During every prep sports season, there is a seven-day period when the regular season concludes, playoff seedings are released, the playoffs start and are on occasion concluded, all in short order. Last week was that period for Coronado High School as all five winter sports teams made the playoffs and entering this week the Boys Soccer and Girls Soccer programs are still in hot pursuit of a CIF title.

CHS Boys Soccer Defeats High Tech High in Quarter-Finals

Upsets have come in a fast and furious fashion in the CIF Boys Soccer playoffs in all divisions this season. “This year more than ever the top seeds are going out the window,” said Islander Head Coach Brian Hiatt-Aleu. “Westview, the top team in the county lost in the quarter-finals. It’s happened in all four of the main divisions.”

Fortunately the Coronado Boys Soccer Team escaped the upset trend courtesy of a second-half goal scored by senior forward Kyle Runyon. The lone goal allowed Coronado to defeat a persistent team from San Diego High Tech High 1-0 Friday evening. “The goal came during free play,” Hiatt-Aleu said. “We caught them in transition. Kyle came down the left side, let the center go by and scored. We have been working on isolating the forwards a little bit. We’ve been going over finishing (shot attempts) in particular, which paid off. Give them credit, their goalie had an outstanding game. We just didn’t put the game away. It was just a little bit of a wakeup call.” Ricardo Gonzalez-Diaz earned the shutout in goal for Coronado.

Coronado entered the playoffs as the second ranked team in San Diego County in all divisions, due at least in part to their sparkling 21-1 record and championship run through the Central League. They were also the No. 1 seed in Division IV.

When asked how the game as a whole went, Hiatt-Aleu responded, “It didn’t play out as well as we wanted it to in terms of putting the game away. High Tech is much improved from when we played them in our tournament. We had played and beaten them and some complacency set in. Our practices during the week were just okay. Sometimes we play like we practice. We weren’t getting behind the ball and our shots and passing weren’t there. We let them hang around. We wanted to score early and we couldn’t do that. Finally our relentless pressure paid off. We had opportunities to score the second one and put it away, but couldn’t. It was a nail biter until the end.”

The folks doing the seeding in or around the CIF office knew what they were doing, at least in Division IV, as all four of the top seeds remain in the competition. Coronado hosts The Bishop’s School Tuesday evening. Hiatt-Aleu previewed the Knights. “They have a 6-foot, 7-inch 220 pound kid who scored two of their four goals on throw-ins. They only have one loss all year and it should be quite a game. They run, run, and run some more. We’ll have a very tough game. I think it will be a one-goal game, hopefully our way.”

Should form hold and the Boys win Tuesday evening, they will play in the CIF Finals at Cathedral Catholic Sat., March 5 at 6:30 pm.

Islander Girls Soccer Advances to CIF Semi-Finals

The Coronado Girls Soccer Team’s 2-1 victory over Escondido Charter is difficult to write about because you had to be there to fully appreciate Coronado’s domination of the game. And yet the Islanders won by only one goal in a contest that could easily have had a 5-1 final score.

Less than two minutes into the game, Brianne Clifford boomed a kick from roughly 25 yards out for a score and the early my early thought was, ‘Well this game was over quickly.’ The Islanders spent 95 percent of the first half in Escondido Charter’s defensive end of the field. In fact Coronado goalie Cory De Marco literally did not touch the ball in the first half of play.

With 23:15 left in the second half, the Callahan sisters combined on a beautiful scoring play, with freshman Abigail Callahan lofting a beautiful left-footed corner kick on goal, which was finished on a nice header from senior sibling Cassie Callahan. So at this point, with a two goal lead, it seemed like the game would come to a conclusion shortly. However Escondido Charter scored five minutes later and now anything can happen.

“It was a much closer game than I thought it would be,” said Islander Head Coach Kiko Medina. “It was obvious early on that there was an evident difference in the levels of our team and theirs. After getting the early goal, we just kind of took our foot off the gas and were going through the motions a little bit. They had numbers behind the ball and that made it hard for us to finish. We got frustrated and let down. They got their one chance and converted and then it’s a game. They had one real good player and she worked hard. Their goal was nice. It was a great placement from the corner and she muscled her way through a couple of our players. It was a good goal.”

Looking ahead, the Islanders host Francis Parker in the Division IV Semi-Finals Wednesday evening at 6 pm. Medina previewed the game. “They are always in the Division IV playoffs and they have a little bit of experience. They’re going to be good and give us a good game. If we play to our potential, we’ll be okay. Saturday night we showed that doesn’t always happen.”

