Nado Natterings
A weekly column by David Axelson Back to Index

8 September 2010 Issue #36

Friday night’s regular season opener for the Islander Football Team can best be summarized by a quick look at the play-by-play sheet from the first quarter of the game. Grossmont took the opening kickoff and scored 12 plays later.

After a touchback on the ensuing kickoff, the Islanders started their first offensive series on their own 20 yard line. Three plays from scrimmage and a delay of game penalty later, they had been pushed back to their own 12-yard line and had to punt. That would be Coronado’s only penalty of the game, which considering this was the first meaningful game of the season is, as Head Coach Bud Mayfield said, “Pretty remarkable.”

Aside from the penalty component, the rest of the game followed this format. The offensive series delineated above would prove to be Coronado’s sole possession in the first quarter. For the first 12 minutes of the game, the time of possession amounted to 1:46 for Coronado and 10:14 for Grossmont. Fast forward 90 minutes or so and you have a 33-0 final score with the Foothillers coming out on top.

“The offense wouldn’t move the ball and we gave the opponent field position,” said Mayfield. “The defense always had their back to the wall but played hard throughout. Grossmont earned everything they got. Because of field position, they didn’t have to go far to get it, but we made them earn it.”

Defensive leaders included Andrew Toomey with four solo tackles and six assisted tackles; Jose Sanchez with four solo tackles, four assisted tackles and a fumble recovery; Austin Copp had one solo tackle and 11 assisted tackles; while Jordan Jacobs was credited with four solos and four assisted tackles.

Offensively, the Islanders have yet to establish their identity, as running back Charles Westbrook, who figured to get most of the touches at running back for Coronado this season, appears to be out for the balance of the non-conference season with a cracked clavicle. The senior tandem of Jeff Bona and Toomey, along with junior quarterbacks Austin Denson and Trey Jasonek accounted for all 19 carries from the line of scrimmage against Grossmont. Toomey ripped off the longest gainer for Coronado during the evening, with a 25-yard run in the second quarter.

The Islander passing attack never got untracked. Denson and Jasonek combined to throw 11 passes in the game, which collectively didn’t amass much yardage. Coronado ran a total of 30 offensive plays in the contest, while Grossmont ran nearly twice as many.

“That was the meekest offensive effort we have had in the last five or six years,” added Mayfield. “The last time was in the playoffs against Valley Center in 2005.”

Grossmont, which is the smallest school in CIF San Diego Section Division I with an enrollment of 2,594, has been flying under the radar entering the 2010 season. In the “North County Times Sportswriters Poll,” not only were the Foothillers not in the Top 10 Preseason Poll, but they received zero votes. I placed Grossmont into the No. 10 slot on my poll ballot for this week, as their line play on both sides of the ball was solid and they had six running backs gain positive yardage. In addition, their special teams play is very strong. As Mayfield said, “You have got to give them credit.”

No harm, no foul so far. There certainly is no disgrace losing to a good team from a larger school. By means of comparison, Coronado competes in Division IV and has 1,100 students.

This Friday at 7:30 pm, the Islanders host Harry Ainlay High School from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Mayfield provides a preview of the Titans. “They were 9-0 last year and won their area championship. They then played in the Provincials (playoffs) and lost in the championship game. They won’t be pushovers. It will be old fashioned football coaching from the sideline. Then we have Santa Fe Christian coming after that.”

North County Times Sportswriters and Sportscasters Prep Football Poll

In the text above, I noted that I would cast a vote for Grossmont in the aforementioned football poll. A total of 21 schools received votes this week and Grossmont earned one tally, mine. The Top 10 Teams:  No. 1 Vista; No. 2 Helix; No. 3 Eastlake; No. 4 La Costa Canyon; No. 5 Steele Canyon; No. 6 Oceanside; No. 7 Torrey Pines; No. 8 Cathedral Catholic; No. 9 Valley Center; and No. 10 Valhalla. The next three teams receiving votes included Ramona, Mira Mesa and Escondido.

