LJ wrestling: Leonard 3rd in CIF D4

Senior Keegan Leonard, with hopes of gaining an appointment to the Naval Academy this fall, placed third at 140 pounds in the CIF Division 4 wrestling meet held at Mount Miguel High Sat., May 29.

Surprisingly, freshman Sebastian Rivera landed third at 108 pounds, winning one match--the key one for third place--and losing one in a meet one can only characterize as typical for this COVID-restricted season which has seen a limited number of participants due to the stop-again, start-again situation across the entire athletic schedule this Spring.

It's no fault of the young, earnest Rivera, who has worked hard and shown up for the "mat time" that Ryan Leonard, the strength and conditioning coach who also works with the wrestlers, preaches to develop and improve. That one weight class had a lesser number of entrants only worked to Sebastian's advantage, and he made the most of it.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Correa, the muscular 172-pounder, lost a match, won two by pin, then succumbed in the third place match in his weight division. Correa attended and wrestled at La Jolla High as a ninth-grader, moved to Mira Mesa High for two years, then came back to LJHS this year for his senior finale.

At heavyweight, 287 pounds, Danny Molestina won by decision in overtime, 3-2, then lost by a pin before going to the consolation bracket. Molestina, a lineman for the Vikings' Eastern League champion football team, won back-to-back bouts by pin before losing by a pin in his last match.

Another Viking competitor, Caden Kestler, won one match on the day as a 134-pound wrestler.

Finally, freshman Kieran Sternberg, at 115 pounds, entered the tournament but lost both his matches.

In all, the season was a challenge with the COVID limitations. These were the wrestlers who stuck it out through the spring. Chase Maisel, a senior along with Keegan Leonard, was unable to compete in the tournament at Mt. Miguel.

LJ track: Girls 4x100 relay advances to CIF

By Ed Piper

Ebony Crandle, who runs the lead leg

on the LJ 4x100 relay. The team finished

second in 49.77a seconds to advance

to the Masters meet.

Maddie Lyons, here after

the 100m, runs the second

leg of the women's

4x100 relay.

Freshman Payton Smith runs the

anchor leg of the 4x100 relay. She

chose to rest for the past month

to heal up from a leg issue

before Friday's meet.

Freshman Kyra Fisk (right front)

ran second in the 3200 meters

in her first-ever league finals

with a time of 11:42.06a.

Fisk during the 3200 behind eventual winner

Gina Queck, a senior from Mission Bay.

La Jolla's Katie Cavanaugh (far left)

Shannon Cao clears 4'3" in the high jump.

Eugenia Kritsuk

Avery Redfern placed third

in the high jump at

4'11", with the first two

finishers placing higher

due to fewer misses.

LJ baseball: Reset

By Ed Piper

Surveying the Eastern League baseball scene with a week left in the regular season--COVID-adjusted, of course--we see La Jolla is not in a bad position to sail through to the conference title, if there is will.

"Where there's a will, there's a way."

High Tech High and San Diego, hard-working and striving, mean well but they don't seem to present viable factors in the league race.

High Tech fields a large number of freshmen and sophomores, and that's a tough way to fill out a roster when you're competing against a team like the Vikings, who have eight seniors and a whole crop who have grown up in the system and been fostered by Head Coach Gary Frank, pitching coach Jake Grosz, and always-steady first base coach Bob Allen. That program has attempted to be destabilized, but it's holding steady under current market forces.

San Diego High sent a coach to scout Monday's game between La Jolla and Mission Bay. Good for him. I was told SDHS just doesn't have the pitching to make a challenge for the league title.

Beside High Tech and San Diego, that leaves Christian, Mission Bay, and La Jolla to struggle it out with the towel clenched between their respective teeth to see who can tear it away from the other two. Could we have a co-championship? A tri-championship? I don't know.

Christian has the pitching and offense. Their scores against High Tech this week are horrible or fantastic, depending on your point of view: The Patriots beat the Storm 21-2 Monday at home, 17-2 Wednesday at High Tech's South Clairemont Recreation field, and 21-0 Thursday back home. Ouch.

Mission Bay seems to be in the middle: The Bucs started out 6-0, but had only played High Tech and SDHS. Against La Jolla this week in the two teams' three-game series, they lost all three and fall to 6-3. La Jolla, on the other hand, having lost three games right out of the gate to Christian two weeks ago, rise from 3-3 to 6-3, tied with the local rivals but holding the edge, obviously, in the case of a tiebreaker.

