Her freshman year, Alissa Pham was the low girl on the totem pole going through an “embarrassing” initiation ritual, where she and the other freshmen donned ridiculous clothing and wigs and went out bowling.
Pham embraced the whacky makeup and odd clothing and just had fun with her new teammates and bonded with them.”
“I think initiation is one of my best memories ever,” Pham said. “The fun we had especially with just a bunch of random girls. People you’d never expected to be friends with, now I’m really good friends with some of them.
Little did she know then, wearing an afro wig and running through Morgan Hill Bowl, how far she would come in four years.
By contrast, the soft spoken and stoic Kyle Quadros kept his focus over four years at Live Oak.
He led with his work ethic on the field, if not with his words.
Both are now the Live Oak Athletes of the Year to cap off high school careers that saw plenty of successes for both athletes.
Quadros played on two league championship teams his senior year, going 9-1 overall and 7-0 in the Santa Teresa Division playing football and 15-12 overall and 10-4 in Santa Teresa play.
Both led to Central Coast Section playoff berths.
“I liked the challenge of trying to still do good in school and do good in both sports. I liked the challenge,” Quadros
Pham earned a playoff seed with the Live Oak soccer team
The whole time, both athletes had to juggle school with practice for both Live Oak and travel teams in their respective sports.
“I think having a sport made me focus more on school. You have to manage your time better. You can’t really just forget about school and keep doing your sport,” Pham said.
Sport is also allowing Pham to continue her schooling, at least without having to cover many of its costs.
Pham received a scholarship to play for Fresno State in the fall, which was the crescendo of her stellar high school career.
In 2011, Pham was named the Sophomore of the Year in the Mt. Hamilton Division. She followed that up with First Team honors her junior and senior years.
Despite being hurt for three games midway through the 2013-14 campaign, she still led the team in goals with 11 and was third in assists with seven.
“Knowing that you have a team that can help you and support you and keep you going in that direction, it always feels good,” Pham said. “To be able to make it to CCS all four years was pretty fun. You don’t experience that all the time. Not a lot of people get to go to CCS and know what it’s like.”
Track and field and soccer seem to go hand-in-hand as both require athletes to be great runners. But Pham shied away from the traditional running routes, opting not to focus solely on the sprints or distance.
Although she competed on the girls relay teams, she also found success in the throwing events and the jumps.
It paid off as Pham advanced to the CCS finals in the discus and triple jump.
“The jumps I just did one day just for fun because I did jumping in middle school. At one of the meets, I asked if I could do the triple jump really quick. I did it and it was one of the top marks in CCS,” Pham said.
The throws also gave Pham an excuse to not have to run. Since she did soccer year round, she said she wanted to avoid the extra riggers.
“Because I was playing club soccer too, I was kind of lazy with the running, so I tried to stay away from all the sprinters,” Pham said. “I just had fun throwing.”
Like Pham, Quadros was also a two-sport athlete, dominating in football and baseball.
“Being in football kept me in shape for baseball knowing that baseball is not near of an active sport as football,” Quadros said. “Just being in football shape kept me good for baseball.”
In his 2014 campaign, Quadros earned Senior of the Year honors for baseball—the second in as many years to do so—to lead a group of nine Acorns named to the All League team, including his coach CJ Goularte who was named Coach of the Year.
Quadros was also named to the First Team All League in 2013.
For his senior season, Quadros held a 5-7 record on the hill with a 2.70 ERA with 62 strikeouts against 24 walks.
With the bat, Quadros boasted a .256 average with 12 RBIs and 12 runs scored. He also had .645 OPS.
Quadros admits he prefers baseball to football. He’s going to West Valley College to play baseball next year. But his preference didn’t negate his talent.
Quadros was named the Linebacker of the Year in the Santa Teresa Division for football his senior season, helping to lead the Acorns to a 9-1 regular season record and a perfect 7-0 league mark.
His senior year, he recorded 122 total tackles, including 69 solo tackles. He was second only to his brother, Ryan, who had 138 total tackles.
The duo accounted for 260 take downs of the team’s 805 total tackles.
The year before, Live Oak was off to a 5-0 start in 2012 when off the field issues led to the dismissal of some key players and resulted in the Acorns going into a tailspin to miss the playoffs.
But thanks to the leadership of Quadros and the record-setting running of Trevor Bearden, Live Oak in 2013 picked up where it left off at the start of the 2012 season
“It was great knowing that we could come back even stronger the next year and win league,” Quadros said.
Honorable mention
While Quadros had a strong senior year, his teammate Bearden’s senior season will forever be in the record books.
Bearden set the career rushing record for CCS that had stood for 10 years. He tallied a four-year mark of 6,214 yards. He threatened the single-season mark, rushing for 2,737 yards, coming up a little less than 300 yards short of the record set in 2012.
The Butte College bound football player led Live Oak to a CCS playoff berth for the first time since 2010 and the first home playoff game since 2007.
He was named the MVP of the Santa Teresa Division in 2013 and was Junior of the Year in 2012.
