‘These girls are ready’: Faith Christian kicks off state championship Saturday with D-IV title game against Palisades
· Yahoo Sports
There are not many schools smaller than Faith Christian High School out of west Yuba City. The Lions have a 9-12 enrollment of just 52 students – 12 of whom play on a varsity girls basketball team that has rewritten history the past four years. Led by superstar and No. 3 all-time prep scorer Lauren Harris, the FCS girls look to put a finishing bow on the unprecedented past four years with a win over Palisades Charter High (Pacific Palisades) today (Saturday) in the California Interscholastic Federation state Division IV championship. Tipoff is set for 10 a.m. at the Golden I Center (downtown Sacramento), a site that the No. 1 seeded Lions (33-1) are extremely familiar with after back-to-back Sac-Joaquin Section championships won at Golden 1 Center, and a third banner won four years ago.
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Three section titles in four years; one NorCal Regional title won at home a year ago; and now a CIF state title against a school that overwhelms FCS in size. Palisades (16-13), out of the Los Angeles City Section, had about 3,000 students before the 2025 Palisades Fire that dropped enrollment to approximately 2,500, according to recent data.
Still that is a massive difference and big advantage in terms of a pool of athletes to draw from. Palisades, in the regular season, played programs like Westchester, the No. 1 team in LA City; fellow 1,400-plus school Palos Verdes High; and many schools out of the Southern Section, the largest section in California.
In fact, Palisades beat No. 1 seed Marina out of the Southern Section, en route to Golden 1 Center. Palisades comes in as a No. 5 seed in the state playoffs following a season in which the school did not return to its campus until Jan. 27 following the fire. Forty percent of its campus was burned, forcing Palisades to make a Santa Monica Sears Building its temporary home. Multiple players in its program lost their homes, including now senior Ayla Teegardin, who will suit up for her final prep game today. Teegardin is one of four seniors on the Palisades roster, coached by LeBre Merritt, who will be looking to help a team go from a fire-torn city to state champions in a little over a year.
FCS head coach Geoff Harris said that Palisades could be the sentimental favorite come today, but that won’t stop his squad from giving it all it has one final time.
“Yeah, maybe,” Coach Harris said. “Hopefully we can just have a good solid basketball game with all that external stuff not playing any sort of a part … we’ll try to do the best we can.”
It will take one more dynamic performance from the Lions’ Big Three of Lauren Harris; Presley Berry and Mia Bryan – the latter has dominated at both ends of late. Bryan had 21 in Tuesday’s Northern California D-IV Final, several of which came late in the second half as Lathrop closed to within four late in the third quarter. The junior Bryan, who will be the unquestioned leader in 2026-27 for FCS, is three points shy of 1,000 for her career coming into the state final; has dropped double figures in five of her last seven games and has a season-high of 27 delivered back in January.
“I have grown in hustle and grit and I have wanted it,” Bryan said. “I have grown defensively and I’m very proud of my defensive performance. We all work together well.”
Bryan is the speed and open-floor threat, while Berry slashes and finds openings inside and Harris drops bombs from Steph Curry range. Harris has scored over 3,500 career points and is the all-time prep single-season and career 3-point leader.
“It’s going to take us playing the kind of basketball that we trained for that we are capable of,” Coach Harris said. “It’s going to take everything we got; at this stage you can’t take plays off … You gotta give everything and leave it all on the court. These girls are ready to do it.”
Saturday’s state schedule
Division IV Girls: Palisades (16-13) vs. Faith Christian-Yuba City (33-1), 10 a.m.
Division IV Boys: San Juan Hills (21-14) vs. Sacred Heart Prep (20-11), noon
Division II Girls: St. Joseph-Santa Maria (17-15) vs. Sierra Pacific (24-11), 2 p.m.
Division II Boys: Bakersfield Christian (24-11) vs. Memorial-Fresno (27-7), 4 p.m.
Open Division Girls: Ontario Christian (33-2) vs. Archbishop Mitty (28-2), 6 p.m.
Open Division Boys: Sierra Canyon (29-1) vs. Salesian-Richmond (29-3), 8 p.m.
*In Northern California, NFHS Network will carry each game