Playoff games are in the immediate future for all of the winter sports teams at Coronado High School, as regular season play concluded last week.

Leading the playoff charge is the CHS Girls Water Polo Team, which got a jump on their Coronado compatriots by playing their first two CIF Division II playoff games last week. Entering the festivities as the No. 2 seed, Coronado opened their title pursuit with a 21-1 victory over No. 15 seed Mar Vista.

This one was over early as the Islanders raced to a 10-0 lead at the end of the first quarter. Considering the fact that a high school water polo quarter is 7 minutes long, the Islanders were scoring against the Mariners at the pace of more than one goal per minute. Islander Head Coach Dave Throop had his first unit out of the water at the conclusion of the first period.

Danielle Goldblatt led Coronado with six tallies, while Alex Adamson and Morgan Ronimus split time in goal.

That one-sided victory led to a Saturday evening match against Valhalla, which Coronado won handily 13-1. Sophomore center Carly Hoshko scored three times, while senior Captain Sandra Fernandez and Lauren Corcoran scored twice each. Single goals were scored by Hannah Sebenaler, Molly Patrick, Sarah Clinton, Maggie Sosnowski, Katie Estrada and Goldblatt.

Throop believes his team is peaking at the optimal time of the year. "I’m really happy with the way the girls look right now. They look like the team we expected to see all year long. We really looked good against Valhalla. In the first half, with our starting group, we did a very, very nice job moving the ball early. As we got deeper in the bench, everyone got to contribute and there was no drop off. I thought the 18-19 girls who played did a very nice job. We were very active defensively and doing some good things. Sandra Fernandez had three steals and played just a quarter and a half."

Coronado now has the possibility of two games remaining in their schedule. The first is Wednesday’s semi-final match at 7:30 pm vs. No. 3 seed La Jolla, playing in their home pool. The Islanders defeated the Vikings in their first two meetings by the scores of 15-9 and 10-4. "That’s a scary trap sometimes," said Throop. "It’s difficult to beat a team the third time around. We’re hoping for that vs. La Jolla, and not against Bishop’s." The Knights defeated Coronado 9-6 and 9-7 in their two regular season matches.

The Islanders now own a 20-9 record. If form holds, the much-anticipated third and final match between Coronado and Bishop’s this season will be held Sat. Feb. 25 at 7:30 pm at the La Jolla Coggan Family Pool.

The Central League showed how tough they have become in boys basketball last week, as all six member schools emerged with playoff berths in their respective divisions. Hoover is in the Division II postseason, while Crawford, Clairemont and Madison made the Division III dance. Christian and Coronado will sally forth in Division IV.

For their part, the Islanders were seeded in the No. 7 slot and will host a home game Tuesday against Palo Verde at 7 pm. The two teams faced each other in their fourth game of the Small Schools Tournament in December, with Coronado earning a 69-59 victory. "They attempted 26 three-pointers in 32 minutes," said Islander Head Coach Sandy Dillon of the Yellowjackets. "We were ahead 44-29 at halftime and they started hitting every three-pointer in the world. We played a lot of our kids and they got it down to seven points and we finally won it by 10. I won’t make that mistake again."

On the way to their eventual playoff game, Coronado had a tough time. They started the last week of the regular season with a 70-38 loss at Christian. "It started out bad against Christian," said Dillon. "And it got worse. I had good games from Geoffrey Worley and Chas Marks. We had played at a pretty good level for a good period of time, but we just played poorly against Christian."

Friday night Coronado hosted Clairemont and the Chieftains prevailed 53-43. The Islanders trailed 26-20 at halftime and 39-29 at the end of three quarters.

"You can’t get behind and then catch up in those kinds of games," added Dillon. "As bad as we played, we had a chance to win. We just didn’t play hard until the fourth quarter and Clairemont had to go 10-10 from the free throw line to beat us. I got a wonderful game out of Geoffrey (Worley) and Bryan Reed. Geoff played every minute of the game, except the last 18 seconds. I was as disappointed Friday night as I have been in a long time. If we could have been more patient and hit a couple of shots, we could have won the ball game."

Marks led Coronado in scoring with 19 points, in rebounding with five caroms and in steals with two. Reed scored 10 points, while junior Matt Oakley added eight more.

Dillon was hoping for a six seed, but was pleased with the results of the seeding meeting. "The Central League had the second most non-conference wins in the section. Division IV is probably the toughest to seed, but it came out exactly where it should have." If Coronado gets past Palo Verde, they will play at Francis Parker Friday at 7 pm.

Tuesday night was the home showdown between the Islanders and the Patriots from Christian High School for the Central League title. From a Coronado perspective, it was a contest that never really got off the ground as Christian prevailed 72-46 to go undefeated in conference. Coronado finished with an 8-2 league record, good enough for second place.

Brooke Becky scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds in a losing cause. Jessica Davis-Ricci added 15 points and five rebounds for Coronado, which lost all four quarters of the game.

Islander Head Coach Toler Goodwin provided the following summary of the Christian game. "They out played us, they made shots, they played with better energy, focus and intensity. If we made a mistake, they capitalized on it."

Things improved dramatically Friday evening as Coronado dominated Clairemont 46-26 and Goodwin, who suited up what appeared to be most of the female student body for the game, managed to find floor time for just about all of them. Becky again supplied 19 points, this time adding six rebounds. Davis-Ricci had seven points, lead Coronado with nine rebounds, and added three assists and four steals. Arrielle Luna contributed four points, four rebounds, two steals and five blocked shots.

