Nado Natterings
by David Axelson, Chief Executive
Officer
The Islander Sports Foundation
9 Jan 2008 - Issue #1
Head Coach Kiko Medina
and his CHS Girls Varsity Soccer Team made the most of their holiday break
by winning the Lady Vaquero/Sultan Classic, despite fielding a roster that
totaled just 14 players at one point due to injuries and family vacations.
The first game of the tourney found
Coronado matched with Steele
Canyon, a team that Medina
described as “a good Division III team.” The Islanders prevailed 3-0 on goals
from Colleen Burns, Avery Woodhouse and Mackenzie Coutts.
The second game was less
satisfying as Coronado fell 2-1 to Junipero
Serra Catholic High
School from the San Juan
Capistrano area. “We struggled in the first half,”
said Medina. “We gave up a couple
of silly goals and got down 2-0. In the second half we had several scoring
chances, but we lost 2-1. Cassie Callahan had our goal in that game.” In
a rather blatant example of literary foreshadowing, keep the Serra result in
mind as you read along.
In the third contest of pool
play, the Islanders found Western League rival Scripps Ranch on the other side
of the field. Coronado launched 20
shots on goal against the Falcons and couldn’t find the back of the net and the
result was a 0-0 tie. With a 1-1-1
record from the preliminary round, the Islanders advanced to the semi-finals
where they encountered Bonita Vista. “They are always in the Top 6 teams in
Division I,” said Medina of the
Barons. “They are always in the CIF quarter-finals, if not higher. We came out
on fire and played really well defensively and did a good job containing them.
We beat them 2-1, with both goals coming from
(freshman) Mallory Mitchell. We brought her up from the JV for the
tournament. Normally she is a defender, but we needed her speed up front.
She’ll probably be a sweeper in the future. Mallory definitely stepped up and
gave us what we needed.”
The victory over Bonita Vista
advanced Coronado to the finals,
where they found the only team that defeated them in the tournament, Serra
Catholic. “The girls were disappointed the first time we played them. We came
out early and were all over them. We got two goals from Colleen Burns in the
first half. We gave up a goal when we had a miscommunication on defense and it
was 2-1 at half time, which is how it ended.”
Medina
thought he had a lot of talent in the program going into the season, but is
assured of that fact now. “We went in with 15 players and we had seven of our
players missing,” Medina said. “Leah
Hatheway got hurt and will be out for another month. Everybody really
stepped up and played a huge role in getting good results in the tournament. I’m
assured that we have depth and that will really help us throughout the year.
Defensively we were extremely solid the whole tournament.”
Coronado
now has an overall record of 7-2-3
as they head into Western League play Thursday night, when they host University
City at 6 pm
at Niedermeyer Field. The following Tuesday, Jan. 15, the Coronado
will play at Cathedral Catholic at 3 pm.
“They are the team to beat again, as always,” said Medina.
Boys
Basketball Goes 4-0 in Islander Holiday
Tournament
In the last installment of
“Nado Natterings, we noted that the Islander Boys Basketball Team had
handily defeated San Ysidro and Lutheran High Schools in the first two games of
the four-game Islander Holiday Tournament.
The third game of the four
contests played was played against Sweetwater, a game won by Coronado
by the score of 58-42. It was also the best varsity game of the tournament. The
Red Devils squad is the most vertically challenged I have ever seen at the high
school varsity level, with their tallest player listed at a height of 5-feet,
11-inches and the majority of their players were in the 5-7 range. What
Sweetwater may have lacked in size, they more than made up for in
aggressiveness and quickness. The game was much closer than the 16-point final
spread might indicate. The Islanders led 29-26 at halftime and 41-36 at the end
of three quarters.
Coronado’s
inside duo of Justin Parsons and Krishna Samperio finally wore
down the Red Devils and paced the Islanders to the victory. Sweetwater couldn’t
keep the 6-5 Parsons and the 6-6 Samperio off of Coronado’s
offensive glass and the Islanders decisively won the fourth quarter by the
score of 17-6.
The final tournament game was
a 64-30 victory over Julian and the entire Islander roster scored in the game. Coronado
rolled to a 22-8 first quarter lead and never looked back on their way to the
victory and an overall record of 7-4.