The Vikings seem to have the horses, even with senior standout Gavin Graff saying sayonara to his high school career with a sliding injury last Tues., May 18, his right thumb sore but only identified as a fracture this Tues., May 25 and casted for the next three months.

LJHS pitching coach Jake Grosz was talking with Gavin during Wednesday's game at Mission Bay on whether Graff wanted to do arm-strengthening exercises and other work later in his rehab in pointing toward next year at Adelphi University, Garden City, New Jersey. That's a long way to drive in a Buick, as Dick Howser used to say.

In the Vikings' lineup, leadoff hitter Connor Hobbs sits at .367, with 13 walks, tied with Cole Duffy and four behind Graff, still the team leader in that category. Hobbs has 10 stolen bases, tied with Luke Roberts, Ryan Lancaster, and Graff for the team lead.

"Our Man" Roberts, the second-slot hitter, is pounding the ball at a clip of .402, with 21 RBI's to tie Graff for the team lead. Luke has 10 doubles, again to pace the squad along with Graff. He has also touched home plate the most times, 24. The lefty who bats right also has three triples to pace the team, along with Lancaster.

Jake Klimkiewicz, at second base, is rattling along at a healthy .308. "Klim", the fourth hitter until Graff went down, is fourth in ribbies with 17. He leads the team in sacrifice flies with 3.

Cole Duffy, the catcher, hits the ball hard and is batting .267. He has been hit by a pitch 5 times, tied with Roberts for the team lead.

Willy Barton, at third, is no slouch at the plate (.308), and neither is the quiet Ryan Lancaster, hitting .295. The hot corner man has 4 sacrifices, tops in that category. He also has 13 RBI's.

I asked the lefty Ryan when he got to be so fast on the basepaths, and he said, "Always."

Simon Baker, despite struggling to hit (.171), is third on the team in RBI's with 18 behind Graff and Roberts.

Graff, of course, was MVP of tourneys and had all-league stats when he broke his thumb (then pitched a complete-game victory over Mission Bay six days later). It will be interesting to see how the powers that be recognize him at the end of the season--probably all-league, even with the partial season.

LJ g lax - Recap

By Ed Piper

There was a light air around the Vikings girls lacrosse team before the game.

We're coming out of COVID, so nobody was wearing a mask, for the most part. That helps the mood.

But another thing is that, here in the Open Division quarterfinals, la creme de la creme, teams know how good they are.

Yes, La Jolla got mercy-ruled by visiting Foothill (Santa Ana) a week ago, though it didn't show up in the box score. The Foothillers led 8-0 or so in the first few minutes of their "friendly". The visiting fans and staff treated it all like that's what they expected.

But having found their ceiling, LJHS coaches Kitty Cullen and Sam Farrell and their crew know they also stand high atop San Diego Section lacrosse with only a very few other local teams. Helen Lee, a 2016 LJHS grad, was on the sidelines Thursday night, May 27, and she must have been struck by the ascent the program has experienced since her era on the team.

Stella Wineman, taking faceoffs, and Jorie MacDonald, up behind the opposing net, among others took it right to visiting La Costa Canyon from the starting whistle.

The Mavs weren't ready for the onslaught. After each of the first three goals by their opponents, the defenders on the team would congregate in front of the goal trying to figure out whether to keep doing what they were doing, or smile. What they were doing wasn't working.

Finally, LCC won a faceoff and took the ball--briefly--into their attacking half of the rectangle. But not for long. A turnover brought it right back into La Jolla's wheelhouse, their relentless forward march toward the Mav goal.

The brief pause in seemingly automatic scores by the hosts was only paused for the time it took for LCC to win the faceoff and temporarily go toward the Edwards Stadium scoreboard. Everything immediately reverted to score-after-score when the Viking offense, led by Wineman and others at midfield, returned to the area in front of LCC's goal and pounded in five more bang-bang-bang goals.

8-0, La Jolla, 11 minutes left in the (25-minute) first half.

The hosts obviously let up in the second half. With halftime reading 13-3, the letup had already begun. La Jolla only forced in four more goals the rest of the way for a 17-7 quarterfinal win.