Should the No. 2 seeded Islanders win Wednesday, they will compete in the Division IV Finals at Cathedral Catholic at 4 pm, Sat. March 5.

Big Time Journalism Hits Coronado

A fellow ink-stained wretch from the major daily newspaper in San Diego was in the press box for the Coronado Girls Soccer game Saturday night against Escondido Charter. Before and during the game, he asked injured Islander player Ariel Ochoa roughly 75 questions about the team, pasta dinners, what the team did during practice, etc.

Ochoa to her eternal credit answered every question in a positive and upbeat manner. The writer, apparently on loan from the Home and Garden section of the major daily newspaper, displayed an amazing lack of knowledge of any sort of activity played with a ball.

His article the following morning, incorrectly credited the first Coronado goal scorer, missed the interesting tidbit that the Callahan sisters combined on the second goal, and misspelled Kaityln Couture’s last name. And those were just the obvious mistakes.

His most egregious sin was not crediting or thanking Ochoa for her endless patience. So please allow me the honor and may I just add that Ochoa has a brilliant future in public relations, should she decide to pursue that career path.

CHS Girls Water Polo Falls in CIF Semi-Finals

The Islander Girls’ Water Polo Team had their Division III CIF Playoff run halted by the Bishop’s School last week and Coronado Head Coach Dave Throop provides a report on the contest. “We went into the game a little nervous, which led to the first couple goals against us, and then the wind sucked right out of our sails.  

We began to get away from a lot of what we had done successfully and resorted to old tendencies regarding ball movement and spacing.  After Bishops went up 5-0, I called a timeout in the first quarter to try and mitigate the damage.  Unfortunately, the shellshock had set in, and it wasn't until half time that we were able to catch our breath.  Also unfortunately, we were down 11-1 at half and the game was beyond reach.  

Our halftime adjustment was a message of just leaving all we had left out in the pool for some semblance of pride, with the goal of winning the half, which we did in a 4-3 manner.  The final score was Bishop’s 14, Coronado 5.

I don't think there was anyone on the team, or of the coaching staff, that envisioned the start to the game such as we had, but I believe I said previously that adversity does strange things to people at odd times. While our hope was that it would affect our opponents, it was us that fell victim to it.  

My message to the team post-game was simple.  While we fell short of our goal to play our best in our last opportunity, the hope is that for each and every member of the team to utilize the game and season as a tool to motivate them for improvement in whichever endeavor they chose to apply themselves, whether academically, professionally, or athletically moving forward.

I think when the moment passes, and they have some emotional distance from the game, they'll see how important preparation is for success and even with the best intent, one can still fall short of a goal.  I hope they've learned it's not the goal, rather, the preparation for things that matter.  It's the one area we can control. Everything else has too many variables which can influence the outcome.”

CHS Girls Basketball Beats Preuss, Loses to Mater Dei

In rapid succession, the CHS Girls Basketball Team dominated Preuss Academy 53-13 in the First Round of the Division IV CIF Playoffs Tuesday evening and then fell to Mater Dei 59-35 Friday night. Coronado finished 20-8 on the season and tied for the Central League title. On one Friday evening they defeated Christian to clinch the league co-title. The next Friday their season was completed. As the late author and novelist Kurt Vonnegut would say, “And so it goes.”

So let’s start with the victory over Preuss Academy, which was paced by Peri Curtis who contributed 28 points and eight rebounds. Samantha Kirk kicked in nine points, Alex Evans had six points, Camille Wilson contributed four points and Nicollette Abrantes, Meganne Weissenfels and Airean Gillig all had two points each. Cory De Marco played a fine floor game and had seven assists and seven steals. Weissenfels added eight steals and five rebounds.

Islander Head Coach Toler Goodwin said, “It was nice to get a home playoff game. Last year we had to go on the road against a league champion, even though we were the higher seed. We would have had the same dilemma this year if we hadn’t won the Central League. We were rewarded for the season we had, before we had to go on the road and play one of the top three seeds. We did some decent things against Preuss and played pretty evenly and we made some shots.”

Friday it was off to deepest Chula Vista and the road game with Mater Dei, who as recently as two seasons ago won the state Division IV title. They’re off some from that standard, but not a whole lot. The first quarter of the game was uneventful and the Crusaders held a 12-7 lead. In the second quarter with 6:24 remaining, Curtis hit a long three-pointer to make the score 14-12 in favor of Mater Dei. Unfortunately the Crusaders then ripped off a 15-0 run to take a 29-12 lead into the locker room at halftime. 