Football Correction

In last week’s edition of “The Coronado Eagle and Journal,” a picture of Jordan Jacobs recovering a fumble in the Francis Parker end zone was incorrectly identified by Your Natterer as Jordan Jenkins. Since Jacobs is also a senior Co-Caption along with Austin Copp, the felony was thus compounded. In my defense, Jacobs switched numbers from 80 his junior season to 7 for his senior campaign. Best wishes to the defensive end and tight end for the 2010 season.

Islander Girls Golf Squad off to 2-0 Start

Coronado’s Girls Golf Squad has teed it up twice this fall and come away with as many victories, both on their home course of Coronado Municipal (Par 36). Their first test was a 240-245 victory over Patrick Henry. The second win was over San Diego High School 263-271.

At the outset of the golf season, your scribe attempts to re-cap scoring in the sport of golf. Six golfers compete, with the best five scores used to compile the team score, with the low team score winning.

Leading the way for the Islanders against Henry was freshman Cara Barker, who shot a 39 for the day, earning medalist honors for the match. Putting that in perspective, Barker’s 39 would put her in the upper playing tier of the Islandder Boys Golf Team most years. “I coached her when she was a youngster,” said CHS Girls Golf Head Coach Hanna Cohan. “She started when she was 6 or 7 in the LPGA Girls Golf program in Coronado and has been playing ever since. She was also in the middle school golf program. She has also played all over the country in San Diego Junior Golf Association events.”

In addition to the precocious Barker, Coach Cohan has the luxury of four returning senior athletes, including Natalie Bailey, Melissa Lewis, Emily Bodkin and Kayla Englehart. Liza Logan is the lone junior on the Islander squad. However, Andrea Perez, Erin Dupree and Haley McKay are all sophomores who will contribute. Logan and Bailey are the team captains this season.

Cohan said that Dupree and Logan “are ones to watch,” and added that Lewis shot a personal best round of 49 and “was thrilled with that.”

In the San Diego match, Coronado only had five golfers compete, which meant they did not have the luxury of throwing out the high score. Barker again led the way, this time with a round of 47. As Cohan put it, “Cara relaxed a little bit in the second match.”

“What’s nice about this year is that the girls are very athletic, strong and smart,” Cohan added. “They all get along and like each other. They have already had a social outing together and there is a lot of unity and camaraderie, and not much drama. They are very inclusive. We definitely have some individual candidates for CIF play and there’s a glimmer for the team going to CIF. There’s a sparkle out there that says we can go to the CIFs as a team.”

Team members are playing on their own to improve their scores. Cohan received a text at 6 am over the weekend from Perez saying that she was playing the back nine at Coronado with her Dad. “Andrea said it was really nice,” said Cohan. “And that she would like to do more of that.”

CHS Girls Tennis Splits a Pair of Matches

Prep tennis scores used to be fairly certain. Unlike most sports, there were no substitutions allowed once the lineups were set. Changing your lineup after the beginning of the match meant forfeiting the balance of that person’s matches. Starting with the spring 2010 Boys season, substitutions were allowed, which means that potentially more kids get to compete in case of injury or a one-sided match.

The new format didn’t come into play during Coronado’s 13-5 victory over Francis Parker, which was highlighted by the Islanders doubles contingent winning eight of their nine sets, but it did later in the week. The Islander’s No. 1 doubles team of Brooke Gensler/Abigail Andreasen and No. 3 doubles of Brittany Kullberg/Nikki Krueger won all three of their sets against Parker. The No. 2 doubles entry of Alex Rawlings/Katie Salinda won two of their matches. Islander singles players Elena Wang, Priscila Gomez and Mary Mulvey won five matches among them.