Cullen and Farrell's troops play in the semifinals Tues., June 1. The Vikes will be at home to host Torrey Pines, a 12-5 winner over Patrick Henry. La Jolla is the number two seed, Torrey Pines number three.

LJ g lax 17, LCC 7 - CIF quarterfinals - Photos 5/27

By Ed Piper

Helen Lee, 2016 grad/lax

Went to Cal

Ari Conboy, goalie

LJ baseball 4, Mission Bay 1

Vikings centerfielder Ryan Lancaster gets back

safely to first before Bucs first baseman

Declan Lynch's tag in the top of the second.

(Photos by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

"Let's still go out and win the league title," La Jolla coach Gary Frank told his troops just before they ran out to do pregame infield practice.

The adverb carried the prevailing tone in the dugout on Wed., May 26. Top player Gavin Graff was wearing a shiny new plaster cast on his right hand, and his exploits as pitcher and hitter were lost for the rest of the season.

The Vikings went out and handily won their second straight contest against Mission Bay in a three-game series, behind Owen McNally's firm left arm and some "small ball" bunting, hitting, and running that delivered key runs in the first three innings.

Lefthander Owen McNally had no

problems with a depleted Mission Bay

lineup in hurling a complete-game

victory Wed.

With second baseman Jake Klimkiewicz moving up to Graff's accustomed third slot in the lineup and Kaden Wheat DH-ing in Klim's familiar fourth position with the returning Spence Carswell playing shortstop, La Jolla got to Buc righthander Ethan Silber right off the bat.

Rightfielder Connor Hobbs led off the game with a sharply-hit single to left off Silber's slow stuff. Luke Roberts, the leftfielder, drove in Hobbs with another hard hit to the outfield to make the score 1-0. Roberts was thrown out at third trying to stretch his double into a triple.

In the top of the second, Vikings centerfielder Ryan Lancaster got aboard on a five-pitch walk. After he moved around to third, Simon Baker--playing first with Carswell at short--hit a foul ball down the right field line, driving in the speedy Lancaster with a sacrifice fly. The Vikings led, 2-0.

La Jolla doubled its lead in the third inning when Klimkiewicz doubled, narrowly avoiding second baseman Levi Retish's tag. Cole Duffy, the Vikings' catcher, followed with an RBI single to center to drive in Jake.

Finally, the next batter, Willy Barton, stroked another hard-hit ball to center, scoring Wheat. That closed out the Vikings' scoring for the game, which was enough as McNally only allowed two hits to a Mission Bay lineup depleted by Grad Nite for a complete-game victory. A coach for the Bucs said four of the team's eight seniors were away for the trip.

LJ baseball 3, Mission Bay 2 - 1st of 3-game series

Willy Barton lays down a sacrifice bunt

in the bottom of the fourth inning as

Buc starter Demarco Lucero (far left)

throws him out, to move Ryan Lancaster

to second base. Beau Brown then drove in

Lancaster for the Vikings' second run.

(Photos by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

Behind Gavin Graff's pitching and the offense plating runs in the third and fourth innings, La Jolla surged to a 3-2 win over visiting Mission Bay Mon., May 24 in probably the Vikings' most important game of the season so far.

Graff, the staff ace, held the Buccaneers (6-1 Eastern League) to two hits in the first five innings. Meanwhile, "Double Duty" Gavin (as star Ted Radcliffe from the Negro Leagues was dubbed) drove in Connor Hobbs with a single in the bottom of the third as La Jolla broke into the scoring column.

Then, in the bottom of the fourth, Beau Brown likewise moved speedy Ryan Lancaster around to score with a hard single past third to make the lead 2-0. Lancaster, the diminutive lefty centerfielder, had gotten aboard on a bunt and error by Mission Bay catcher 

The Vikings held on for a thrilling one-run win, as they went face-to-face with another competitive team in the up-down Eastern League and landed the first blow in a three-game home-away-home set this week. (High Tech High and San Diego are down; Christian is on top, with La Jolla and Mission Bay right next to them.)

LJ softball: A chat

By Ed Piper

I had an informative conversation with Rich Cardenas the other day.

The setting was La Jolla High's softball field (renovated a couple of years ago). The occasion was pregame, before Cardenas' daughter, sophomore pitcher Emmy Cardenas, and her Viking teammates thumped Hoover, 10-0, in a league game. That brought La Jolla's season record to 12-9, not brilliant but pretty darn good in view of the Vikings' 0-25 record two years ago.

