Poway High Puts Lacrosse ‘Fluke’ Label to Rest

Although it’s just a club sport now, as was boys’ volleyball in 1987, lacrosse has been well-represented by Poway High School the past two years. The Titans won their second straight California State High School Championship on Saturday with an 8-4 victory over St. Ignatius High from San Francisco.

When Poway beat St. Ignatius last year, 8-6, it gave Southern California its first championship against a team from the North.

“I’m sure they didn’t take us very seriously last year,” Poway Coach Morgan Rogers said. “I’m sure they thought last year was a fluke. Now, we’ve won it two years in a row and we beat them 8-4. There’s no question about it.”

Poway had a tougher time winning the county championship, coming from behind to beat San Dieguito, 13-12, for its 60th consecutive victory against a San Diego team.

Poway player Matt Miller also has been named a high school All-American. He had a goal and four assists against St. Ignatius. Matt Krepelin and Drew Dies scored three times and Lee Weech once for the Titans.

Trivia time: What is the county’s most popular high school nickname?

Not a fish story: Alison Terry heard the question over and over.

“Did it hurt?”

It was in reference to the tattoo she was wearing on her right shoulder blade--a rose wrapped around a dagger--that drew double-takes at the San Diego Section swim meet.

Terry, a senior at University of San Diego High who holds six of eight individual section swimming records, is interested in getting a real tattoo, unlike the one she was wearing last week. And she wasn’t the only swimmer wearing one.

“Me and my friends said we were going to get tattoos for CIF,” Terry said. “(Patrick Henry’s Kim Shultz and Serra’s Monica Gingras) had them. They had sharks.”

Terry thinks she might like to get a permanent tattoo--appropriately, a dolphin.

“I know a lot of people liked the one that I had and told me to get one like that,” she said. “(But) I’ve got to think about it, do I want this thing for the rest of my life? It’s not like they come off very easily.”

Unlike the ones she bought--two for $3.99.

Out of control: Certainly, San Diego High School baseball Coach Tom Lopez had not seen everything. He realized that watching Wednesday’s 8-0 victory over Lincoln.

“This,” Lopez said afterward, “is baseball at its ugliest moment.”

Believe it or not, it was a pitcher’s duel. There were only four hits in the game--two by each team--and there were 28 strikeouts. However . . . there were 13 walks, two hit batsmen and four errors.

The coup de grace was in the fourth inning when San Diego scored four runs on a bases-loaded walk gone awry. Lincoln pitcher Tobias Price (six innings, two hits, 15 strikeouts, eight walks, one hit batter) walked two and hit one to load the bases. Then he walked James Dean with the baserunners moving on the pitch. The pitch was wild, allowing two runners to score. The ball was thrown away by the catcher and the center fielder as Dean circled the bases and scored.

San Diego scored four more in the sixth on three walks, two wild pitches, two stolen bases and one of its two hits.

“It was a very good ball game until the fourth inning, a pitcher’s duel,” Lopez said. “That one bases-loaded walk started the massacre. I had never seen that before.”

Must be the coaching: Poway won its third consecutive San Diego Section boys’ and girls’ swimming title on Saturday. The victory by the Poway boys gave first-year Coach Greg Ormsby his third title at three different schools. He won a boys’ swimming title at Valhalla in 1985 and a water polo title at Hilltop at 1980.

As an athlete at Crawford High, Ormsby was on CIF championship swim teams in 1969, 1970 and 1971, and water polo in 1970.

Who gets the check? Joel Jordan moved to San Diego from Texas and wanted to dive for USDHS. The only problem was that there was no diving coach. So Jordan and swimming Coach Dan Crane started talking.

“He was very interested in diving and we were concerned that we didn’t have a dive coach,” USDHS swimming coach Dan Crane said. “I said dive coaches in San Diego are few and far between. So we started the conversation last fall, put messages up, trying to get some feedback.”

There was little feedback. Diving coaches were few and far between.

Finally, Jim Jordan, Joel’s dad and a religion teacher at USDHS, offered to coach . . . in theory.

“He said he would give his time to coach just so the team could exist,” Crane said. “His knowledge of the sport was just in what his son had done. (Jim Jordan) is there for supervision purposes.”

Crane is impressed with his young player/coach.

“Joel’s knowledgeable, imparts information very well and did a great job this year,” Crane said.

He also won the boys’ diving championship.

All four members of the girls’ diving team qualified for the finals, and two placed in the top 16.

And one other thing, Crane said: “The check went to Jim.”

Trivia answer: Eagles, or a derivation of it, belonging to Fundamental Baptist Academy, Granite Hills, Julian, Santa Fe Christian and Tri-City Christian. San Pasqual is the Golden Eagles.

In the long run: At the 1983 San Diego Section Track and Field Championships, Bonita Vista’s Joe Manuel out-leaned St. Augustine’s Paul Greer to win the 1,600-meter title. Manuel clocked 4:13.79, Greer 4:13.81. Manuel went to Kansas and later dropped out of running. Greer stayed with it and graduated from San Diego State. Greer, now with the San Diego Track Club, took fourth in 3:39.05 at Friday’s Santa Monica Track and Field Classic. With the time, Greer, 26, qualified for June’s U.S. Track and Field Championships in New York City and the U.S. Olympic Trials in New Orleans in 1992.

The Olympic qualifying mark is 3:41.7.