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Nado Natterings |
A weekly column by David Axelson |
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Nado Natterings
by David Axelson, Chief Executive
Officer
The Islander Sports Foundation
17 Sept 2008 Issue No. 35
With Islander Football
experiencing a bye week; CHS Boys Water Polo scrimmaging twice, but not beginning
their regular season until this coming weekend; and the Boys and Girls Cross
Country Teams in training, but not in meets; this would figure to be a slow
news week.
Au contraire, as we still have
Girls Tennis, Girls Golf, Girls Volleyball (picking up the trend yet?)
and some CHS Sailing to cover. We’ll also riff on the Chargers at the
conclusion of this column, as we investigate whether or not corner back Warren
Cromartie committed another personal foul or four
boarding the team bus on the way to the airport after Sunday’s game in
CHS Girls
Tennis Takes Two Matches Last Week
The Islander Girls Tennis
program, under the direction of Head Coach Rob LeBuhn
had a nice week as they defeated Point Loma Monday by the game score of 12-6,
followed by a 15-3 victory over Hilltop Tuesday.
LeBuhn
plans to have his normal singles roster include No. 1 Jackie Hites, No. 2 Spencer Berman, and No. 3 Mary Mulvey. The doubles teams will consist of No. 1 Brittany
Hites and Jennifer Carney, No. 2 Alex Rawlings
and Kirsten Krock and No. 3 Andrea Sassenrath and Natalie Brooks.
A total of 33 players came out
for tennis this season, with 16 players on the varsity and 17 on the JV.
According to LeBuhn, a total of four freshmen are on
the varsity, with three of the underclassmen (Hites, Mulvey and Rawlings) earning their way into the starting
lineup.
The Islanders will again
compete in the hyper-competitive Western League, which includes Our Lady of
Peace, Scripps Ranch, La Jolla, Cathedral Catholic and
Despite long-standing local
tennis power
This week the Islanders host
Islander
Girls Golf Also Wins Two Matches Last Week
The Islanders Girls Golf
Team had one tough match last week and one that didn’t prove to be
difficult and
Tuesday the Islanders warmed
up with
Then Thursday it was time to
get serious as
Wednesday Coronado hosts
Crawford and Coaches Coutts and Hanna Cohan will field several different
players. “We’ll take the girls who only have one match under their belts and
they will play against Crawford,” said Coutts. “That means that after four
matches, everyone will have played twice. We’ll take the girls who have proven
themselves in those matches and put them in our Top Six.
Girls Volleyball
Team Competes in Fall Classic Invitational
Last week we noted that the CHS
Girls Volleyball Team was due to compete in the 25-team Fall Classic
Invitational. Included in
Friday night’s pool play found
the Islanders winless against those three schools and Saturday morning
With a short time between the end of the OLP game and the next game with West Hills, the
team met among themselves, followed by a meeting with the coaching staff. “I
knew we were asking a lot of them to do a complete 180 from match to match,”
Lahr said. “I had never seen our team play like that, either in a game or in
practice. It was very shocking.”
Something clicked during the
conversations and the Islanders played well against West Hills, a team that
went on to the Bronze Division finals. “We came out and played incredibly
well,” Lahr said. “We won the first game 25-17. We looked like we had been
playing together for years. Our players were excited, talking and working
together. Melissa Humphrey had a rough morning and she came out like a
completely different setter. Kori
Fitzgerald also had a rough morning and she came out and put that all
behind her against West Hills. We also started Rachel Rodriguez. Against
OLP she was the only player who seemed like she wanted to play. She had an
amazing match against West Hills, putting serves and hits in and she had a
couple of incredible digs. She fired everybody up.”
Unfortunately the Islanders
lost a close second game 25-22, setting up a fourth game, which they narrowly
lost and were out of the tournament.
“We know the team can compete
in the Eastern League and then go into the CIF,” Lahr said of her team. “They
were incredible to watch against West Hills. They definitely were a team on the
court in that second match Saturday.”
This week the Islanders host Grossmont on Thursday at 5 pm. Eastern League competition
will commence the following week.
CHS Sailing
Team Tryouts Underway
The CHS Sailing Team is
in the process of holding tryouts and interested parties should contact Head
Coach Jon Rogers, who doubles as the head coach at the Coronado Yacht Club.
