Nado Natterings
A weekly column by David Axelson

4 November 2009 Issue #42

Tempting as it would be to run last week’s football game story in this space and just change the name of the Islander’s dominated opponent from Crawford to Kearney, we’ll actually dispense some fresh football prose for you. After all, it was Homecoming. Let’s end the suspense, much the same way it was concluded in the game itself, Coronado won 56-0. The team’s second consecutive one-sided victory runs the Islanders record to 4-4 this season.

Kearny apparently didn’t review their scouting tapes well, as they won the coin toss and opted to kick off. Sophomore Charles Westbrook was glad to accept this largesse and promptly laid an 87-yard return for a touchdown on the unsuspecting Komets. A scant 14 seconds into the game, Coronado leads 7-0.

Kearny went three and out, punted and Coronado took over on their own 42-yard line. The Islanders promptly were called for an illegal procedure penalty, which in essence only added to Coronado’s statistical dominance. Chris Page ran for 19 yards, followed in short order by another gain of nine by Page. Kodie Englehart ended whatever suspense that may have built up among the Homecoming faithful at that juncture and took off for a 35-yard touchdown.

On the next offensive series for Kearny, Austin Copp recovered a Kearny fumble caused by Roland Kaaialii and Coronado was back in business on the visitor’s 15-yard line. A series of short gains led to a 2-yard touchdown plunge by Page and the score was 21-0 with 6:30 remaining in the first quarter.

Kearney’s next possession didn’t yield anything significant, so Englehart ran the ball in from the Coronado 45-yard line the next time he touched the ball. And so it went. Later Englehart threw a 32-yard touchdown pass to Andrew Smith and Westbrook added scoring runs of 5 and 13 yards.

The halftime score was 49-0 Coronado. After intermission, Westbrook scored on a 44-yard touchdown gallop to reach the eventual final score of 56-0. Most of the game was played with a running clock, or the final could have been much more lopsided. The previous week against Crawford, Islander Head Coach Bud Mayfield worked to keep the score down despite the eventual 70-0 final tally. This week the veteran coach really worked at score control. For virtually all of the second quarter and the second half, sophomore quarterbacks Austin Denson and Trey Jasonek shared time and Westbrook, who normally plays a slot back or receiver position, was the team’s running back.

While discussing the game with Mayfield a couple of nights later, Your Natterer posed the question as to who would be faster in a foot race, Englehart or Westbrook? Mayfield said that it would be close, but thought that Englehart, a senior, reached his top end speed a little quicker than the younger Westbrook.

Last week we noted the ‘promotion’ of junior Jack Mikesell to the role of player-coach. This week the lineman, who will miss most of the season with a broken arm, diversified and hung out his shingle in the public relations field, trying to get a newspaper mention for fellow junior Alex Bookout.

Honesty compels me to report that Mikesell, Bookout and standout two-way lineman Jose Sanchez all played basketball for me at CMS, so it’s fun to see them do well. Shortly after Mikesell tried in vain to compare Bookout’s foot speed with Englehart’s, thereby trying to earn a mention in this week’s column, Bookout was on the receiving end of a 42-yard pass from Englehart. So the Mikesell karma, less the part about the broken arm of course, continues unabated.

The Kearny game marked another fine effort for Coronado kicker Andrew Toomey, who was eight for eight in extra point conversions, running his string of consecutive conversions to 28 straight over the past six games.  In real life Toomey plays linebacker on the Islander defensive unit. However, his long kickoffs, his dependability in converting extra points and the occasional field goal, have been important in Coronado’s recent run of victories.

 “We’re back to .500, which is the longest it has taken us to do that in 10 years,” Mayfield said. “Hopefully we can finish well. Twelve teams go to the playoffs and I would guess we will get a middle seed, somewhere between No. 6 and No. 8. After the league champions and the undefeated teams are seeded, that’s where we should be. The four teams we have lost to have a total of two losses combined.”

Friday the Islanders return home to play Clairemont, which is coming off of 49-3 Central League loss to Madison. Kickoff is slated for 7:30 pm.

Islander Girls Golf Squad Posts 2-0 Week in Western League

One of the themes with the Islander Girls Golf Team this year has been that the squad is comprised of good athletes, who are in various stages of learning the game. Several team members have played quite a bit, while others are learning and adapting quickly.

Those elements were reflected in the scores Coronado posted last week. The Islanders defeated Point Loma 236-240, which according to CHS Head Coach Hanna Cohan, was 13 strokes better than her club’s previous best score this season. To put the score in perspective, when the two teams met for the first time in the beginning of October, Coronado lost 238-291.

