Santana Chases 20th Consecutive Title

Santana will compete for its 20th consecutive Grossmont League gymnastics championship Saturday at Mt. Miguel. Until this year, the 2-A and 3-A have been combined, but this year the meets will be held together but scored separately.

Santana Coach Becca Webster said scoring the two leagues separately will be good for the teams involved because, she said, the stronger teams, including Santana, are in the 2-A. Webster said barring extenuating circumstances, her team should win the 2-A meet.

“So far we’ve beaten everyone in our league so if we can stay together and compete the way we have been, we should win,” Webster said.

Santana’s top optional competitors are junior Dawn Cogar, sophomore Leslie Davis, senior Kim Canino and freshman Amy Vance. In the compulsories, Santana is led by senior Missy Meadows, junior Missy Moelter and sophomore Jennifer Blofsky.

Since 1974, Santana has won the Section title 10 times (consecutively from ‘74-’78) and finished second five times.

Webster, a 1986 Santana graduate and the Section gymnast of the year that year, has been on the coaching staff for four years and is in her second year as head coach.

The Crawford badminton team will go into Wednesday’s Section team playoffs with hopes of capping two successive unbeaten seasons and wrapping up John King’s six years as coach on a positive note.

King, who also has been Crawford’s basketball coach for 15 years, resigned from both positions two weeks ago to spend more time with his family.

Crawford (14-0), which has not lost a regular-season match the past two seasons, lost to Hoover, 11-6, in the Section final last year.

This year King said his top-seeded team probably will be challenged by Serra for the title. Crawford defeated Hoover, 13-4, and Serra, 12-5, in the regular season.

Hoover and Serra advanced to the tournament with 12-2 records. Hoover will be the second seed because it won the match between the two teams. Rounding out the top four is La Jolla (11-3).

“We have better individuals from top to bottom than other teams,” King said. “They are committed and they don’t want to be second.”

Crawford’s No. 1 and No. 2 boys’ players are brothers, Khuong Thai and Tho Thai. Among the girls, Tammy Tran, the top student in the junior class with a grade-point average higher than 4.0, also is one the team’s top players.

“She’s won two real tough matches recently,” King said. “She’s just a bulldog out there and won’t quit. She’s such a competitor.”

Brian Negrete, a 1988 El Cajon Valley graduate, will return to his alma mater to coach the girls’ soccer team. Negrete, who attends San Diego State and is on the Aztec soccer team, replaces Kurt Madden.

The luck of the draw has belonged to Poway in the Palomar League. The second-place Titans have not faced three of the league’s best pitchers, Vista’s Rodney DeLeon (5-5), who has thrown two no-hitters this season, and Mt. Carmel’s Doug Hill (7-1) and Mario Israel (7-2).

Martin Henderson contributed to this story.