Retirement Doesn’t Come Easy to Her

Her players, fellow coaches and friends say she does this every year at this time. Granite Hills softball Coach Cookie Sullivan struck again Saturday, announcing her retirement after the Eagles’ 2-1, 12-inning loss to Patrick Henry in the San Diego Section 3-A championship game.

But if history is any indicator, she’ll be back. Her doting players have never failed to woo her back for another year.

She came within a wild pitch (which allowed the winning run) of getting Granite Hills its first championship with a lineup that included one senior and five 10th graders. All but two of the 15 from this 26-10-1 team will return.

“I’m done,” said Sullivan, who, for weeks, has been talking about retiring to a fishing hole on the Colorado River in Imperial County.

“She won’t leave,” Eagle pitcher Rebekah Kilpatrick said. “I won’t let her.”

Mighty Titans: Poway won its third consecutive state lacrosse championship on May 24. The Titans beat San Francisco St. Ignatius in the final.

National star: John Treadwell of Patrick Henry has been selected to play in the 10th annual Lacrosse Classic, a national all-star match at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Treadwell, a midfielder, plans to attend Yale in the fall.

Would-be record: In three years as La Jolla Country Day’s kicker, Eric Abrams’ longest field goal was 53 yards, good for a third-place tie for the longest kick in section history. The Stanford-bound senior recently booted a 58-yarder for the Aztecs, a local men’s open flag football team playing for the Western Regional championship at UC San Diego.

Abrams’ kick split the bamboo uprights and cleared a crossbar made of string--a makeshift goal two-thirds the size of NFL regulation--with three minutes left to tie the San Jose Renegades, 6-6. But San Jose won the game, 12-6, advancing to the national tournament. The Aztecs were ranked seventh in the country.

Hot man: Vista’s Aaron Rounsifer was in an incredible groove a couple of weeks ago. He homered in the seventh inning to give the Panthers a 2-0 victory over Fallbrook, then homered in the first inning of the next game, against Poway, to determine the Palomar League champion. For good measure, he hit a second homer in that 15-2 victory, giving him four home runs in five games. He finished the year with six.

“The ball looks like a watermelon,” Rounsifer said. “It doesn’t seem like I can miss it. At the beginning of the year, it looked like a golf ball.”

In the running?: Morse’s boys and Fallbrook’s girls were listed among the 10 favorites by the State CIF to challenge for team titles at this weekend’s state track and field meet.

That list was made before Saturday’s San Diego Section meet. Morse took the boys’ team title, but Fallbrook’s girls finished fourth behind San Pasqual, Mt. Carmel and Morse.

The state meet will be Friday and Saturday at Cerritos College.

Jack Murphy’s Law: Because Bonita Vista and Mira Mesa both advanced to tonight’s (7 p.m.) San Diego Section 3-A baseball final at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, senior awards ceremonies at both schools were switched to Monday night.

They had been scheduled for tonight at both schools.

Said Bonita Vista Coach Bill Getz: “Our A.S.B. guy (Mike Swift) was frantically trying to reschedule it. Here, it was like, what if you have an awards banquet and no one comes to pick up their award?”

Times staff writer Dana Haddad contributed to this report.