LJ softball vs. San Ysidro 2/28

Photos by Ed Piper

This tag applied by LJ 3b Kaitlin Murphy (right)

was the result of a good throw by

leftfielder Maddie Ehlert (not in view)

on a grounder to left. The out took place

in the bottom of the first against San Ysidro.

Freshman catcher Aviv Laska drove in two runs

from the fourth slot in the batting order.

Freshman Imelda Lopez (51) playing second base

LJ's Roxy Metcalf at shortstop

with a runner on third base.

Pitcher Arie Williams tried to make a play on

a nubber back to the pitching circle, here on

her knees. But her throw went errant.

Arie is a freshman.

Imelda Lopez (51) takes a cut at the plate.

1b Natalie Alvarez takes a swing.

LJ b tennis: Game story 2/27

Bananas (healthy to replace potassium) and cookies

(good for the spirit) predominated at the team

snack table for the Viking tennis players

Tues., Feb. 27, against visiting SDA.

(Photo by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

La Jolla tennis coach Jack Kruger went sophomore-freshman-freshman in singles against visiting San Dieguito Academy (SDA), then showed the veteran/underclassman strength across the team by sending out in doubles the following pairings: senior-senior, senior-senior, and soph-freshman in 1-2-3 Tues., Feb. 27.

The coach, who in his playing days competed at Wimbledon, showed an attentive but calm presence with his players, whom he conferred with individually during and between matches, and watched over as their respective matches progressed.

It was a very "homey" feel Tuesday, engendered by assistant coach Phifer Crute and others, including player moms, anxiously eyeing the action down below on the courts--also trying to deal with the season's low sun in the late afternoon that had finally come out after all the recent rainy weather and which cuts right through from the coast to blind you as you try to see and record (a dad with a phone) or photograph (a reporter) the activity.

In singles, the lineup went Leo Thieler, a sophomore in the first singles spot, against a reputedly highly-touted SDA opponent, then Joe Sammartino and Jacob Chorny, both freshmen, in the two and three spots, from the court nearest the team area (covered by sun-blocking canvas) toward the distant courts. Rushville Street was on the other side of the fence from these courts.

In doubles, the one's were seniors Ryan Keller and Barrett Keller. Ben Haswell and Tucker MacDonald made up the second pair. Zach Zanio and Nikita Stephan were three's on the far court.

The courts were framed by the impressive La Jolla High CIF and league champion banners over the  years, providing a fitting backdrop of historical importance to the present competition.

LJ swim: Western League Relays @ Coggan - Season opener

Photos by Ed Piper

LJ b tennis: Still more photos 2/27

Photos by Ed Piper

LJ b tennis: More photos 2/27

Photos by Ed Piper

LJ #2 singles - Joe Sammartino

Freshman

LJ b tennis vs. SDA 2/27

Photos by Ed Piper

LJ #1 singles - sophomore Leo Thieler

LJ #2 doubles - Ben Haswell and Tucker MacDonald

LJ #3 doubles - Zach Zanio and Nikita Stephan

'20-year itch' - FB highlights

Carson Diehl (13) nearly gets another interception

against Christian High Oct. 28.

(Photos by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

This spring will complete 20 years of my being around and/or covering La Jolla High sports (my granddaughter became a varsity cheerleader as a freshman in Aug. 2004).

Football has been one of the prominent sports at LJHS during that time, the last 11 years including a "restart" (after declining participation) by Jason Carter, a stabilizing year under Matt Morrison, then seven years of Coach Tyler Roach's further building of the program. There have been several highlights during the most recent period.

Imagine: I am not a football guy. I never played football, neither Pop Warner nor high school football.

But I have seen years that harken back to the "glory years" of 1991-1995, which I have since read about, under Coach Dick Huddleston, who is revered by those who speak of him. Every one of those five years, the Vikings won their league title. That is really impressive. (This was before CIF was split into many levels.)

From the beginning, Roach preached the reality that in his program, his best athletes would have to play both ways--on the offensive and the defensive platoons--for the team to have success. That has carried through. Carter started it, Tyler has continued it.