Rich Cardenas is a constant presence at LJHS softball games. Since Emmy chose to attend La Jolla High as a ninth-grader two years ago, her father has sat behind the backstop, tracked his daughter's pitches, checked in with her between innings, and generally kept a watchful eye over Emmy like a father hawk. On this date, he also was pressed into duty as first base coach when the Vikings were batting.

And that was where the conversation began. The unspoken question was why the Vikings, with an all-star pitcher like Emmy--who was named Cal-Hi Sports Freshman of the Year last season--are not dominating the opposition.

The short answer is, other teams are good, too. Other teams have decent pitchers, as well. By the way, softball, if you have ever watched it, can be dominated by a strikeout pitcher who mows every batter down. It almost gets boring, while watching such a pitcher can also be an appreciation of the art of pitching from the circle (not mound) surrounding the pitcher's rubber.

In our exchange, the elder Cardenas allowed as how there are at least two levels of pitching that factor into the win/loss equation. The first is a pitcher who consistently gets the ball over the plate. The Hoover pitcher in the game that followed had fairly good location (called "control" in my day). That part was okay.

But the second level of pitching is, can they get the opposition out? Some pitchers with location can, some can't. It turned out the Hoover pitcher couldn't get all the Vikings out: they put runners on base in each of the first three innings, pounding across two runs in the first inning, two more subsequently on the way to 10 total.

Surprisingly, Emmy Cardenas was struggling a little with her characteristically good location, walking a couple of Cardinals back-to-back. But not bad enough to allow a run. As the final score showed, she shut out the team from major league Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams' alma mater.

In Rich Cardenas' experience, school teams like the present La Jolla High team and others have and need about five girls experienced in travel ball, the non-school counterpart to the school team. That way, five of the nine fielding and batting positions are occupied by players who are fairly good, and who have experience under real game situations.

Two years ago, when La Jolla didn't have five girls from travel ball, the team had a good spirit to it, but they lacked a pitcher and almost every game was called after five innings due to the mercy rule. (They had to put different position players in the pitching circle, and some did better than others.) Read that: they didn't have enough good players to make them competitive.

The other part of the conversation had to do with young players sustaining injuries. Younger athletes have soft tissue that hasn't formed totally. Thus, youth and high school players may sustain injuries that an older athlete, an adult, whose tissue has developed more fully, wouldn't suffer.

I mentioned the topic of young girls heading the ball in youth soccer and suffering neck injuries at a high rate, because they don't have highly-developed neck muscles. Many youth leagues have done things to discourage younger girls from heading the ball, like outlawing it entirely.

Subsequently, catcher/captain Jackie Farias, shortstop Kelsey DeFalco, and the rest of the Vikings, with Emmy Cardenas pitching, went out on the field and stuck it to Hoover.

LJ wrestling: Keegan Leonard 3rd at City Conference tourney

By Ed Piper

Viking heavyweight Danny Molestina (left) tangles

with David Faatoalia of Madison in his second

bout in the 287-pound weight division.

Molestina pinned Faatolia in 3:19, then

pinned his next opponent before 

losing in the 3rd place match.

He finished fourth.

Molestina waiting for his match

against Faatolia.

Keegan Leonard (right) spars with La Jolla

teammate Sebastian Rivera before the

tourney starts. Leonard, at 140 pounds,

won 3rd place in the prestigious local

tournament with a 7-2 decision

over Jack Wilson of Cathedral in the final.

The tournament T-shirt lists the schools

in the City Conference competing:

La Jolla and other Eastern League

members; Western League; and City League.

Senior Chase Maisel, 147 pounds, was in pin mode

here in his first match against Alex Calabrese

of Point Loma. The pin only took 1:44.

Maisel placed sixth in his weight class.

Maisel warms up before

his initial match.

Ricardo Correa (right), 172 pounds, lost

an early bout in sudden death overtime, 8-6,

to Nick Palid of Cathedral (left).

Correa, a senior who transferred

back to LJHS this year after

two years at Mira Mesa High,

catches his breath

between matches.

Caden Kestler (right), a sophomore at 134 pounds,

advanced to sixth place in the tournament.

Freshman Sebastian Rivera checks in before

one of his matches. Rivera wrestled

at 108 pounds.

LJ track @ SDHS - Photos 5/20

By Ed Piper

SDHS Senior Night