Dave Demarest retired in 2007 after 34 seasons as head baseball coach at La Quinta High School in Westminster, California. He remains the winningest coach in Orange County high school baseball history with a career 753-213 (.780) record that included a county-record 22 league championships and 15 consecutive league championships from 1993-2007.
At the time of his retirement, La Quinta was the only county school to have won 30 games in a season, doing it in 1998 and 2004.
Under Demarest, La Quinta made seven appearances in the CIF-Southern Section finals, capturing three CIF-Southern Section titles and becoming the first county team to win consecutive section championships with their back-to-back titles in 1994 and ’95. In total, his teams advanced to the playoffs in 31 of his 34 seasons as head coach.
The 24-time Garden Grove League Coach of the Year also earned CIF Coach of the Year honors four times and was recognized as the National High School Athletic Coaches Association (NHSACA) National Baseball Coach of the Year in 2004.
More than 30 of his former players went on to play at NCAA Div. I institutions, while another 20 advanced to professional baseball. Seven eventually made it to the Major Leagues, including Bobby Crosby, Gerald Laird and Ian Kennedy.
In 1995, La Quinta officially renamed their baseball field Demarest Field in his honor.
After his retirement from La Quinta, Demarest joined the staff at Cypress College (Calif.) and served as an assistant coach under ABCA Hall of Fame coach Scott Pickler. He later served on the coaching staffs at Fountain Valley and Vista High School in San Diego, California.
A featured clinician at the 2009 ABCA Convention in San Diego, Demarest became a Lifetime Member of the ABCA in 2022 after 35 years of continuous membership with the association.
In total, he has been inducted into eight Halls of Fame, including his induction into the National High School Baseball Coaches Association (NHSBCA) Hall of Fame in 2008. Prior to his Hall of Fame induction, Demarest served on the NHSBCA’s Executive Committee from 2000-2003 and was the association’s President in 2002.
As a player, Demarest was inducted into the Long Beach State University Athletics Hall of Fame in 1995, where he was a captain of the 49ers baseball team in 1972. A three-year starter in center field, he never committed an error during his college career and hit .333 as a senior while earning Academic All-America honors.