Leading the way for the Islanders was Jackie Davis with a round of 43, Liza-Jean Logan who carded a 45 and Kendall Hoshko who shot a 47. The other three players from Coronado, Andrea Perez, Erin Dupree and Leity Buil-McCarty were all in the low 50’s.

A similar occurrence happened Thursday when Coronado defeated La Jolla 252-282. In their first trip through the Western League schedule, La Jolla won 265-275. Medalist honors went to Logan who shot a 45, while Dupree shot a 46 and Hoshko joined the under-50 club with a 49.

“As I said last week, the girls haven’t let off of the accelerator,” said Cohan. “It was a great win against Point Loma. We surprised not only ourselves, but many other coaches and teams as well. The word gets around. They have really worked as a team throughout the entire season and it showed at the end.”

Wednesday Davis, Logan, Dupree, Hoshko, Englehart and Perez will all compete in the City Conference Tournament, which will be held at Cottonwood Country Club.

Boys Water Polo Has Busy, Busy Week

One of my grandmother Axelson’s favorite sayings, loosely translated from the Book of Isaiah was “There is no rest for the wicked.” Perhaps she had the CHS Boys Water Polo Team in mind when she recited that verse.

The Islanders started their week with a home match against La Jolla, which they won 15-9. The next day they traveled to Cathedral Catholic, which because Bishop’s had previously knocked off The Dons, meant the Western League race and the No. 1 seed in the CIF Division II playoffs were very much up for grabs. Coronado came out on the short end of the 7-4 final score.

“That loss was a pivotal game for the conference,” said Coronado Head Coach Randy Burgess. “When Bishop’s beat Cathedral, that put us in the driver’s seat and we didn’t take advantage of it. We have a couple of weeks to reflect on that before the playoffs. We were up 3-2 at the half and lost 7-4. I have to take my visor off to Cathedral because they are playing well and we have to play well to beat them. We had a 3-0 lapse in the third quarter and that was the game. That may be the catalyst to get us through the next few weeks.”

The obvious solution to being down after losing a close game is to hop on a plane and fly to San Jose and play Campolindo High School Thursday night. The Islanders emerged with a 13-5 victory, which allowed Burgess to spread playing time around to all. “The team did a nice job and everyone played quite a bit. I wanted to get a feel for the officiating and the kids won handily.”

Friday it was on to the real reason the team flew to San Jose, which was to participate in the Finis Invitational, commonly known as the NorCal Tournament. Since the tourney is played close to the end of the regular season and most of the state’s top teams compete, the NorCal is for all practical purposes, the unofficial state championship.

In Friday’s first game, Coronado defeated Clovis West 13-9. Burgess summarized the game by saying, “We got a good lead early-on. Went into cruise control, but won handily.” The team’s second round game in the 16-team tournament was against Miramonte, which took the unusual step of scouting Coronado in their game against Campolindo. Although honored by the effort of scouting his club, Burgess took more pride in the 8-7 victory.

With Friday now in the books, Coronado played Mater Dei in the semi-finals, a team that had previously defeated the Islanders 9-8 earlier in the season. Despite the fact that Mater Dei went on to win the tournament title over Newport, Burgess wasn’t happy with the 10-5 loss. “We didn’t adjust to the way they played or to the officiating. Going in to the tournament, our goal was to get into the Top 4. I thought we could beat Mater Dei, but they are playing at the top of their game.”

With fourth place assured, Burgess turned the final tournament game over to the underclassmen and the Islanders lost to Corona del Mar 16-11. “A lot of our varsity players received valuable playing time and we got great competition from everybody we played,” Burgess said of the event. “We saw three teams we hadn’t seen before, but we played two teams (Mater Dei and CDM) that we lost to for the second time. We have great kids and we had a great time traveling. We played all three of our goalies Braydon Hummeldorf, Garrett Sabesky and Joe Rodgers, so they got a lot of valuable playing time. The starting seniors including Alex Johnson, Rex Butler, Tommy Schofer, Andrew Ireland and Brennan Casey did a nice job. They provided senior leadership and not just in the pool. They acted maturely through the long weekend.”

The CIF San Diego Section playoff picture is becoming clearer, with Burgess expecting either a No. 2 or 3 seed in Division II, depending in large part on the result of Wednesday’s game at Bishop’s. The week’s full schedule includes Bishop’s on the road Wednesday at 4:30 pm, University City at Coronado Thursday at 4 pm and Foothill at Coronado Friday at 6 pm. A quality combo water polo and football game evening is available for all Islander sports fans Friday.

Cross Country Report

CHS Head Cross Country Coach George Green provides his report on last week’s competition. “Both the Boys and Girls Cross Country Teams won their respective dual meets against Madison last week.

