Coaches Keep Relationship In the Family

A tale of two coaches and one household. Chapter 1.

When El Capitan travels to Mt. Miguel for a girls’ basketball game on Jan. 14, the two first-year coaches may replace the obligatory postgame handshake with a big smouch on the lips.

And why not?

El Capitan’s Jim Mottershaw and Mt. Miguel’s Julie Mottershaw have been married for a little more than a year.

“It’ll be different, and it’ll be exciting,” said Jim, who has been coaching in San Diego for 24 years and cannot recall any other husband/wife showdowns during that span. “But we’ll treat it just like any other (nonleague) game.”

Jim Mottershaw teaches geography at El Capitan but wasn’t named the girls’ basketball coach until last week. He had previously coached both girls’ and boys’ basketball at Kearny and Clairemont before working as an assistant coach at the University of San Diego for three years and UC San Diego last year.

Julie Mottershaw, formerly Julie Evans, teaches math and history at Mt. Miguel. She played for two years at USD before transferring to San Diego State, where she finished among the national leaders in scoring and free-throw percentage during her senior year.

Both have a lot of work ahead. El Capitan was 1-18 last year, Mt. Miguel 4-11.

Two in One Day?: Serra High, which has won 10 of the past 12 field hockey championships and finished second the other two seasons, lost twice on Saturday in its own tournament.

The Conquistadors lost to Rancho Buena Vista in the semifinals, then to San Pasqual in the loser’s bracket semifinals. Both matches were decided on penalty strokes. Hilltop won the tournament with a 3-1 victory over RBV.

Serra, which has all but written the field hockey chapter in the national high school record book, once went nearly four seasons without a loss--winning 86 in a row--and has the top five winning streaks in section history.

Going for the Gold: Former Serra standout Kris Fillat, the section field hockey player of the year in 1987, is the youngest member on the U.S. National team and the only one to have grown up west of Pennsylvania.

The U.S. team begins play on Saturday in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Auckland, New Zealand. Twelve teams are battling for the five remaining spots in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

Fillat, 20, would have been a senior this season at Iowa, but she received a waiver from the NCAA to train with the national team and will be eligible for the 1992 college season.

Fillat scored a San Diego Section record 53 goals in 1987 and tied Serra’s Mare Chung for career goals with 106.

National Exposure: The Torrey Pines girls’ volleyball team, which had been ranked No. 3 in the nation by USA Today, won all five matches and the championship of the 16-team Block Challenge Qualifier tournament last weekend in Chicago.

By winning the title, Torrey Pines (10-2) qualified for next year’s 32-team Block Challenge, one of the most prestigious tournaments in the nation.

Coach Jim Harrah feels his team could have won this year.

“We were playing well enough to challenge any of those schools,” he said. “I know we would have been challenging for the title.”

Extra Special: University City’s offense has produced only one touchdown and one field goal this football season, and those both came in the second quarter of Week No. 1 on Sept. 13. The Centurions, however, are 2-1.

They beat Crawford in that first game, 10-3, then edged Madison, 8-7, when Daranzol Sheppard returned a punt 96 yards for a touchdown with 36 seconds left.

University City had its highest scoring game Friday, but lost 24-12 to Mira Mesa. Paul Turner scored both Centurion touchdowns on kickoff returns of 80 and 86 yards.

Unhappy Returns: Torrey Pines (3-1) could have been 4-0 for the first time in school history, but the Falcons allowed a 92-yard kickoff return for a touchdown on the opening play of the season and eventually lost to USDHS, 7-6.

Until Friday, no Falcon in the current senior class had ever won three consecutive games at any level in high school.

Big Start: San Diego (4-0) has one more victory than all other City Central teams combined. The Cavers would have had twice as many, but Lincoln (2-2) scored on the final play of Saturday’s game to upset Morse, 34-28.

After winning 17 in a row, Morse (3-2) has more losses than any other City Eastern team.

Go Figure: Montgomery (1-2-1) had been outscored, 61-7, before claiming a shocking 11-0 victory over Sweetwater. The Red Devils had not been shut out by a South Bay team since Montgomery beat them, 10-0, in 1975.

Nice Bench: Any doubts about El Camino’s depth this year? Third-string tailback Mike Flanagan rushed for 127 yards and second-string fullback Elias Noa added 136 as the Wildcats (3-1, 1-0) recorded their third shutout of the season on Friday, 21-0 over Escondido.

Lamont Girton was to have been the starting tailback, but he has been out with a knee injury. Girton’s replacement Mike Gee spent three days in a hospital last week with a viral infection. Daniel Esposito, the regular fullback, has been slowed by an ankle injury.