Leading the way against Julian
was Parsons with 14 points, followed by Cole McLean and Samperio with 10
points each. Dallas Taylor and Tyler Hustwick added six points
apiece, with Blake Malkemus and Josh Williams chipping in four
each.
“It was good for us to
win all of the games in our own tournament,” said Islander Head Coach Ken
Caesar. “It’s good for our confidence going into league. I thought we did
what we are supposed to do, which is good for us. We took some positive steps,
especially after playing in the Hilltop Tournament.”
The Islanders are idle this
week and don’t take to the floor until their Central League opener Tuesday,
Jan. 15th when they host Clairemont. However, ‘idle’ is a relative
term when it comes to basketball.
“We thought about adding a
game this week,” Caesar said, “but the guys said they would just rather
practice and work on our stuff. I’m kind of glad about it in a way. That will
give us a chance to practice, get caught up and get ready for league. The guys
are starting to figure it out and get comfortable within the offense. We can
make adjustments and changes we couldn’t make before and they feel like they understand
how to attack the pressure.”
CHS Girls
Basketball Goes 1-3 in Lady Nighthawk Tournament
Despite going 1-3 in the Lady
Nighthawk Invitational Tournament, played in Murietta over the break, CHS Girls
Basketball Head Coach Toler Goodwin thought the four games were
beneficial to his team. “It was a good experience and all of the games were
competitive for us. We lost one in double overtime and we lost another to the
eventual tournament champion. That was a one-point game with 50 seconds to go
and we didn’t execute. We turned the ball over too many times in key
situations.”
The Islander varsity has only
nine players, which makes scrimmaging (five per side) somewhat of a
mathematical challenge. “We haven’t worked on (end of game) situations since we
only have nine bodies,” Goodwin explained. “That hurt us in a couple of games.
We have quite a bit of time in the next couple of months to get into
situational basketball and to get things done. From here on out we can’t let up
on anybody and we have to stay strong. No matter who we play, we have to get
ready for the playoffs.”
Tuesday evening the Islanders
host Julian, with the JV playing at 5 pm
and the Varsity playing at 6:30 pm.
Islander
Boys Soccer Wins Central League Opener
The Islander Boys Soccer
Team played University City
last week and came away with a 3-1 victory, courtesy of single goals from Peter
Kittiyasawadi, Connor Marcone and Evan Binning. The game against the
Centurions pushed the Islanders overall record to 4-2-3. Coronado
is 2-0-1 in the Central League.
“We beat Madison and Crawford
in league and tied Hoover,” said
Head Coach Brian Hiatt-Aleu. “We’ve worked real hard the last two weeks
and got a lot of hard work in during the Christmas break. This is kind of like
our Hell Week, where we do all of our hard work. We’ll do better the second
half of the season and we always seem to come together during this time of the
year. We’ll be okay. I expect to be playing March 1st.”
Girls Water
Polo Splits Games with Ranked Opponents
When you have a team as
talented as the 2007-08 version of the CHS Girls Water Polo Team,
creating your playing schedule is relatively easy. You just play the toughest
teams you can find and look to gain from the experience.
Over the break, Coronado
continued to play ranked opponents by traveling to Los Alamitos and defeating
the No. 5 ranked team in Orange County
8-6. Ashley Young led Coronado
in scoring with three goals. “Their style of play is to set up a lot of
isolations (on offense),” explained CHS Head Coach Dave Throop. “They
have a very unique style of play that makes more traditional players and coaches cringe. We went up 6-3 and they came back and tied
the game. We outscored them 2-0 in the fourth quarter. We played well in the
first half and in the fourth quarter.”
The next highly-ranked team to
take on Coronado was Dos Pueblos,
which won the recent Newport Holiday Tournament and enters the Santa Barbara
Tournament of Champions this weekend as the No. 1 seed. Coronado
lost the game 7-6 in overtime. Starting playmaker Alana Burgess was ill
and couldn’t play and fellow senior starter Carly Hoshko sustained a
shoulder injury and couldn’t participate. High-scoring senior Hannah
Sebenaler found herself in early foul trouble, so in essence the Islanders
were without the services of three starters.
