Eagles face challenges from Griffins,
Jaguars, and Salas-less Knights
New material added to this story February 24.
The 2009 Santa Cruz Interscholastic Sports League (SCISL) boys basketball season presents fascinating panoply of probabilities, possibilities – and puzzles. Here’s the situation at each school presented according to the order of finish last year.
Eagles once again have skill and depth
The Christian Learning boys team lost some key players to graduation, including captain Tim Swope, all-star David Lotz, and stalwart rebounder Josh Mann, but thanks in part to its high percentage of North American students the Eagles never seem to lack for players who know how the game in played, and this year will be no exception.
Two of last year’s big stars are back – senior power forward Jeff Stabler and sharp-shooting guard Paul Estes. They will be ably supported by a cadre of experienced players. (The Eagles last year often substituted four or five players at a time with no apparent diminution of efficiency.) These include junior Danny Canaviri, who demonstrated clutch shooting skills last year, as well as Tim Zimmerman, Richard Ling and Kyle Swope. Andre Larsen, the big man on last year’s outstanding JV team, moves up to the varsity, as does Nicolas Smith. Also, soccer standout Josh Mojica has been talked into trying his hand at basketball this year.
The key challenge for the Eagles will be coming up with someone to play low post. Six-foot sophomore Jesse Hallock had been pegged for the job, but has returned to the US with his family.
Coach Chad Jackson will be guiding the team, coming off a stellar debut last year in which his teams won the regular season championship, the post-season tournament, and the all-star game, while he personally won the coaches foul-shooting contest at the all-star game. He will be assisted again by James Wolheter.
At this point the Eagles look like the team to beat.
Jaguars lost stars, but new ones are rising
Cooperative probably suffered the most from graduation, and the team will have to surmount what has become their school’s losing tradition. The Jaguar boys have not won a championship since taking the track crown in 2006, and have never won the basketball championship in the entire history of the League.
Last year’s team may have come closest. After a mediocre 2-4 regular season, veteran coach Max Farfan primed his team for the playoffs and upset co-favorite Cambridge by two points in the semifinals. The Jaguars then lost to Christian Learning in the finals, but played a creditable game.
However, graduation has taken captain and high scorer Pablo Taborga, and Big John Paredo, who was also a Top Ten scorer. Daniel Linggi, who was a key factor in the playoff games, has also gone on to greater things, as well as key substitutes Esteban Gomez and Cristobal Roda.
Still, that leaves the Jaguars sophomore Juan Alfredo Abuawad, a Top Ten scorer last year and the player with the highest vertical leap in the League. He will be aided and abetted by junior Diego Morales, who showed occasional flashes of brilliance last year, as well as a group of highly talented freshmen from last year’s champion JV team, including Milan Marinkovic, Andres Shin, Nicolas Suarez, and Oliver Lederman. The Jaguars have to be regarded as dark horse contenders.
Knights will be a team of mystery
Cambridge will be without its big stars of last year, Juan Manuel Salas and Benjamin Ezpeleta. Ezpeleta, the No. 2 scorer and the most stylish player in the League last year, graduated. Salas, the No. 1 scorer in the League and arguably the best player in the city, has moved to Lima for his senior year, where he is playing for Colegio San Augustin, a perennial basketball powerhouse, and for a semi-professional basketball club.
Those losses don’t render the Knights defenseless, but it does make them a big question mark. They will still have Jose Ribera, their third Top Ten scorer from last year and the leading three-point shooter in the League. He will be a whole year older – but still only an eighth grader.
They also have junior Alvaro Lopez, who wasn’t noticed much when he was on the same court with Salas and Ezpeleta, but has a proven ability to put the ball in the hoop. (He also has good bloodlines. His sister is captain of Cambridge’s defending champion girls team, and his brother starred for Cambridge several years ago.)
Another experienced player is Tae Han Kook, a junior who came on strong for Cambridge last year filling in for Yosep Song, whose loss for the season with a broken leg visibly dimmed the Big Red team’s championship prospects, and who has graduated. The Knight aficionados love to cheer Kook. “KOOK . . . KOOK . . .KOOK . . . ,” they chant.
The Big Red team also has some newcomers who may be able to help out in a hurry. The most promising is Tomu Hashimoto, an agile junior. Also, Alexander Nagel, an outstanding swimmer and track star, has decided to try his hand at basketball this year.
But even with those new players, Cambridge will (once again) be the shortest team in the League, with no proven rebounder.
Still, they will again be coached by Victor Coronado, who has a demonstrated ability to make lemons into lemonade, and whose teams always play omnivorous defense and shoot well. Cambridge’s new athletic director, Steve Hill, is a former US professional basketball player, and may be able to offer some pointers.
Their opening game against the Eagles, which has been rescheduled for the week after Carnival, will give a better picture of the Knights’ potential.
This could be the year of the Griffins’ Revenge
International’s boys have been the doormats of the League since the start of the League in 2004, and lost all of their games last year. However, they almost beat everyone in the League except the Eagles last year, and this could be the year the worm turns. They lost last year by only one-point in overtime to the Jaguars, and succumbed to Cambridge by three points after leading for most of the game.
True, some of last year’s best players have moved on. Martin Gonzales, the team’s best scorer, and Alex Roempler have graduated. Christopher Saltzieder has moved back to the US.
However, the Griffins welcome back three outstanding players. They are seniors David Huang, who was a star of the all-star game last year, Ernando Tesch, who will be a force to be reckoned with under the boards, and Mario Rohrman, who was uneven in his play last year but showed great promise at times.
Another senior, Nicolas “Yeyo” Bedoya, has been persuaded to try basketball. He has demonstrated his ability to leap by setting the League record in the high jump, and was a standout on the Griffins soccer team.
Sophomore Joaquin Casteñedo will probably be the fifth starter.
Other players expected to contribute include sophomores Santiago Maldonado, who missed last season after breaking his shoulder playing rugby, and Felipe Molina, who was out last year with a broken ankle, and Diego Nostas. The Griffins may also have a “seventh grade phenom” in Julio Rivero, who has been playing with great poise in practice.
Second-year Coach Eduardo “Presi” de la Riva stresses that he is not just thinking about this season. He has his eye on the future. Two years ago, he says, “nobody here played basketball.” This year he had so many players show up for junior varsity tryouts that he formed a four-team coed league, with ten or eleven players on each team. His goal is to create a basketball machine.
This could be the year the Griffin boys break out of the cellar. Juan Manuel Salas, writing in from Peru, picks International to go all the way and win the championship. Of course that’s just one man’s opinion.
