Morningside Girls Prove Point

The Inglewood Morningside High girls’ sprint relay team had something to prove at the Mazda Mt. San Antonio College Relays Saturday.

Morningside started the season impressively with times of 46.25 seconds and 3:45.86 in the 400- and 1,600-meter relays, respectively, at the Dallas Relays but since then had dropped out of sight.

The Monarchs did not run at the Arcadia Invitational, where a young Long Beach Poly team, headed by freshmen Channelle Anderson and Aminah Haddad, had the state’s best time in the 400-meter relay, 46.17, earlier this month.

To regain their status as the state’s top relay team, Morningside knew it had to defeat the Jackrabbits in the Mt. SAC Relays.

“We knew that we had to make a statement and to get more respect,” said senior Sanoma Nickson, who ran the second leg on the 400-meter relay team. “A lot of people thought that we were going to get beat.”

Morningside answered the critics, but not without a big effort. It took a strong anchor leg by senior Santeshia Arnold to defeat Long Beach Poly with a nation-leading time of 45.83 to their opponents’ 45.88.

It was the second time in three meetings that the Monarchs had defeated the Jackrabbits in a relay this season.

With the state’s best 400- and 1,600-meter relay teams, Morningside uses five runners--sophomores Felisha Williams, Joranda White and Ta-Ne Gibson, and seniors Nickson and Arnold.

In recent years, the Monarchs have emerged as one of the top relay teams in the state, which Arnold credits to hard work.

“We practice hard all week to be the best,” she said. “We take pride in winning relays. We have a group of runners who can run in every relay that we change up all the time.”

This was evident at Mt. SAC as Morningside also won the 1,600-meter relay and finished third in the 800-meter relay behind Long Beach Poly and Thousand Oaks--with its second unit.

Morningside was not the only girls’ relay team to do well at the Mt. SAC Relays. Pasadena Muir’s shuttle hurdle team and Agoura’s 6,400-meter relay team also scored impressive victories.

Laura Hayward, Kay Nekota, Kristie Camp and Amy Skieresz combined to win the 6,400 relay in 20:29.15. The Chargers’ time would convert to 20:36.32 for four miles and ranks third on the all-time national list.

In the rarely contested shuttle hurdle relay, Muir’s Kelly Moten, Amber Roberts, Ch’a Mosley and Shireen Brookhart won in 59.42.

Long Beach Millikan, The Times’ No. 1-rated Southern Section baseball team, dropped to third in this week’s poll. The Rams lost their first game last week when Moore League rival Long Beach Jordan defeated the Rams, 5-1.

Sophomore pitcher Tom French went the distance for Jordan, holding Millikan to four hits while striking out four. Millikan senior Greg Gregory suffered the loss, which ended his 17-game winning streak in the last two seasons.

Jordan spotted Millikan a 1-0 first-inning lead before taking control of the game behind French and an efficient offense that produced five runs on five hits against Gregory.

Tom Bergeron, Cerritos Gahr baseball coach, gained his 400th victory when the Gladiators defeated Mission Viejo, 9-3, last week in the semifinals of the Santa Ana Elks tournament.

Bergeron, in his 21st season as coach at the school, has a 400-172 record. Among active Southern Section coaches, he trails only El Segundo’s John Stevenson (693 victories, 33rd season), Lompoc’s Dan Bodary (443 victories, 26th season), Channel Islands’ Don Cardinal (421 victories, 27th season) and Glendora’s Clint Harwick (418 victories, 24th season).

Glendale Hoover softball pitcher Nancy Evans has become the master of the one-hitter this season.

In compiling a 10-2 record, the junior right-hander has pitched nine one-hitters, including a 1-0 victory over Pacific League rival Glendale last week.

Evans retired 24 of 25 she faced and lost a perfect-game bid with two out in the seventh inning. It was the second consecutive time that she had come close to a perfect game.

Kansas-bound Charisse Sampson of Washington showed why she was a four-time All-City selection last Thursday night when she scored 17 points to lead the White All-Stars to a 93-74 victory over the Red All-Stars in the first Kodak prep All-American girls’ basketball game at Jackson, Tenn.

Sampson, the City career scoring and rebounding record-holder, made seven of 13 field-goal attempts and had five rebounds. It was her eight first-half points that helped the White All-Stars take a 45-34 lead at halftime.

Sampson’s backcourt teammate was Auburn-bound Kristen Mulligan of Rolling Hills Estates Peninsula, who had a game-high four assists.

Times’ Prep Baseball Rankings

CITY SECTION

No. School Div. Record LW 1. University 4-A 12-2 2 2. Kennedy 4-A 13-5 7 3. El Camino Real 4-A 10-4 6 4. Taft 4-A 9-4-1 1 5. San Pedro 4-A 12-2 7 6. Granada Hills 4-A 10-4 3 7. Cleveland 4-A 9-4-1 4 8. Westchester 4-A 11-4 10 9. Monroe 4-A 7-3-1 9 10. Garfield 3-A 10-2 NR

SOUTHERN SECTION

No. School Div. Record LW 1. Diamond Bar 5-A 16-1 2 2. Mater Dei 5-A 14-1 3 3. Millikan 5-A 13-2-1 1 4. Huntington Beach 5-A 14-2 4 5. Channel Islands 5-A 13-2 6 6. Hart 5-A 13-2 7 7. Capistrano Valley 4-A 14-3 8 8. Simi Valley 5-A 12-5 6 9. El Segundo 3-A 14-2 5 10. Arroyo Grande 4-A 12-2 14 11. Don Lugo 4-A 14-4 9 12. Lakewood 5-A 11-5 NR 13. Norte Vista 2-A 15-1 12 14. El Dorado 5-A 12-5 15 15. Saddleback 3-A 13-4 11