The CHSST board of directors
is actively preparing for the exciting challenges of inventory, fundraising and
travel for the coming season. Team Captain and senior Alex Wood is gearing up to lead the team and assist in the
fund-raising efforts. The goal for the season is to qualify for the High School
Nationals to be sailed in May 2009 in
Chargers
Facing Uphill
Sunday afternoon was spent in
‘Charger Game Mode,’ which consists of a stack of unread back issues of “The
Wall Street Journal,” placed immediately adjacent to my black recliner, which
in turn is positioned directly in front of the ‘Fitty’
(ask your kids, they’ll know). While perusing “The Journal” (tough week for
Lehman Brothers) and watching the game (listen to the original play, watch the
replay, back to the financial markets) Your Natterer
had a flash back to a football from a long time ago. It was reminiscent of the
glory days of the old American Football League with George Blanda in high top black cleats fading back to pass for
the Houston Oilers and having his long touchdown pass almost immediately
countered by a scoring bomb from the Kansas City Chiefs’ Len Dawson. It
was wide-open, pass happy football with plenty of scoring.
Unfortunately, due at least in
part to a badly blown call by NFL referee Ed Hochuli,
and a more to the point, a porous Bolt defense in the first half, the Chargers
lost a game they should have won by the score of 39-38. For a Chargers
ownership group, team management and a fan base expecting to go to the Super
Bowl, this is the kind of game that can cost a head coach his job.
Typically 10 victories gets a
team into the playoffs, although in 2007 the Cleveland Browns reached that
double digit victory total and didn’t qualify for the post season. So, to be
safe and secure, the Chargers need to win 11 games this year, meaning they have
to finish the year 11-3 against a very tough schedule. This was a game that
needed to and was supposed to be in the ‘win’ column. It’s this kind of season
that the NFL’s unbalanced schedule (better teams play other better teams in
their non-divisional contests) makes winning streaks difficult to put together
and makes the Chargers’ collective challenge that much tougher.
The call by Hochuli, considered to be one of the game’s best referees,
was made on a play where Bronco quarterback Jay Cutler clearly fumbled.
But Hochuli, stationed immediately behind Cutler,
whistled the play dead as Chargers linebacker Tim Dobbins was making a
fine play, supplying the defensive pressure that forced the fumble and then
making an athletic play on the recovery. In sports, good plays are supposed to
be rewarded and bad plays should cost you the game. Unfortunately this
philosophy was turned on its ear in
The theory behind instant
replay is very simple and direct – get the play called correctly. Regardless of
the limitations on instant replay in the NFL, the system failed.
Early in the spring, when
instant replay was gaining momentum in Major League Baseball, I told the Natter
Son that it would take blown calls negatively impacting either of the
I have come to another
conclusion regarding the NFL and that is that the game’s rules are now too
complicated for the casual fan to follow. If an official takes 30 seconds to
explain a call to the crowd and the coaching staffs still don’t understand the
call, then your rules are too arcane to follow. Players are exempted from this
concept because 99 per cent of them don’t read the rule book and thus when they
argue a call it is rarely from a technical perspective. Having worked in the
NBA for more than a dozen years, trust me the covers on the player’s pristine
copy of the rule book supplied at the beginning of each season, doesn’t get
cracked.
Now, let’s address to the
immediate challenges facing the Chargers as they attempt to salvage their year.
Entering the season the five biggest names on the Chargers were running back LaDainian Tomlinson, quarterback Philip
Rivers and tight end Antonio Gates on offense along with linebacker Shawne Merriman and tackle Jamal Williams
on defense. Merriman is lost for the season to a severe knee injury, with
Tomlinson and Gates hobbled with toe injuries. Williams, in his 11th
season in the NFL, is also recovering from off-season surgery and isn’t the
immense defensive presence he has been in the last couple of years. Rivers
alone among the Top Five is having a good year and he can’t carry the load
alone. Stars are being replaced by fill-ins and with the possible exception of
speed merchant Darren Sproles for Tomlinson,
there is a dramatic drop in the talent level.
Notice that none of the five
names above included defensive cornerback Antonio Cromartie,
who for the first two weeks of the season apparently has focused on setting the
NFL record for pass interceptions in a season. Instead Cromartie
was whistled for four 15-yard penalties against
In this era of instant
gratification and instant blame; when the 24-hour news cycle is reduced to
roughly 12 minutes, one of the boldest coaching moves of recent times was made
by Bronco Head Coach Mike Shanahan. Trailing by one point with 24
seconds left in the game, the conventional call would be to kick an extra point
to tie the score and hope to hang on in overtime. Shanahan called for a
two-point conversion to win the game, the ultimate risk/reward call, and a
maneuver that paid off handsomely for the home team.
The Chargers playoff chances
are dimming daily and the light at the end of the tunnel may be the 3:10 from