Local notebook: All-American Olejnik headlines local athletes on the move

Given another chance following his second MAC title, he secured an elusive All-American honor at the tournament in Tulsa, Okla., claiming three straight wins over the No. 22, No. 20 and No. 10 wrestlers nationally as part of a 4-3 run to finish in eighth place.

Olejnik concluded his redshirt senior year on March 18 with a 31-5 record on the season. However, he still maintains one final year of eligibility due to COVID-19, and on March 27 announced on Twitter his plans to transfer. He will pursue his goal of becoming an NCAA champion one last time at a different college.

Many other local athletes have rapidly moved from school to school in recent years. After one such series of moves, R.J. Banks, a former BVarsity All-Area first-team point guard at BHS, ended up winning a state championship. The onetime Driller's winding road led him to Fullerton College after a senior season at Los Angeles-Cathedral, a postgraduate year at Middlebrooks Academy and a stint as a preferred walk-on at Nevada. As a sophomore at Fullerton, Banks averaged 8.6 points in 22 minutes per game off the bench, scoring 13 to help the Hornets eliminate East Los Angeles in the March 11 semifinal matchup. The next day, they came back and beat City College of San Francisco 83-73 to dethrone the defending champion Rams and send Banks out on top.

Banks' former BHS and Fullerton teammate, Ronnie Stapp, will be looking for a new school after playing in three games at Idaho State this season. He entered the transfer portal on March 13, according to Verbal Commits.

Another late-2010s men's basketball standout in the portal is Kadar Waller, who embarked on an unusual pre-graduate path of his own from Liberty to Bakersfield Christian to Lanham (Md.)-Mt. Zion Prep. Waller, who much like Banks had his recruitment disrupted by the onset of the pandemic, then spent a year at Collin College at Plano, Texas and most recently two at NCAA Division I Mississippi Valley State. He had several flashy games for the Delta Devils, including a career-best 20-point showing at Southern on Jan. 24, 2022, though he rarely entered the starting lineup. Waller upped his scoring average to 7.1 points per game during the 2022-23 season but will now search for a new home with two years of eligibility still remaining.

With several months' distance from the end of the fall season, more and more football and volleyball athletes are picking new schools as well. Centennial graduate Nariah Prescott, a 5-foot-10 outside hitter who tallied 1.63 kills per set with a 1.22 hitting percentage as a freshman at Chico State, is transferring to Westmont. The Santa Barbara-based college is moving to NCAA Division II — the same level as Chico State — after a decades-long history in the NAIA, and announced the signing of Prescott on social media on March 14. (No transfer announcement has come for her twin sister and former Chico State teammate Nya Prescott.)

Luke Soto, who has carved out a lengthy collegiate career as a tight end even with just eight receptions across the JUCO and Division I level, will begin the next chapter of his football journey at Marshall next season. The Tehachapi native and former rodeo standout went from Bakersfield College to UTEP, making his first career catch for the Miners at Louisiana Tech on Oct. 8, and will now join the Thundering Herd as a graduate transfer. 

On the sidelines, after his debut season as head coach of the Denison-Schleswig (Iowa) football team in 2021, former Ridgeview star Kamari Cotton-Moya told The Californian he hoped to jump to the college ranks in a couple years. The opportunity came for him just one season later. After coaching the Monarchs to an 8-12 record over two years, the former Iowa State defensive back accepted a role last month coaching defensive backs at Buena Vista University, a Division III school in Storm Lake, Iowa.