Nado Natterings
A weekly column by David Axelson

Nado Natterings
by David Axelson, Chief Executive Officer
The Islander Sports Foundation

4 Feb 2009 Issue #5

One of the better in-season turnarounds in recent Coronado High School sports history was completed last week when the CHS Boys Basketball Team defeated Crawford at home 57-48. That’s not a remarkable score, although the Islanders worked long and hard to earn the victory. What is worth noting is that the first time the two teams played, the Colts forced 30 Islander turnovers, hit 18 three-pointers of their own and cruised to an 83-49 victory.

Saving you the effort on the mathematical calculations, that represents a 43-point swing in the two contests between the two Central League teams. Shortly after the original lop-sided loss, CHS Head Coach Ken Caesar had this to say about the game, “Crawford is a team that takes a lot of bad shots, but they went in. Crawford won’t be able to do that at our place.” And he was correct in his assessment, which seemed bold at the time.

The Islanders were paced by guard Justin Hebner who scored 18 points and senior center Krishna Samperio who scored a respectable total of 10 points, but had a huge game on the boards, snaring 21 rebounds. “Krishna was possessed,” said Caesar. “He has been our most consistent big guy and I am proud of the way he has handled himself. He’s starting to figure it out.”

Other contributors to the comeback victory included Chris Maskevich with eight points, Blake Malkemus with six, Danny Hebert with five points, Brian Beverly and Justin Parsons with three points each, followed by Brian Allen and Josh McNeal with two points each.

When asked the reasons for the Coronado turnaround Caesar replied, “We defended better. We funneled them to the basket. We knew they wouldn’t be comfortable driving the ball. We slowed the game down a little bit and that’s how we got them. We also converted a couple of important possessions down the stretch.”

In addition to the above, Caesar considered the victory to be the result of a team-wide effort. “I thought that everybody gave us good minutes. They all came in and did their part. You could tell everybody wanted this game bad and they knew we needed to have it to stay in the conference race. We’re still alive and we’ll see what happens.”

This week Coronado, 13-10 on the season, hosts Madison (4-13) Tuesday at 5 pm and then travels to Christian (13-7) for a Friday night contest, which tips off at 7:30 pm. “Christian will be tough,” Caesar said. “I know they will be harder to beat at their place. We held (Brazilian shooting guard) Luiz Bidart under 20 points in our first game. We jumped out on Bidart and ran different people at him. I have a feeling they will run him off of screens in this game. We’ll try to stop him and make the other guys beat us.”

Islander Girls Basketball Punishes Crawford

The Coronado Girls Basketball Team hosted Crawford last Friday night on the front end of a Girls/Boys doubleheader and weren’t very hospitable to their guests, hammering them 18-0 in the first quarter on their way to a convincing 41-13 victory. Other than an inexplicable loss at Clairemont a week ago, the Islanders are undefeated in Central League play.

CHS Head Coach Toler Goodwin was pleased with the overall effort of his team, but was a little confused regarding the precision of the 18-0 Islander first quarter dominance, when compared and contrasted with the 4-4 second quarter score. “We played well. We had to make a couple of adjustments with Coco Abrantes out of the lineup with a hamstring injury. Delaney Luna replaced Coco in the starting lineup and played well. We were really efficient in the first quarter and everybody got a little piece of that. We made good decisions with the basketball. I was disappointed with the effort in the second quarter, but we came back to finish well.”

Senior center Angela Strohbeck dominated the lane with 19 points and 13 rebounds. Freshman point guard Cory De Marco led the Islander offense with five assists. “Everybody in the starting lineup had at least two assists,” said Goodwin. “It’s nice that we shared the ball and were able to convert on some scoring opportunities.”

Maggie Harris scored nine points, followed by the aforementioned Luna with five points. Peri Curtis and De Marco had four points each and Alex Evans completed the Islander scoring with two points.

Goodwin pointed out another relevant statistic, which speaks to getting your post players involved in the offense. “In our first four possessions of the game, Strohbeck either assisted on a basket or scored. It’s nice to jump out like that.”

In his overview of the team, Goodwin sees improvement from the start of the season to now. “Our freshmen are starting to understand what we are trying to do and they are getting better. We’re getting some decent performances out of them. Maggie is showing us some real leadership. It’s fun to see this team mature.”

In addition, Coronado (9-6 overall) is very much in the Central League race. “We’re tied for the lead with Kearny who we beat (a week ago) Monday. Our only loss is to Clairemont. If we do our job the rest of the way, it will come down to the last regular season game at Kearny. If we win, we win the league outright. We have an important game at Madison Tuesday and another at Christian Friday. Four of our last five league games are on the road.”

