Amid Jarrod Hoagland’s fourth season as head coach, the team learned over the holiday that he would not return after leading the Eagles to a 7-5 start. The school moved quickly to find a name to step in, and Gabe Pethel, the school’s athletic director, dug up Mark Burton.

It was Burton on the other end of those text messages, and while the team converged on Layton with hardly a clue of what to expect, the local hoops mogul was hard at work.

Layton Christian Academy is the 2026 Standard-Examiner All-Area Girls Basketball Team of the Year.

Burton, who owns and operates Burton Basketball Academy in Pleasant View, alongside his son and LCA alum Mark Burton Jr., knows a thing or two about the game of basketball. It didn’t take much sifting around the internet for Burton Sr. to construct a blueprint for the team’s first game back, a region home visit from Andy Blodgett and hungry Ogden High.

CONNER BECKER, Standard-Examiner

Senior captain Fabiana Lopez, originally from Lima, Peru, had only just settled in and figured whoever showed up to that team meeting would have some explaining to do. She was right.

“I went to the bathroom or something, and when I arrived back (Mark) was already saying ‘Ogden does this, this and that,'” Lopez said. “He wrote the whole board, the entire gameplan … and I think it helped having someone like that, and I think that made us better, too.”

Australian foward Ava Smith poured in 20 points, senior guard Sofia Olaya dropped 11 and Lopez added seven through double overtime to defeat the Tigers in Burton’s first outing.

They’d take six of their next eight games, and No. 5 LCA went on to claim the 3A state title over No. 6 Morgan, who’d already bested the Eagles twice in region play. LCA finished third in region behind Grantsville and the region title holder, Morgan.

Sterling Mack led the Trojans, clawing back from a 1-4 start to the regular season, into the title game for the first time since 2023. All-Area selections Zoe Rockenfield, Makayla Williams and a talented supporting cast all wanted a piece of their first title in three years.

Before that fateful rematch, Lopez and Smith were addressing an issue within the team.

“I found early on, all I needed to do was call and send them texts,” Burton said. “If there was any time I had something that I needed to resolve, I sent them a text (pointing to Smith and Lopez) … tell them what the issue was, and I remember both of them right before we went down to state reassuring me that they were going to take care of a situation that we needed to have taken care of.”

The pair have become exceptionally talented communicators and, in the midst of their final season, weren’t taking any chances on letting locker room banter slip onto the floor.

“The first person I met was Ava and she showed me around and everything — that’s why I decided to come back,” Lopez said. “Basketball, it was like the way of me coming here, but I think it just opened a lot of things for me, people I’ve met and they’ve helped me a lot.”

Burton added:

Courtesy of Layton Christian Academy

“I knew they were mature enough to handle what was happening,” Burton said. “I never doubted that, because I saw their heart early so I never doubted that. Once I saw that, it was easy for me to say ‘OK, they’re winners in life.'”

The Eagles overturned a 20-13 Morgan lead in the second half of the title bout. Lopez, leading the team with 13 game-high points, and a late jumper by junior guard Sarah Ledio inside 48 seconds to play, lifted LCA over Mack’s Trojans to deliver the program’s first-ever state championship.

LCA named Burton the team’s full-time coach earlier this month.

“I don’t think that I knew what we had really accomplished,” Burton said. “I hear people saying things are surreal in certain scenarios, but I’m thinking, how? And, after winning, I can understand that it’s something that your mind can’t quite capture — the excitement of it, the life-changing of what you affected in the lives of people.”

LCA is no stranger to state titles in boys basketball. Bobby Porter led the boys to six different titles between 2007 and 2022; Casey Stanley led the Eagles to another in 2024 before taking the program independent last year.

To deliver the school’s first-ever girls basketball title, Smith said, goes a little deeper than merely sticking new hardware in the display case. Even after graduation, she can point to the building and the physical proof of her team’s historic milestone — that’s forever.

“I’ve been here three years and this is what we’ve been working for,” Smith said. “This school, I mean they put a lot into me. My parents trust this school 100%. I love it here. It’s like a family, and I’m really sad to be leaving but to finally give them something — like, I’ve watched year after year the boys always doing this, we finally made history for the girls. So it feels pretty great, and it’s something I feel will never be forgotten for us.”

Now in the season of spring sports, soccer and track have seen an uptick in participation. It’s a change Pethel and his athletics department partially credit the girls basketball title team.

“What I think these girls, as a team and as individuals, have helped to accomplish, is that our school has now revived, I think at a deep level, our girls sports program,” Pethel said. “And with that, we have revived our soccer team; there are 30 girls playing. And we’ve revived our track team with around 15 or 20 girls running and doing field events.

“So, I feel like what they’ve done is not only win a championship but also help to forward the healthy areas of competition and just growth in life that can happen through sports for anybody, but especially for girls in our school.”

Connect with prep sports reporter Conner Becker via email at cbecker@standard.net and X @ctbecker.