The Boys came back after two tough losses against Clairemont and Christian in previous weeks to win by the score of 24-34.   The significance of this 10-point spread is that Madison beat Clairemont by three points in the first meet of the season and lost to Christian by only 1 point last week. Since the biggest part of the equation that determines the Central League championship will be the League Finals next week, the Islanders are back in the hunt.

The most exciting match-up of the day was between Islander Ryan Keeney and the Madison’s Connor Torre. On paper it appeared that Torre was one of the runners who could advance to the state meet by grabbing an "at large" position at the CIF finals.  If Ryan could finish close to him, then perhaps he would also have a shot. 

Ryan's instructions were to stay in close contact and let Torre set the pace for the first part of the race and then try to pass him at the end. The two traded the lead for the first 2.5 miles of the 3-mile City Conference course. Over the last half-mile, however, Ryan pulled away to easily win by 25 seconds with a time of 17:15.  Aryan Shay placed third in 17:53 followed by Will Funk in fifth, Kevin Siefert in seventh, Gabe Salvatierra in eighth, Jason Vance in ninth, Chase Dalton in 11th, and then Nick Robles, Luke McCue and Weston Breay.

The girls race was such a mismatch, that we sent our top six runners off to get in a hard workout over the Balboa Park hills, leaving basically the JV team to run in the meet. It was still no contest with the Islander girls taking the top five spots to win 15-43. Ashley Engleman was first across the line in 20:46 followed by Mollie Privett in 20:59, and then Stephanie Pietkiewicz, Maddy Danielson, Mary Grace Braun, Yvonne Wood (9th), Melissa Wood (11th), Lindsay Garner (12th), Deming Tobin (15th) and Sarah Alfano (16th).

Girls Volleyball Loses Lone Match to Patrick Henry

Your humble scribe erred rather badly a couple of weeks ago, when based on the positive results from a couple of Eastern League matches, it was assumed that the CHS Girls Volleyball Team had returned to health. Well, not so fast.

Two weeks ago the Islanders, still in the collective grip of the flu that was sweeping through the team, lost two matches. Last week Coronado fell to Eastern League leader Patrick Henry by the scores of 25-16, 25-19 and 25-13. According to Islander Head Coach Leilani Au Hoon, although all of her players were present and accounted for, the team had not played together in several weeks. “It was the first game back for Allie Wilson and Kori Fitzgerald had been sick as well. We played kind of choppy, but we definitely had runs. But we made our own mistakes serving and hitting out.”

Coronado, which should finish in third place in the Eastern League, should easily qualify for the post season. A total of 12 teams are invited to the playoffs, with the playoff pairings announced Nov. 7. Au Hoon has a pretty good feel for how the pairings will go. “We should be in the middle somewhere. What is going to help us was winning the Hilltop Tournament where we beat Patrick Henry. Then we came in second in the Silver Division in another tournament. The application (paper work) for the playoffs is insane. We should do well in the seeding, even though we lost to Mission Bay.” Au Hoon said the favorites for the top seeds included Cathedral Catholic, Francis Parker, and La Jolla Country Day.

This week the Islanders host Mira Mesa Monday afternoon. Wednesday the team travels to San Diego High School for their final regular season game.

Coronado Middle School Registration Wednesday Night

A reminder that registration for the Coronado Middle School winter sports program is Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 6:30 pm at CMS. Sports offered in the winter include: Boys Soccer,  Girls Soccer, Girls Lacrosse, Softball, Boys Basketball, Co-ed Golf, and Girls Fun ‘N Fit. The cost is $120 per child, per sport. A current athletic physical and other forms need to be completed for registration.

Coronado High School Tryout Information

November is a transition month for prep sports, with the end of the fall sports season and the beginning of the winter season. All athletes must attend try-out unless they are excused by the coach. You must also complete the required paperwork, including a current physical performed by a doctor to try out for a team. Here is the current tryout information by team for the CHS winter sports:

Boys Basketball tryouts begin Sat. Nov 14th from noon to 2:30 at the CHS gym. The next couple of sessions include Nov. 16 from 5:15-7:30 pm and Nov. 17 from 4:45 to 7 pm.

Girls Basketball tryouts also begin Sat. Nov. 14. Their first practice is scheduled to run from 9 to 11:30 am on that date. The next few practices include Nov. 16 from 3-5:15 pm and Nov. 17 from 2:30-4:45 pm.

Boys Soccer tryouts begin Sat. Nov. 14 from 10 am to noon at Niedermeyer Field. They will also practice from Nov. 16-19 from 6 to 8 pm.

Girls Soccer tryouts will run from Nov. 16 to 19 from 5 to 7 pm.

Girls Water Polo tryouts are slated to start Monday, Nov. 16 at the Coronado Community Pool from 2-4 pm and will run at that time throughout the week.