The week’s second competition was a 12-6 loss to San Dieguito, with six different players or combinations of players winning a set each for Coronado. Jackie Hites, Wang and Gomez won one singles match each. On the doubles side, Rawlings/Salinda; Rawlings/Heidi Jonson and Krueger/Kullberg won one set each.

Head Coach Rob LeBuhn summarized the matches. “Against Parker, their No. 1 singles player was very good, but after that they dropped off and our doubles teams took them out of it. San Dieguito was very tough, but it was a nice way to start the season.”

This week Coronado stays at home, as they host Canyon Crest Tuesday, La Jolla Country Day Wednesday and then Hi Tech High Thursday. All three of these home matches begin at 3 pm.

Islander Cross Country Program off to Strong Start

Coronado’s Cross Country program had their first significant outing of the 2010 season last weekend, and Head Coach George Green checks in with a report on the festivities. “About half of the runners on the Boys' and Girls' cross country teams started their competitive season last Saturday at the Second Annual Wildcat/Cougar 6-mile relay put on by El Camino High School and California State University, San Marcos on the CSUSM campus.

Over 900 runners competed as four-person teams in two divisions, with each runner covering 1.5 miles. The Islander girls came into the race as the defending "smaller school" champions, but this year the race was a lot larger and most of the schools they went up against were in CIF Division II (Coronado is in Division IV). On top of that, two of the top Islander girls were not in the race. Last years' CIF Division IV cross country champion, Annie Lovering, was out of town and All-CIF performer from a year ago Nicole Davies is still recovering from a leg injury.

On top of that we lost two of our best runners, Adie Davies and Sallie Privett, to graduation. Adie and Sallie are now running at Pepperdine and U.C. Davis respectively. This year's version of the varsity relay consisted of Mollie Privett, Meg Sweeney, Ashley Engleman and Sadie Gimber. After the first three legs Gimber took the baton about 50 meters behind Point Loma with Valhalla's very capable anchor runner, Page Hughes, coming on strong. Sadie, however, is a sub-59 second 400 meter runner, which is why she ran our anchor leg, and was up for the task. At the one mile point she had caught the Pt. Loma runner and was holding Valhalla off. At the finish it was Coronado first in 38:14, Valhalla second in 38:23 and Pt. Loma third in 38:55. 

 The Boy's varsity came with their ‘A’ squad consisting of Nate Wilson, Ryan Keeney, Will Funk and Aryan Shay. As with the girls' race, we were in second place behind Pt. Loma by about 24 seconds at the final hand-off. And as with the girls' team, we had a fast anchor in Shay who clocked 1:58.6 last season for the 800-meter run. To complete the successful comparison, as with the girls' team, our anchor pulled it off. Shay caught the Pt. Loma runner half way into his leg and the boys won going away in 32:04 to Pt. Loma's time of 32:23. Shay not only made-up the 24 second deficit but increased the Islander lead to 19 seconds at the finish.

 In addition to our two varsity squads, we entered two JV girls' teams and one JV boys' team. The JV girls' team of Maddy Danielson, Elise Umansky, Taylor Ramos and Sydney Swanson took first in the Division II JV race. Our other team of Martha Byrne, Sierra Smith, Mary Grace Braun and Sydney Bennett took third. The boys JV team consisting of Carlos Montes, Paul Rodriguez, Jack Gold and Casey Engleman, won the Division II JV boys' race.

Not a bad outing at all.

Bill Davies returns for his third year of coaching the girls' team, U.S. Olympian Alice Schmidt is volunteering her expertise as she did for track last season, and we have a new coach in Todd Vollstedt. Actually Todd isn't new to coaching as he was the head girls' coach at Santa Monica High School. He's here because he's a new math teacher at CHS.”

Coronado Aquatics Water Polo Instruction

Beginning today, Wednesday, Sept. 8, the Coronado Aquatics Club will be holding practices at the Brian Bent Memorial Aquatics Center on the CHS campus. The club will offer introductory and advanced play for all levels, including elementary-school, middle school and high school-aged student-athletes.

