poised to repeat as champions
The Santa Cruz Interscholastic Sports League will get off to a staggered start this month for its sixth season of basketball competition, one in which a pair of defending champions -- Christian Learning boys and Cooperative girls -- start off as favorites.
The Cooperative Jaguars and International Griffins will commence play this coming week, with their JV teams clashing Tuesday, February 9, and their varsity teams getting their first tests Thursday, February 11.
Due to scheduling problems, the Christian Learning Eagles and Cambridge Knights will not meet until Feb 22, and in that week those schools will play a double schedule with each team -- boys and girls, varsity and junior varsity --playing twice. (See schedule at right.)
The staggered start was caused by the fact that Cambridge students do not resume classes until Feb. 8, and Christian Learning students are away on school trips in the early part of the month. And after that, all four schools will be taking time off for Carnaval.
By the end of the month the basketball races should be fully taking shape, but the early line bets have to be on Christian Learning in the boys varsity competition, and the Cooperative in the girls. Both won last year and have most of their regulars returning.
The League will also conduct two track meets during this season. The first has been tentatively scheduled for March 5-6, and the second will be in early April.
Here's how the basketball races appear on the eve of the season openers.
Boys: Can Eagles Fly Higher?
It's hard to overstate the degree to which Christian Learning dominated the boys competition last year. The Eagles not only went undefeated, but only had one game in which the score was even tied after the first period.
Only two players from last year's team -- Jeff Stabler and Tim Swope -- have graduated. Both were starters, but the Eagles played without one or both several times last year with no perceptible loss of efficiency. This year's team will be much like last year´s --big, fast, and deep.
Taking the court again this year for the Eagles will be senior sharpshooters Danny Caniviri, Paul Estes, and Tim Zimmerman, as well as sophomore Andre Larsen, all of whom were Top Ten scorers last year. They will be augmented by two new players, freshman Josh Hoover, and his brother, junior Caleb Hoover, along with junior Jesse Hallock, who returned this year from the US.
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A SWARMING DEFENSE, shown here thwarting International in the Championship Game, and multi-weaponed offense made Christian Learning (green uniforms, unbeatable last year.
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The Eagles have bidden farewell to legendary coach Chad Jackson, who led them to two League champions. Indeed, during the two-year-long "Jacksonian Era" the Eagles lost only one game. In addition, Jackson also coached a winning All-Star team, and personally won the coaches' foul-shooting contest.
However, the Eagles feel they have an able replacement in Mike Banks, a popular veteran member of the faculty. He will be assisted by the school's newly appointed athletic director, Andrew Bloomfield.
Cambridge, the only team to have tied the Eagles after the first period last year, will have a strong team this year built around veteran seniors Alvaro Lopez and Tae Han Kook, and freshman flash Jose Luis Rivera. Rivera, a deadly outside shooter who can also drive to the hoop, was the number two scorer in the League last year as an eighth grader.
That core will be aided and abetted other experienced players, including Alexander Nagel, Tomu Hashimoto, and Matias Martinez. Junior Fabricio Subirana has been improving steadily and could give the Big Red teams a skilled big man, something they haven't had for several years.
The Knights will be without Daniel Kim, Javier de las Heras, and several other players who graduated, but may get some help from players like Diego Bejar, Anthony Salvatierra, Kevin Mendez, and Andres Hurtado, who will be moving up from last year's undefeated JV team. Coach Victor Coronado’s teams have usually found ways to contend for the title, but Christian Learning may have more than they can handle again this year.
__________GRIFFIN DAVID HUANG (right), now graduated, was often an unstppoable force last year, though he met an immovable oble on on this one occasion in the playoff game against Cambridge.
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Moreover, Cambridge will still have to contend with the "home court curse." The mismarked lines on the court have been fixed, but its gym will still be shadowy and equipped with non-regulation baskets.
While other teams do most of the complaining about the Cambridge gym, with its late afternoon "sunfield" in the northeast quadrant, it is Cambridge itself that has suffered the most.
Except for the two games the Knights lost last year to the Eagles, in which they were simply outgunned, every other game that the Knights have lost in the last four years has occurred on their home court, including two embarrassing semifinal losses against teams with inferior records.
This is probably because Cambridge, whose teams are generally smaller, relies more on shooting, which is harder in its own gym. This problem will, of course, all be fixed when Cambridge moves to its new campus in 2012, but until then it will be a factor.
International is the team that surprised Cambridge in the semifinals last year, and the Griffins demonstrated they had come a long way under coach Eduardo "Presi" de la Riva last season. They had two wins during the regular season, which was twice as many games as they had won in the then-five year history of the League. The Griffins came close in several others.
However, that team was hard-hit by graduation, losing David Huang, the leading scorer in the League last year. International also lost two other standouts – Ernando Tesch and Mario Rohrman – not to mention several key supporting players including Joaquin Castañeda, Nicolas "Yeyo" Bedoya, and Ian Ivo Sochtig.