The highlights include:

--Linebacker Max Smith's incredible "interruption" of a hiked ball by Scripps Ranch from his position on the line on the far left, grabbing it in mid-air, giving La Jolla an opportunity to score in the last moments to come back. Scripps Coach Marlon Gardinera still says he doesn't utter Smith's name because of that play.

--Diego Solis' acrobatic ability to catch a pass or make another play that would influence the outcome of the game. He and his talented older brother, Gabe, were both named All-League First Team, which I didn't know until last week (sdcityconference.com). Both enrolled at the cerebral University of Chicago.

--Jackson Stratton, a classic drop-back passer with Southern California surfer long blond hair, piled up numbers never seen previously in my two decades covering the Vikings. He suffered a fractured right scapula running for extra yardage at Del Norte, ending La Jolla's dreams of a repeat of their 2017 league title and run to the Southern California Regional championship with Stratton at QB as a sophomore.

--Another QB named Jackson, this one Diehl, put together a phenomenal senior season in fall 2023 as a two-way threat throwing and running, leading Roach's boys to an Eastern League title and being named All-CIF Second Team (behind only one other quarterback).

--The beginning of the "Carson" phenomenon. Carson Diehl, a sophomore, led the county in interceptions with nine in 2023, and performed on the offensive side as well, as he and his brother connected backyard-style on key plays.

Carson Diehl (L) with Taylor Beck at the Vikings'

lacrosse game against Bishop's Fri., March 1.

LJ b golf 226, Torrey Pines 197 - Fairbanks Ranch 3/26

Photos by Ed Piper

Chris Drake (near far left, hand open), Torrey Pines

coach, gives LJ golfers a welcome and instruction

on ground rules. LJ asst. coach Jarid Morrison

is far right.

Justin Woods, junior

Nathan Wittkow, senior

He shot a 41.

Harry Park, sophomore

He shot a 50.

Brooks Lockey, sophomore

1st time playing with LJ varsity

He shot a 59.

LJ baseball: 'I could hit the ball out of Lane Field'

Dave Jordan, just graduated

from La Jolla High, playing

for the Stockton Ports.

(Courtesy photo from

Dave Jordan)

By Ed Piper

"I could hit the ball out of Lane Field," says Dave Jordan, a former La Jolla High baseball star in the Class of 1955. "Lefty O'Doul's players couldn't."

Mind you, Dave Jordan was a pipsqueak prep player at the time, acting as batboy, then clubhouse boy for the San Diego Padres, a minor league team who played at the downtown ballpark. Lefty O'Doul, the Padres' manager, had won two National League batting titles and went on to great success coaching minor leaguers.

"He taught me how to hit," Jordan assured me as he sat in my living room. Jordan, a lefthanded hitting first baseman and outfielder, apparently could crush the ball, and O'Doul, adept at sizing up talent, helped him develop that difficult skill--as Ted Williams later assessed it, "hitting a round object with a round object" (a baseball bat).

O'Doul, who took the young Jordan under his wing as a junior high student out of Pacific Beach and took him out to dinner with Joe DiMaggio and his moviestar wife, Marilyn Monroe, twice, asked Dave--his first name Willis--to pitch batting practice.

Dave made a deal with his mentor: he'd pitch batting practice, only if he himself could take swings as well. That deal stuck, and O'Doul over-ruled his pro players on the team, who objected that a little kid was taking up their time during valuable batting practice.

Jordan could throw well enough to make it worth the minor leaguers' time in practice.

Over two or three years, O'Doul helped the young Viking improve his swing. This is the period when Dave said he could hit the ball out of Lane Field, the Padres' first field on Broadway, famous for the fog rolling in later in the evening and making it difficult to see in the outfield.

Jordan tells a funny one about the fog: Players would take a ball out with them when they played the outfield. With it so difficult to see during the fog--from the stands as well as on the playing surface--they might just throw the ball hidden in their uniform in to the infield, and let the other one roll toward the fence.

To pitch morning batting practice, the mischievous Jordan would ditch school and cadge a ride down to the ballpark.

But there was a price to pay: with Pacific Beach and La Jolla being much less populated in those days, "When I did something wrong, my mother knew about it before I got home." The Jordans lived on Hornblend in Pacific Beach.