For more information, please go to nadoaquatics.com, contact Coach Dave Throop by phone at (619) 851-9734, or contact Coach Throop by E-mail at throopster@hotmail.com.  

Coronado Youth Soccer Golf Tournament Coming Soon

The Coronado Youth Soccer League has rescheduled their Second Annual CYSL Golf Tournament fundraiser to Wednesday, September 22, 2010, at Sea ‘N Air Golf Course on NAS North Island. The playing fee is $100 per person or $375 for a foursome, which also includes lunch and an awards banquet following at the Coronado VFW.  

Registration begins at 10 am, with a $2,500 putting contest slated for 10:30 am. The golf starts at 12 noon with a shotgun start and the event will be played in a scramble format.  The public is invited to participate. 

Non-golfers are welcome to attend the banquet; advance purchase tickets are available for $10 per person.  In addition there are sponsorship opportunities available, including sponsoring a hole for $100 and the opportunity to have a military golfer join you as your guest for $100. For information on other sponsorships, or to register to play, please contact Helen Maracle at 619-954-1163 or via E-mail at helenmaracle@gmail.com. For additional registration details, go to nadosoccer.com.

Coronado Pop Warner Update

The Coronado Islanders PeeWee football team traveled to Serra High Saturday to play the Tierrasanta Cougars, the defending league champions. Isaac Rosenthal boomed the opening kick deep into Cougar Country and some fine defense was played by linemen Wyatt Trujillo, James Abate and Sean Bongiovanni to keep the Cougars trapped. 

 In a tight scoreless game some hard hitting was being done by Evan Probert and Cameron McMahon to tame the Cougars.  Juan Nieves had some nice runs from the halfback position and linemen Ryan Samara and Kodi Kroll provided plenty of time for Islander pass plays to develop, as the Islanders went ahead 7-0 on a halfback option pass. The final score was 7-7 in a hard fought, well played game. 

Football Mea Culpa II

It occurred to me during the NFL off season, if there really is one, that I owed a long distance apology to New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees. While Brees was the starting signal-caller for the San Diego Chargers, the locals were an above club, going 12-4 in 2004 before being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the New Jersey Jets.

In 2005 San Diego’s record was 9-7, with Brees suffering a severely dislocated shoulder in a meaningless season finale, which was the unintended consequence of the power struggle between current Charger General Manager A.J. Smith and former Head Coach Marty Schottenheimer. At about this time, I was of the opinion that the diminutive Brees, generously listed at 6 feet tall, “Was just good enough to get you beat.”

Brees, now playing for Head Coach Sean Payton, famously led the Saints to the Super Bowl XLIV title last season, has benefitted greatly from Payton’s complex offensive schemes. Brees has become one of the hardest working athletes in professional sports and from a purely physical perspective, one of sports’ greatest over achievers.

In an incredibly detailed statistical analysis of all NFL quarterbacks based on the 2009 season by author Aaron Schatz, he lists Brees as the game’s fourth best at his position, behind Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and the Chargers own Philip Rivers, who succeeded Brees after the latter signed with the Saints.  

ESPN’s Bill Simmons ranks Brees at the top of the NFL heap, followed by Manning, Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Rivers. It’s hard to argue with success and Brees has rightfully earned his accolades. If I was coaching one game and my life depended on the outcome, Peyton Manning would be my choice under center, with Brady a close second. If Steeler Ben Roethlisberger is over his off-field problems, he would be my third choice. As Simmons points out in his recent ESPN.com ‘Sports Guy’ column, the Roethlisberger to Santonio Holmes touchdown toss in Super Bowl XLIII was one of the great passes in NFL history. Then we come to a coin toss between Brees and Rivers for fourth and fifth place.

Whatever the reasons are, Brees has had a great career and his charity work in New Orleans has made him a community legend. With Super Bowl victory, he has now won at every level of the game.