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The best night in San Francisco High School sports — outside of game night — was in full throttle at the 109-year-old San Francisco Italian Athletic Club last month when Riordan High School boys basketball coach Joey Curtin interrupted a speech from St. Ignatius coach Jason Greenfield.
Greenfield was honored as the Boys Basketball Coach of the Year at the lively 10th Annual SFIAC High School Awards Banquet when the two rival coaches pulled a fast one.
They turned the table, the room, switching the presenter to recipient.
They broke out a plaque for the event’s founder, organizer and emcee, University boys coach Randy Bessolo, who has handed out more than 300 awards himself over the years.
The hardware was to congratulate him on his 500th win that he picked up during the regular season, his 20th, which featured 28 total wins and the Red Devils’ fifth North Coast Section title since 2019.
But the win total represented only a portion of Bessolo’s contributions to the region, one which elicited most in the fanciful affair of more than 300 patrons to stand and applaud.
“I love Randy’s commitment to high school basketball and his passion for the game,” Curtin said. “It shows in how his team plays and his success as a coach.”
And carries well beyond the court.
Beyond founding, organizing, writing and presenting the awards at the SFIAC gala, Bessolo also:
* Heads up the Bay City Warriors U17 program, where he’s developed more than 100 players to play collegiately, including 20 at the D1 level.
* Created, selected and runs the San Francisco City All-Star Game, which features the best boys and girls seniors in the city.
* When COVID hit, he and current San Marin state basketball championship coach Chris Laviotis co-founded the Bay Area Basketball Coaches Association (BABCA) at first to create a place for coaches to commence and align, but ultimate to advocate as part of the “Let Them Play” movement to restart the playing of basketball in not only the Bay Area, but California.
The organization, now more than 100 boys and girls coaches, campaigned for legal action that helped jump start the 2021 spring season. It ultimately morphed into an action organization to advocate for all student athletes on issues like competitive equity and generally promotes positive coaching.
“He pours so much of his personal time into trying to make things better for high school sports,” Laviotis said. “We need more people like Randy in our profession.”
That’s a high standard, says CIF Associate Executive Director Brian Seymour. Beyond even, in some regards, human capacity.
“He’s the energizer bunny,” Seymour said last week.
HARDWOOD OF OPPORTUNITY
Seymour’s comments came three weeks before Bessolo hops into his biggest venture, organizing, planning, and running the Boys Cali Live 26, California’s exclusive NCAA certified Scholastic Live Event to be held June 26-28 in Rocklin.
Some 176 teams — many of the best in the state along with some from Oregon, Arizona and Nevada — will compete in pool play with more than 150 college coaches on hand with notepads, swag and possibly scholarship offers.
Unlike AAU events, where club teams participate, these are high school teams, allowed to fine tune and polish their squads under the “scholastic” umbrella, meaning it is sanctioned by the NFHS/CIF.
Seymour and the CIF selected Bessolo and his BABCA team for when Northern California hosts the Cali Live events, which includes Girls Cali Live, alternating between Southern and Northern California sites.
This is the second time Bessolo has served as the boys tournament director, with the greater Sacramento region hosting each time.
Boys Cali Live 24 was hosted at Roebbelen Center in Roseville, which was booked in late June due to the County Fair. Cali Live 26 will be held at Hardwood Palace in Rocklin, along with local high schools, Whitney and Rocklin.
“Randy has been instrumental in getting the CaliLive events for boys and girls up and running,” Seymour said. “He led the charge in getting BABCA organized and developed a team of NorCal coaches all working to provide opportunities for boys and girls CIF teams to compete in front of college coaches.”
MAKING A BIG DIFFERENCE
Basketball has always been a vital part of Bessolo’s life, though he made a healthy living — still does — in real estate.
A Bay Area native, the 61-year-old earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and moved to Chicago where he made his mark in business, though his first love was always the round ball. Basketball was no side hustle.
A player himself at The Thacher School in Ojai and Columbia University, Bessolo started coaching Club basketball in Chi-Town (2000-05) sending teams to national tournaments and producing players who moved on to colleges at Illinois, DePaul, Northwestern, Duke, North Carolina and UAB.
When he returned to the Bay Area in 2005, he immediately hooked up with the Bay Area Warriors and got a job at University, turning the Red Devils into a small school state power. They’ve won at least 20 games 19 straight seasons (not counting COVID 2020-21), won 17 league and five North Coast Section championships. During this past 28-6 season, when they set a school record for points (77 per game), they reached the NorCal playoffs 16 straight years, winning titles in 2015 and 2019.
Bessolo has helped send more than 100 players to college programs, at least 20 at the Division I level like UCLA, USF, Nevada and Santa Clara. Most of his kids from The City have landed at academic juggernauts like Columbia, Yale, Dartmouth, along with Middlebury, Williams, Pomana, Lewis & Clark.
Coaches from all those places and more figure to find their way to Boys Cali Live 26.
“The whole purpose of coaching high school kids is to prepare them for life,” he said. “At the high school level, you have the chance to make the most difference.”
Even though University enrolls just 490 high-school aged kids, Bessolo’s aim was to follow the words of Hall of Fame college football coach Frosty Westering, who wrote a book: “Make the Big Time Where You Are.”
That’s exactly what Bessolo has done, expanding his horizons far beyond the Bay Counties League or AAU circles.
By organizing with the West Region’s top high school coaches and rubbing shoulders with college basketball’s greatest minds and movers and shakers, he’s made a massive difference, according to Salesian-Richmond coach Bill Mellis.
“Randy has been such a big influence not only in the San Francisco area, but in all of Northern California and the state,” said Mellis, Northern California’s winningest active coach (according to CalHiSports) with 696 victories.
TOP TEAMS, PLAYERS, TRANSFERS
Salesian is among the squads signed up along with Northern California’s other top team, Riordan. The Pride and Crusaders met for the NorCal Division 1 championship in March. Second-seed Salesian pulled off the upset on the road, 59-54, before losing in the state finals to Sierra Canyon-Chatsworth.
Though both Riordan and Salesian lost a boatload of talent to graduation, each just last week gained high-level transfers.
Boss Mhoon, a 6-foot-5 small forward who just completed his sophomore season, is ranked the No. 49 player in the country by 247Sports for the Class of 2028. The transfer from the King’s Academy in Sunnyvale has offers from Stanford, Nevada, USF and San Diego.
He’ll join another talented roster that includes foreign exchange students Emmanuel Ahamefule and Gabrielius Kerys, along with other top D1 prospects Judah Van Ewijk (Class of 2029) and Cole White to a program that has gone a combined 83-9 the last three seasons under Curtin.
See all the top players in California selected by CalHiSports' Ronnie Flores from Class of 2029 and Class of 2028.
Salesian, which has gone a combined 87-10 in the same span, added one of the state’s top point guards in NJ Gray, the Marin County Athletic League Player of the Year in 2026. Gray, who has 14 reported offers, including Cal, Stanford and Virginia Tech, averaged 25 points, seven rebounds, four assists and three steals per game last season at Branson Ross.
Mellis has plenty more returning in Tayshaun Bozeman, Asante Johnson and Juelz Richo. Salesian and Riordan, playing in different pools, likely will meet in a championship game on Sunday. Mellis is just thankful for his team and so many others get the chance to showcase their skills in front of college coaches.
He largely thanks Bessolo, who doesn’t collect a dime for all his work, and his management team for the opportunity.
“The fact he’s established both his AAU and high school programs in such top notch fashion is pretty incredible,” Mellis said. “All while putting together a great Cali Live event year after year? I don’t know where he finds all the time. He must not sleep.”