Junior forward Hallie Todaro played well defensively and grabbed a couple of rebounds, seeing extensive playing time in the third and fourth quarters. Freshmen Angela Strohbeck and Emily Bell, who have spent most of the season on the JV contributed to the victory according to Goodwin. "Strohbeck has been doing a nice job and she plays hard. She has a nice touch and sees her options well. Bell has been working on her defensive presence and she is real aggressive on the offensive end. We are trying to get both of them incorporated into the games for when we get to the playoffs. They will give us some flexibility with the lineups."

Coronado wound up with the No. 8 seed and will host No. 9 Canyon Crest High School Wednesday evening at 7 pm. Canyon Crest plays as an independent and compiled a 16-7 record this season, primarily against competition from smaller schools. "They have a couple of scorers we need to make sure we cover and limit their opportunities," said Goodwin. "They’ll come out and play you. They will play a solid game."

If the Islanders win, they will travel to face No. 1 seed La Jolla Country Day Saturday.

Attempting to roll out the week’s CHS playoff activities, mostly in chronological order, we run into a slight glitch with the fact that the No. 5 seeded CHS Boys Soccer Team will host their Division III playoff game Wednesday against San Marcos, at the same 7 pm time that the Girls Basketball Team tips off their game with Canyon Crest.

You might want to mosey over to the Blumenthal Sports Complex after you read this column and grab a parking spot. They figure to be hard to come by.

The Islanders finished off their 20-2-1 regular season with a 4-3 victory over Hoover, which earned Coronado the Central League runner-up slot behind Clairemont. The Chieftains finished 8-1-1 and Coronado was 8-2 in conference competition.

Against Hoover, the goals were scored by freshman Peter Kittiyasawadi, Christian Bond, and two tallies were credited to Nick Hamilton. Before launching into the scoring summary on the phone at the end of last week, Head Coach Brian Hiatt-Aleu started laughing. "Remember Peter’s name. He will be playing for us for the next 3 years. Hamilton played really well in the Hoover game and so did goalie Hugo Vera, who saved a penalty kick."

So the question would be how did Coronado, sporting a nifty 20-2-1 record wind up drawing San Marcos in the playoffs, with their 1-19-2 record? According to Hiatt-Aleu, the answer is pretty simple. "Nobody else showed up (at the seeding meeting). They’re not a bad team. They played people just a little better than them. I saw San Marcos in our tournament and they lost to La Jolla and Clairemont by one goal each. They just never found a way to win. If we beat them, we will play San Dieguito Saturday, who has beaten us each of the last 2 years in the playoffs. I hope the kids aren’t looking ahead, past San Marcos."

Hiatt-Aleu had hoped for a first round bye, which would have allowed injured defenders Travis Lindsay (high ankle sprain) and Jack Harms (knee injury) more time to recover. "Here’s something you never thought I would say," said Hiatt-Aleu. "I really thought if we had stayed injury-free that we could have won the whole thing (CIF Division III). Jack and Travis haven’t played in a month. The two games we lost were because we our two solid seniors in the back were out. That made us make some lineup changes. We’ll see if they are ready for Wednesday. They will have a big say in how far we go. We had a pretty big year, with 14 shutouts and winning two tournaments. Maybe we just peaked too early. We’ll see if we can get them back and going again."

Easing into their Division III playoff schedule, by virtue of their No. 4 seed and a first round bye, is the CHS Girls Soccer Team. Friday they will host the winner of the San Dieguito vs. Santana game, at 6 pm.

According to Head Coach Kiko Medina, the Islanders defeated Santana 4-0 in the Lady Vaquero Tournament earlier in the season. "I don’t know anything about San Dieguito," said Medina. "But I’ll be there scouting the game Tuesday."

The Islanders finished the regular season in manic style, with three games in three days. Wednesday Coronado tied Our Lady of Peace 1-1 on a goal from Leah Hatheway. "We played very well," said Medina of his team. "We were all over them and we had plenty of (scoring) chances. We got unlucky with some of the officiating. We let down for about 10 minutes and they came at us with seven minutes to go and tied it up."

Thursday’s game against Christian had an unusual flow to it. Coronado went up 1-0 on a Sasha Vido goal, but had a defensive letdown toward the end of the first half and yielded three Patriot goals.

Friday’s game with Serra resulted in a 5-0 Coronado victory. "We played the defenders at the forwards and the attackers in the back and had fun with the game," said Medina. Vido scored twice and single goals were scored by Kindall Caldwell, Kallie Caldwell, and Mackenzie Coutts.

Medina went on to preview the playoffs, where the Islanders are the defending CIF Division III Co-Champions. "Consistency is very important for us in the playoffs. We are capable of playing with anyone."

As you may (or may not) remember, Your Natterer coached the CMS Boys Basketball ‘C’ Team this year and we completed the season with a very respectable 2-3 record. We collectively took the early route to success, practicing at 6 am in the CHS gym. Notice the use of the adjective ‘early’ as opposed to the modifier ‘sane.’

At last week’s post season banquet, awards were distributed as follows: Co-MVPs - Jake Nicholson and Collin Green; Co-Most Improved – Jason Fielder and Austin Sengchan; Team Captain – Hayden Deitrick. The rest of the team including: Jack Mikesell, Kurt Beske, Cameron Mahdavi, Jose Sanchez, Devin Vaage and Joe Kusters all received Coaches Awards.

Despite the early practice times, the kids as a unit had a 91 percent attendance mark at our 30 practices. Nicholson, Beske and Mikesell all had perfect attendance. Thanks to the players and their parents for their great support all season long.