{"id":231289,"date":"2026-03-22T14:13:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T14:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/231289\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T14:13:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T14:13:17","slug":"boys-basketball-coach-of-the-year-mike-leduc-of-damien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/231289\/","title":{"rendered":"Boys’ basketball coach of the year: Mike LeDuc of Damien"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Coaching high school basketball since the 1979-80 season and being the second-winningest coach in state history with 1,127 victories, Mike LeDuc is one of those old-school coaches who likes to push his players forward and fade into the background when team success comes.<\/p>\n

This season at Damien, LeDuc can take a bow for guiding the Spartans to the state Division I championship<\/a> with little size but a group of players who loved to shoot threes, never stopped hustling on defense and executed close to perfection on the biggest stage at Golden 1 Center and during his team\u2019s playoff run.<\/p>\n

For turning a group of players he fondly called \u201coverachievers\u201d into champions, LeDuc is The Times\u2019 boys\u2019 basketball coach of the year.<\/p>\n

Through his many years of coaching at Damien and previously at Glendora, he\u2019s mentored such outstanding players as Tracy Murray, Casey Jacobsen and Cameron Murray. Now Cameron\u2019s sophomore son, CJ, plays for Damien. It\u2019s a full circle moment for LeDuc, who was holding his granddaughter at the awards ceremony in Sacramento.<\/p>\n

As the years go by and the game keeps changing, LeDuc continues to adapt, adjust and power on. <\/p>\n

LeDuc\u2018s answer is, \u201cBasketball is a real simple game. It\u2019s a game of repetition and if you do it over and over, you expect it to be done perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coaching high school basketball since the 1979-80 season and being the second-winningest coach in state history with 1,127…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[10658,104920,8825,104917,18663,100484,423,7244,48,52,51,47,50,49,104915,9442,278,104919,104916,104918,72],"class_list":["post-231289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-basketball-coach","tag-big-stage","tag-boy","tag-cameron-murray","tag-champion","tag-damien","tag-game","tag-group","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mike-leduc","tag-player","tag-season","tag-sophomore-son","tag-team-success","tag-tracy-murray","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}