot of defense. It was a good effort.”