Evans, inch for inch the best rebounder in Southern California, picked up her fourth foul just 27 seconds into the second half on an atrocious block-charge call. Her fifth and final foul came just 28 seconds later. Despite her limited playing time, Evans snared 11 rebounds in the game. Coronado won the fourth quarter 17-16 but lost the game by 24 points.

The game was marred by an egregious lack of sportsmanship by the Mater Dei home fans. Sportsmanship, we are constantly reminded during CIF events, is of paramount importance. Apparently that is not the case, at least Friday evening, at Mater Dei.

Goodwin reflected on the season as a whole. “We had a solid season and there were some parts of the season where the kids had to step up and pick each other up when we had some injuries and illness. We lost only the one game to Kearny during that stretch. We won a league title, when we had been close the last two years. It was a positive season record-wise and results-wise. The reality is we finished the season playing a team better than we were and they beat us.”

Boys Basketball Loses Heart-Stopper to Army-Navy

Last week the CHS Boys Basketball Team went from having a first round bye, to the CIF office discovering that oops, we found some paperwork from Palo Verde and Islanders you get to host a home game Wednesday evening. The Yellow Jackets seemed to be okay with the four hour bus drive from Blythe to Coronado and showed up for the game at the appointed hour.

Frankly it wasn’t much of a game as the Islanders prevailed 71-46, behind 28 points, five rebounds and five steals from Danny Hebert. Justin Hebner scored an even dozen points, and added four rebounds and four steals. The big number was not the 11 points scored by Luke Gillingham, but rather the 17 rebounds he hauled down. Harley Ralph contributed nine points, six rebounds and four steals. Chris Banks had a nice outing with six points and four rebounds.

So with a First Round Playoff tune-up under their belts, the Islanders hosted the Warriors from Army-Navy Saturday evening for a Quarter-Final Division IV tilt. The featured attraction on the visitors roster was 7-foot, 1-inch sophomore center Cheikh Ndiaye. The real star of their show is freshman point guard Devin Watson who is the team’s leading scorer.

The first quarter was even, with neither team able to gain an appreciable advantage. Army-Navy held a slim 17-16 lead at the end of the first frame. In the second quarter, the Islanders bested the Warriors 13-6 and for just short of six minutes held Watson, Ndiaye and company scoreless. The Islanders held a 29-23 lead at the half.

The Islanders seemingly gained control of the game in the third quarter, as Hebner hit two three-pointers, and virtually everyone in the starting lineup for Coronado scored at least one basket. The Warriors scored the final four points of the quarter, but the Islanders ended the quarter with a 44-32 lead and seemed to be in control of the contest.

Army-Navy scored on an offensive rebound 90 seconds into the final stanza and Coronado scored 75 seconds later and held a 46-34 lead with 5:15 left in the game. Then Army-Navy started scoring two baskets for every one Coronado scored and the gap between the teams quickly narrowed. With 3:17 left in the game, Islander 6-foot, 7-inch senior center Billy Schmitt, who had contained the 7-1 Ndiaye throughout the contest and played perhaps his best game as an Islander, fouled out. With 2:03 left, the Warriors closed the gap to just one point.

As Islander Head Coach J.D. Laaperi said later of the game, “We did a good job being patient and looking for our shots. Something happened in the last four minutes where we sped things up a bit. Instead of getting an offensive rebound, backing it out and running the clock, we put it back up. We turned into a team we weren’t in the first 28 minutes of the game.”

In the final 30 seconds of the game, the Islanders holding on to a 52-51 lead, missed the front end of a one-and-one free throw combo, made a great steal and committed a costly turnover all in the space of several seconds. With the ball and down one point, Army-Navy senior captain Lamar Greenwood hit a jumper in the lane with three seconds left in the game to win the contest for the Warriors. A long-distance heave from half court at the buzzer for Coronado was wide of the mark.

Ndiaye could only manage seven points and nine rebounds against Schmitt and his back-up Jordan Jacobs. Watson scored 12 points for Army-Navy.

Senior Hebner had 19 points in his final game for Coronado, to go with eight rebounds and four assists. Hebert scored 16 points, and added five rebounds, three assists, four steals and three blocked shots. Ralph had 11 points, three rebounds and three steals. Gillingham scored four points, but made his presence felt in the lane with 11 rebounds. Jacobs had two points and six rebounds.

Laaperi added his thoughts on both the final game and the season as a whole. “Billy did a good job on their big guy and that was something we stressed all week. There were stretches where Justin shot the ball better than he had all month. Luke turned into one of our top three players in the last month and that showed Saturday night. When we had foul trouble, Brian Turley gave us some outstanding defense and gave us some great minutes.