“In the fourth quarter, we
played the way we are capable of playing,” Throop elaborated. “We had girls
playing in roles they weren’t used to. It was frustrating in that we fought
back and allowed them to tie the game with 25 seconds left in regulation. It
was also frustrating that we didn’t play well for a while and then let them off
the hook. We had a pretty large crowd for the game. The bleachers were full and
it was standing room only.”
Coronado
plays this weekend in the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions, which is
formatted to include the Top 16 teams in California.
Coronado enters play Friday night
as the No. 7 seed and will play Villa Park in their
first game. Should they win, Coronado
will likely face Newport Harbor,
the No. 2 seed in their second contest. “The Top 10 teams in the tournament all
have a shot at winning,” Throop added. “There is no clear cut favorite. This is
an opportunity for us to play four great games and the tournament is a pretty
big deal. It’s one of the three or four major things on our calendar this
season.”
After they return home, Coronado
travels to The Bishop’s School Tuesday of next week for a 4 pm game. “These next five games are pretty competitive,”
Throop said.
Coronado
Boys Lacrosse Clinic Dates Announced
The Coronado Boys Lacrosse
Clinics, which have been held for the past several years and collectively
serve as a fundraiser for the Coronado Middle School Lacrosse program, are
returning again this year. The clinics, which are designed for boys in third
through eighth grades, will be held each Saturday from Jan. 26 through Feb. 23.
Clinic times are 9 to 11 am. Both
Niedermeyer and Cutler Fields will be used.
The fee is $100 per player and
checks should be made payable to Coronado Schools Lacrosse. Included in the fee
is a U.S. Lacrosse Association membership, a Coronado
lacrosse sticker, a reversible jersey and a player mouth guard. Players are
required to provide a lacrosse stick, cleats and shoulder pads. Helmets, gloves
and arm pads are available to be borrowed on a first-come, first-served basis
and a deposit is required for their use.
Clinic registration dates are
Jan. 12 and 19 from 9-11 am and Jan.
26 from 8-9 am. Registration will be
held at the Sixth Street
entrance to the Blumenthal Sports Complex, located between Niedermeyer Field
and the Brian Bent
Memorial Aquatics
Center. Clinic questions may be
directed to Megan Stanley at megandyno@sbcglobal.net.
San
Diego Chargers Win One for Norval
Although ‘Win One for Norval’
doesn’t have quite the cache of ‘Win one for the Gipper,’ Sunday’s 17-6 playoff
victory by the Chargers over the Tennessee Titans was an important one for
Charger Head Coach Norval Eugene Turner. In one three-hour span Turner
accomplished something that the Chargers franchise hadn’t been able to do since
1994, win a playoff game.
It wasn’t easy and it
certainly wasn’t pretty, but it was a victory. The win earned the Chargers the
right to travel to Indianapolis to
take on the Colts, arguably the second best team in the NFL currently, and the
owners of a very nifty 13-3 record. Lest we forget in our rush to glorify the
2007 New England Patriots and their perfect 16-0 mark, it is the Colts who are
the defending Super Bowl champions.
The relationship between
Charger All-World Running Back LaDainian Tomlinson and quarterback Philip
Rivers continues to be an interesting one as it publicly evolves. Missed by
the television announcers at the time and newspaper pundits the morning after,
was the fact that Rivers didn’t see a wide open Tomlinson on a Red Zone pass
play late in the game. Tomlinson was isolated on a single defensive back after
he flared out of the backfield and Rivers didn’t get the ball to the NFL’s
leading rusher. Tomlinson let Rivers hear about the missed touchdown scoring
opportunity on the sidelines afterwards. Although Rivers has rightfully earned
the reputation of being a big talker, he is smart enough to listen when
Tomlinson has a legitimate gripe.
Simply stated, the Chargers
have to ratchet up their play a couple of notches to come out of the Heartland
of America with a victory next Sunday. I would venture to say that the Colts
would love to avenge their 23-21 loss to the Chargers on Nov. 11th.
In the meantime the Chargers
earned a hard-fought playoff victory for their head coach, which undoubtedly
earned Turner the right to return to the club for the 2008 season. Hopefully
the next Charger playoff victory won’t take more than a decade to achieve.