Coaches Versus Cancer Girls Basketball Event in Coronado Saturday, Feb. 7

A reminder that the Coaches Versus Cancer girls basketball day-long event will be played at the Coronado High School Gymnasium Saturday, Feb. 7. The proceeds from the event will go to the V Foundation for cancer research, features seven games, all of which can be seen for a single $5 admission fee for adults and $3 for students.

Starting at 11 am, La Jolla plays Morse; at 12:30 pm Scripps Ranch plays Serra; at 2 pm Mission Bay plays Mira Mesa; at 3:30 pm Coronado plays Hoover; at 5 pm Santana plays San Marcos; at 6:30 pm San Diego takes on El Capitan and the finale is scheduled for 8 pm when The Bishop’s School plays Mt. Carmel.

That’s seven games for a total of $5, which benefits a great charity and a worthy cause.

Injury Bug Strikes CHS Boys Soccer Team

Recently CHS Boys Soccer Head Coach Brian Hiatt-Aleu described his team’s rash of injuries, all within a two day period, as “a little bit unfortunate.” That is roughly the equivalent of saying that the national economy is in ‘a little downturn.’

The injury list includes Sergio Flores with a strained tendon, who will likely miss a couple of weeks; Stefan Massie requires surgery to repair a completely torn anterior cruciate ligament and will be out for a calendar year; Connor Marcone broke his wrist after being undercut on the field and will miss four to six weeks; and Peter Kittiaysawadi sustained an ankle injury and will likely miss a few games. After thinking about it for a while, Hiatt-Aleu revised his thoughts relating to the severity of the injuries to, “We got hit pretty badly.” All four injured Islanders are starters.

To add insult to (literally) injury, the Islanders lost a home match to Clairemont Friday by the score of 1-0. It was a game where Coronado could hit the goal, but not the net behind it. “At the end of the game we had a penalty kick, which hit the post and that was the game. It was over. We hit the post four or five times in the game.”

The good news is that the Islanders currently carry an overall record of 9-3-4, with six games remaining in the regular season. “These are real challenging games for us. Many of our main guys, our veterans are out. The young players are going to have to step up and they will get a lot of playing time. Hopefully they will show some character and we’ll get good results.”

Doing a little thinking out loud with Hiatt-Aleu, with 12 teams qualifying for the CIF Division III playoffs, if the Islanders were to split their final six games, would a record of 12-6-4 qualify the teams for the playoffs? “They (the CIF) go on strength of schedule, the strength of the league and matchups in the division. Although we beat Montgomery, we have a couple of really bad ties, games that we should have won. It seems everybody has beaten everybody, so we’ll see how it pans out. We have some tough games coming up against teams that are loaded with seniors. We’ll have to show some grit and character.”

Hiatt-Aleu also pointed out the depth of talent in the Central League, where in the 2008 CIF Playoffs, Coronado, Clairemont, Hoover, Crawford and Christian all won at least one game in their respective divisional playoffs.

This week Coronado travels to Christian Tuesday for a 3 pm game. Friday night they host San Ysidro for a non-league contest, which starts at 4:45 pm.

Girls Soccer Rebounds With 2-1 Win at U.C.

Resiliency is a good quality to have, particularly in the world of sports. The CHS Girls Soccer Team flashed large doses of that trait last week, coming off of a tough 1-0 home loss to long-time Western League rival Cathedral Catholic, followed by a 2-1 road victory at University City. A second half defensive miscue wound up costing the Islanders the Cathedral contest.

“It was a good game,” said Islander Head Coach Kiko Medina. “Cathedral had their chances and on one of those, we really got unlucky. We had our chances to tie it up and get the win. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.”

So four days later at University City, the Islanders rebounded with a victory on goals from Mackenzie Coutts and Briana Baszak. “That was huge for us,” Medina said. “We haven’t won at UC for a while. With the loss to Cathedral, we needed to get back on the winning side and that got us going again. Mackenzie’s goal came from outside the 18 (yards or meters, let’s say meters to be internationally inclusive) and Briana scored on a free kick from about 25 (let’s stay with meters) out. She struck it really well and it went in, just under the cross bar.”

Road victories usually are accompanied by good defense and Medina praised his defenders and midfielders. “Paige Berube had a good game as did Cassie Callahan. Sandy Shepherd had a good game and organized us pretty well in the back. We looked to possess the ball a little more in that game and she kept the ball for us.”

The Western League race is coming down to a three-way tussle among Cathedral, Coronado and La Jolla, which comes as no surprise to Medina. “I expected those three to be at the top and that’s where we are halfway through the (league) season. If we take care of the games we should, we can finish in the top two. We’re trying to finish with a strong second half. We want to try and get a No. 1 or No. 2 seed heading into the CIF playoffs.”

The Western League is so strong competitively in girls soccer, that the final regular season conference standings will in all likelihood be the seeding order for the Division III playoffs.

