Season records: 12-0 Central Sequoia League, 26-5 overall

Central Section Division V championship: Defeated Mission Prep 53-37

Career records: 49-5 league, 111-40 overall (5 years)

Previous championships: Section D-V and CSL 2009, East Sequoia 2008, East Sierra 2006

Central Valley Christian High has but 320, largely home-grown students and, unlike many private schools in Southern California, it doesn’t recruit students who happen to be exceptional athletes.

“We don’t target athletes in any way, shape or form,” Cavaliers athletic director Ryan Tos says.

And that’s what makes this Visalia-based boys basketball empire shaped by Blake Van Der Schaaf even more impressive.

“We envision being consistent every year to be in the running for a section championship, and that’s where we are,” says Der Schaaf, The Bee’s Coach of the Year.

He’s won two straight Division V titles and is 111-40 in five years, including 49-5 in three leagues.

And the section suits have noticed.

Divisional playoffs in all sports, effective next fall, will be aligned by competitive equity — meaning, the more successful you’ve been, the higher division you can expect to compete. And to heck with your enrollment.

CVC has been so dominant — the Cavaliers have gone 24-0 the past two seasons in the Central Sequoia League while opposing most schools at least four times larger — that the section administration initially elevated the school to D-III in boys basketball next year. The school won an appeal, reducing the bump one level, to D-IV.

“For one year, probably,” says Tos, noting the divisions will be reviewed annually.

With Bee All-Star Grant Verhoeven, a 6-foot-8 sophomore attracting major college attention, anchored in the post for two more years, CVC figures to maintain its standard.

“With our enrollment, there are going to be peaks and valleys,” Van Der Schaaf says. “We just happen to have really good kids coming in right now.”

Verhoeven’s offensive game began to flourish this season but, as a defensive dynamo, his game fits the foundational approach of Van Der Schaaf.

The Cavaliers don’t pick up a ball the first two weeks of practice.

“We stress stops defensively,” says Van Der Schaaf, who, ironically, is the school’s career-leading scorer and a 1998 graduate. “It’s all basic, fundamental defensive stuff.”

This showed on a 26-5 team that gave up an average of 46.4 points a game while scoring 68.8.

CVC defeated Mission Prep 53-37 for the section D-V title at Selland Arena, and then routed West Valley Christian-West Hills 72-26 in a Southern California Regional opener before checking out with a 78-54 loss to Marantha Christian-San Diego.

“We have good kids who are coachable,” Van Der Schaaf says. “And we have, good, good junior high coaches who are running our stuff. We’ve got it going.”