De la Riva will have only two experienced varsity players to build his 2010 team around – Maykol Villavicencio and Santiago Maldonado. However, de la Riva has been building the basketball program at the school for the two years he has been there, and is likely to have some talented newcomers to add to the roster, as well as some players who were impressive on last year’s junior varsity.
Cooperative boys were the League doormat last year, posting an 0-6 record, and two of its better players won’t be on the court this year. Diego Morales has moved to Florida, and Juan Alfredo Abuawad will be an exchange student in Colorado.
But all is not gloom and doom in the home of the Jaguars. Two years ago the Jaguar boys junior varsity went through the League like a hot knife through butter, dominating the opposition almost as powerfully as the Eagle varsity did last year.
Those players – notably Milan Marinkovic, Oliver Lederman, Andres Shin, Jonathan Pauker, and Nicolas Suarez -- were still little kids last year, and not able to help much at the varsity level.
However, this year they are sophomores – a whole year older. What’s more, they have been reunited with their old JV coach, Hugh Feeney, and reinforced with the arrival of Jose Moza, a standout player from last year’s JV, and Sebastian Kyllman, a big player who could help out under the boards.
The Jaguars will be a team to be reckoned with in the future – and could pull some surprises this year.
GIRLS: Jaguars could be building a dynasty
It may seem premature to be speaking of a Jaguar "dynasty" in girls basketball rivaling Cooperative’s dominance in soccer, especially since the Jaguars lost one game last year (to Christian Learning), and nearly lost a couple of others to Cambridge, including the championship which the Jaguars won by only a single point.
However, last year’s Jaguar team was a team on the rise, built around rapidly improving young players (some of them the same as the players who created Cooperative’s dominance on the seccer field). Cambridge and Christian Learning by contrast look, on paper at least, to be past their peak.
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LET ME HAVE THAT! -- Jaguar Sofia Sotelo (left, grappling with Griffin defender) led her team in scoring last year as a freshman. She was always thrilled to get her hands on the ball.
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The Jaguars lost almost nobody from its championship squad of last year, and will be led this year by senior Cecelia Aponte, and sophomores Sofia Sotelo, Ana Paula Peredo, and Carla Limpias, all of whom were Top Ten scorers last year.
They will be ably assisted by an echelon of experienced players, including Aldana Roda, Natalia Aponte, and Audrey Saucedo. JV standout and soccer star Tania Landivar moves up to the varsity this year. The Jaguars, under Coach Max Farfan, have height, heft, speed, and shooting skill. They will be tough to beat.
Christian Learning may have the best chance of heading the Jaguars off at the pass. They welcome back the "Bomb Squad" – Kaylynne Lampen and Ruth Nyquist – whose long set shots (so long they often seemed to be coming in from outside the gymnasium) were a key factor in the Eagles win over Cooperative last year, as well as in several other wins.
The possibility that a sudden explosion of three-pointers could occur at any time meant the Eagles could never be counted out, even when the Eagle offense otherwise appeared to be running cold.
Erica Kienzle, another outstanding all-around player, will also be back.
However, Eagles new coach Andrew Bloomfield will have a hard time replacing Tabitha Malloy, the big center whose rebounding and increasingly accurate shooting at short range was also crucial to the Eagles winning record (4-2). Malloy has moved to the United States, and another powerful player, Hannah Moss, graduated.
But that’s not saying it can’t be done. The school often seems to have an inexhaustible supply of talented basketball players. The Eagles will surely get a boost from Jessica Smith, a speedster who was a prolific scorer as a JV player last year, and Laura Lindahl, a senior who hasn’t previously played basketball.
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PLAYING IN A PACK -- Christian Learning (green and yellow) and Cambridge (red and white) both could match the Jaguars last year on a given day. They may find it harder this year.
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Cambridge seems to be headed for a rebuilding year. The nucleus of players who accounted for two championships and a second-place finish over the last three seasons is now mostly gone. Raquel Lopez, the team leader through that period and leading scorer in the League last year, has graduated, along with Vania Rueda, and Karen Aliaga.
The Lady Knights do still have sharp-shooting junior Maira Lino, who was the number three scorer in the League last year, and senior forward Mariana Escaño was also a top ten scorer. Senior Stephanie Quiroga had a lot of playing time last year at guard. But Coach Victor Coronado will have to fill out the squad with less experienced players. A full team roster was not available as of this writing since Cambridge had not yet resumed classes.
International was 0-6 last year, but came close several times, and did not lose a lot of players to graduation. The Griffins biggest loss was Stephanie Gioto, its outstanding offensive player. Coach Eduardo "Presi" de la Riva, will have a lot of experienced players available, including Camila Johnson, Laura Gioto, Ariane Nostas, Natalia Suarez, Adriana Ocampo, Matilde Gamarra, and Ines Fernandez.
In addition he can get help from players moving up from last year’s championship JV team, including Irerne Vergara and Carolina Baldivieso. The Griffins are unlikely to be 0-6 again.