In those days, the Vikings played in Edwards Stadium on the high school campus. "We thought it was a great place to play," he beams. The field was situated under the concrete stands near the corner of Fay and Rushville, and right field was in the direction of the tennis courts.

The powerful Dave, who was good enough in high school to be signed to a minor league contract by the Orioles organization at the age of 18, pulled home runs toward the tennis courts. Right field was the only area with a home run fence. Center and left field were open, because track athletes trained there. That posed a situation where track runners working out could be hit by batted balls.

That only ended decades later when the Vikings' present ballpark was constructed up the hill on the Muirlands campus.

O'Doul's careful eye, and hitting acumen, had finally passed on its wisdom to the young Dave Jordan. Jordan played five seasons in the pros, starting out with the Oakland Oaks.

Youth sports: Good and bad breakthrough

By Ed Piper

I applaud 18-year-old Olivia Moultrie of Santa Clarita for breaking down the barriers for a teenaged girl in the U.S. to play pro soccer (L.A. Times, "Olivia Moultrie's fight for the right to play kicked off a U.S. soccer youth movement", Feb. 20).

But the then-15-year-old's lawsuit against the NWSL, which the NWSL conceded three years ago, has introduced another issue into youth and prep sports: the immense pressure that comes with going pro at such a young age.

Imagine, your daughter--for me, it would have been my granddaughter back when she attended LJHS 2004-2008, though she didn't play soccer--just out of middle school, though having played youth soccer since she was seven years old or so, heading into the limelight that included international stars Meg Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, and others.

The pressure would be immense. The media coverage would be something else. The whole lifestyle would be, literally, life-changing in going from middle school and high school to spending her time in a giant stadium atmosphere.

I would say the same things for a son or grandson.

I'm not for limiting someone reaching their potential; my interest is in growing a person to be normal, competent, confident, able to hang out with friends and enjoying all those things that a teenage can expect. They need to grow healthy in physical, emotional, relational, even spiritual ways.

The young person may have outstanding ability in one particular area, whether playing soccer, or for that matter, violin, math (a youngster entering Harvard at a young age), or some other skill. The "rest" of the person still needs to be attended to (emotional, relational, etc.).

An extreme but real case of youth getting too much attention too soon--a victim of the NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) revolution that enables amateur youth athletes to make tons of money through signing lucrative contracts with Nike and other companies--is Mikey Williams, the San Ysidro High basketball player who bought a million-dollar house, then put four bullets through the back of a car over jealousy that his girl friend was talking to someone else.

Now, that's pretty extreme, and Olivia Moultrie isn't violent, nor is Mikey Williams, other than the shots.

But it shows the immense layer of air that descends on a young person at such a young age, that they feel anxiety, tension, loneliness. They need a good support system, which our local San Ysidran apparently didn't have at the time.

Bringing the discussion back to more familiar territory, young female gymnasts have had a long history of gaining early training and heading to the Olympics. Olga Korbut competed for the USSR in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games and won four gold medals. She was only 17 in her first Olympics in Munich, where she won three golds.

Nadia Comaneci, from Romania, took it even further. At age 14, in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal (I'm showing my age here), she was the first gymnast to receive a perfect 10.0 at the Games. (They had to create new scoreboards displaying more than three digits after that Olympics.) She won three more 10.0's and won three gold medals in '76.

Both of those athletes were competing during the Cold War, when Soviet and Eastern Bloc countries under the USSR had state-run programs that funneled kids into programs that are different from our Western world concepts. Perhaps they're not the best examples.

I'm just arguing for concern for the person inside those athletic bodies, whether Olivia Moultrie, Bronny James, or others. Too much, too soon, is a formula that cannot be undone. Also, adults can be unscrupulous in using these kids to achieve earlier, bigger, better accomplishments in their respective sports.

In the worst case, things like the abuse at the Karolyi Ranch occur: Romanians Bela and Marta Karolyi established a facility in Houston in 1983 to train elite young gymnasts. The U.S. National Team doctor, Larry Nassar, was convicted of sexual abuse. The Karolyis left the camp and went back to Romania after 2021.

LJ track: Battle of La Jolla vs. Bishop's, LJCDS - Season opener

Photos by Ed Piper