I was pretty pleased with the season. We had two 10-game winning streaks and we have had 46 wins total in the last two years. That’s pretty special. Two years ago I sat down with some of the kids and they looked at the league championship banners in the gym. Danny said he wanted to win three league championship banners in three years. He’s two for two. These kids have been working hard since last March to get to where we got. We won the league, won a tournament early in the season and we went out in a hard-fought game.”

Bud Mayfield to Retire as Teacher, Head Football Coach

Bud Mayfield, who helmed the CHS Football program for 23 seasons and has won more games than any other coach in the 98-year history of the sport at Coronado, plans to retire as a teacher and coach at the end of the 2010-11 school year. The Islanders posted a 9-3 record in 2010, going 6-0 in the Central League to win the conference title.

The Islanders won their Division IV First Round Playoff game over Escondido Charter 47-14 before falling to the Santa Fe Christian Eagles in the Quarter-Finals 63-35. Mayfield won 131 games as head coach at Coronado.

The Miami University graduate holds BA and MA degrees from his alma mater and is known for teaching the popular ‘Theory of Knowledge’ class at CHS as well as AP English and ninth grade English. A former star running back at Holy Name High School in Cleveland, Mayfield played for the legendary Bo Schembechler at Miami University.

It’s Time for Separate Public/Private School CIF Championships

Results from the winter sports season, combined with the imminent departures of CIF San Diego Section Commissioner Dennis Ackerman and Assistant Commissioner Bill McLaughlin should supply the impetus for a long-needed change in the CIF sports scene.

The San Diego Section has either a complete unwillingness or an inability to stop recruiting of prep players by the private schools which compete in the San Diego Area. In the 13 years I have spent writing this column, the illegal recruiting stories have become increasingly more blatant.

Simply stated, the public schools, including Coronado High School, take the kids that show up and are eligible to attend the school. The private schools offer scholarships to good athletes and have a disproportionate level of success with their sports teams.

This winter there is concrete proof of that skewed success among private schools. In Girls Basketball, three private schools (La Jolla Country Day, Mater Dei and Bishop’s) made the semi-finals along with one public school (Del Norte). In Boys Basketball, all four semi-final teams in Division IV are private (Francis Parker, Army-Navy, Bishop’s and La Jolla Country Day.)

In Girls Soccer, three private schools (Bishop’s, LJCD, and Parker) are joined by Coronado. In Boys Soccer its Coronado and three private schools (Bishop’s, Mater Dei and Parker). In water polo Coronado is joined by La Jolla representing public schools, while private schools Bishop’s and Cathedral Catholic rounded out the field. In summary, with 20 semi-final slots available in five sports, private schools commanded 15 positions or 75 percent of the total.

“We keep bringing up a public and a private league every year,” said Coronado Head Soccer Coach Kiko Medina. “It makes it difficult to compete.” Boys Soccer Head Coach Brian Hiatt-Aleu said, “The CIF swears they aren’t going to do it until Northern California does it. We can play each other during the regular season, but come playoff time, they should have their own bracket.”

With a new administration coming in to run the CIF, it’s time for a change in the increasingly unfair competition model that just isn’t working. Similar league playoff structures exist in New York and Chicago and there is no reason to believe it can’t work in San Diego.

Brigham Young and SDSU Basketball

We’re running out of space for this week, but a few thoughts regarding the recent Top 10 basketball battle between San Diego State and Brigham Young. The prevailing thought going into the game was that the Cougars were just Player of the Year Candidate Jimmer Fredette and four non-playing biology majors. BYU in fact is a fine, well-balanced team.

Fredette is a tough kid who can do much more than score and I think he has a chance to succeed in the NBA. I was actually more impressed with him in the recent 13-point win over SDSU when he scored 25 points than I was in the first match-up, also won by BYU by a 13-point margin, than when he scored 43 points.

SDSU Head Coach Steve Fisher has done the nearly impossible, make Aztec basketball relevant in a county which largely gave up on collegiate round ball years ago. That being said, the Aztecs were dramatically overrated at No. 4 in the nation heading into the BYU showdown and are still overrated at No. 9 in both the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll and the Associated Press Top 25 now. Brigham Young currently resides at No. 3 in both polls.

The Aztecs need to finish the season strong to get a decent NCAA Tournament seed and not get sent to the East Coast to play like they did last season. SDSU has never won an NCAA Tournament game. Here’s hoping this is the year.