This week the Islanders are at home for both of their games. Wednesday at 6 pm they host Our Lady of Peace. Friday at 7 pm Coronado faces Christian.

CHS Girls Water Polo Bests Bishop’s 10-7

Last week Your Natterer opined that for my money, the best water polo team in San Diego County, year in and year out, boys or girls, is either Coronado or Bishop’s. Both schools have programs that play essentially year around, have exceptional coaching staffs and really don’t like each other very much as programs.

The latest chapter of ‘Who Is No. 1’ took an interesting dramatic turn last week as the Islanders stormed the beaches of La Jolla and defeated Bishops, in their pool, by the score of 10-7. In fairness, for the limited number of Coronado-based Bishop’s followers who read this column, the Knights won Round I in Coronado 11-8 in overtime. As Islander Head Coach Dave Throop put it, “We’re playing with a bit of confidence right now, as we’re on a seven-game winning streak.”

Throop provided some details of the Bishop’s game. “We played a good game. Not great, but good enough. Ashley Young scored four goals, while Kathryn Bailey and Hillary Estrada had two goals each. Kelly Ronimus had a goal and three assists, Michelle Carroll scored once and Maddie Murphy had two assists. Alex Adamson had nine saves, three assists and one steal while in goal.”

Coronado had to come from behind early in the game, according to Throop. “Bishop’s went up 2-1 at the end of the first quarter, and we scored three times in the second to make it 4-3 at halftime. We peeled off four goals in the third to take control. We answered each other goal for goal in the final frame.”

Then it was a return home the following day to face Cathedral Catholic and the result was a 12-6 win for Coronado. Young again led the Islander offensive proceedings with five goals, three assists and threw in a little defense for good measure with three steals. Ronimus added three goals, Bailey had two goals and three steals, while Sydney Hoshko added a single score. Murphy chipped in two steals and two assists. Adamson and Colleen Moore split time in goal, combining for eight saves between them.

Throop was leery of playing two important games back-to-back. “The coaching staff feared the proverbial ‘trap game’ and we found ourselves down 3-2 quickly in the first quarter, before scoring to tie it up by the buzzer. We were afraid that it would be difficult for the girls to recover mentally from the game against Bishop’s the day before and perform well. We came out flat and it was a matter of simply being more talented than Cathedral that found us in the win column.”

Assessing the balance of the season, Throop said, “This coming week is one of our last major weeks of competition and we play a pretty tough schedule. Wednesday we host La Jolla and then travel to the SoCal Championship Tournament, where we’re seeded seventh overall. It’ll be interesting to see how we do, because I believe we are a better team now than we were in either of our last two tournaments. This is a great test for us. We’ve been stressing the importance of preparation for a while and physically we’re ready to go. It’s the psychological aspects of the team that we’re learning about. This week is a great opportunity for us to apply those lessons.”

Save This Date for College Recruiting Presentation

By popular demand, the Islander Sports Foundation is bringing Jack Renkens and his ‘Recruiting Realities’ presentation back to Coronado Monday, March 23^rd at 7:30 pm. There will be no admission fee for the presentation, which will be paid for by the ISF and will be held at the Coronado High School Theater. Parents of Coronado Middle School and Coronado High School athletes and all student-athletes themselves are invited to attend.

Renkens appeared last year and was a resounding success. Unfortunately his presentation was the same evening as a couple of late-season playoff events, but the crowd of 250 that attended came away with a broader understanding of the college and university athletic recruiting process. Immediate reaction from the presentation was that Renkens should return again this year.

For now, circle the date on your calendar. The presentation, which lasts about 90 minutes, is a no-nonsense, realistic recruiting seminar from a former coach and parent, who knows the topic and presents it in an entertaining fashion.

Honors and Awards for Malkemus, Mills, Beaubien and Smith

Accolades continue to mount for CHS football players Blake Malkemus and Mason Mills. Both athletes were recently named to the CalHiSports.com All-State Small Schools Second Team, with Malkemus being honored at the tight end position and Mills honored as a multi-purpose quarterback and running back. Congratulations to both athletes.

Coronado High grads and Olympians Layne Beaubien and Jesse Smith will be honored by the Breitbard Hall of Fame, Wednesday Feb. 18 at a dinner at the Town and Country Hotel’s Grand Exhibit Hall. Smith and Beaubien will be honored for their roles in helping the U.S. Water Polo Team win the Olympic silver medal during the recent Beijing Olympics. The medal was the first won by the U.S. in water polo since the 1988 Olympic Games.

Others being honored for contributions at the professional level are Adrian Gonzalez of the San Diego Padres; Cole Hamels of the Philadelphia Phillies; NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson and former NFL and San Diego State running back Marshall Faulk.

Tickets for the dinner are $250 and are tax deductible. For more information on the dinner, call the Hall of Champions Events Department at 619-699-2313.