San Diego Players Find Home at Golden Dome

South Bend, Ind., with a decided West Coast slant.

Notre Dame’s women’s volleyball team breezed into town earlier this week and brought with it three former San Diego-area high school standouts.

The Fighting Irish, who defeated the University of San Diego Tuesday night, 15-10, 15-2, 16-14, in a nonconference match, are led by three former San Diego Volleyball Club members, two from Torrey Pines High and the third from USDHS.

“We get a lot of use out of the San Diego girls,” said Notre Dame Coach Debbie Brown, a former assistant with the San Diego-based women’s national team. “They have great club programs in San Diego, and we’ve had a lot of success with (San Diego players).”

Brown was still living in San Diego when USDHS’s Alicia Turner, now a senior at Notre Dame, headed off to college. But Brown was very much involved in the recruitment of sophomore Christy Peters and freshman Brett Hensel.

All three players are starters on Brown’s 18-4 team, the defending Midwestern Collegiate Conference champion, which Brown said is a tribute to the local club programs.

“I hate to sound like a broken record, but the thing that stands out most about all the San Diego players is they can do just about everything,” she said. “They’re all good all-around players. Their involvement is already huge, and it will only increase down the line.”

Outside hitter Turner, a two-time San Diego Section Player of the Year, has started for four years and is the team captain. Brown described Turner as tough in the clutch.

“She’s very good in tight situations,” Brown said. “She’s my money player. When the game’s on the line, she’s a good one to go to.

Peters, a member of Torrey Pines’ 1990 section champion team, didn’t start for Notre Dame initially, but she did after Brown decided the team couldn’t afford having her on the bench.

“No question, she’s our top outside hitter,” she said. “She takes more swings than anyone. She carries a big load offensively.”

Hensel, who was instrumental in two section championships for the Falcons, moved from her role as an outside hitter in high school to back row specialist when she arrived in Indiana.

“She’s an excellent defensive player. She has quick feet and she covers a lot of area,” Brown said. “She doesn’t get rattled, and its unusual for a freshman not to sometimes get scatterbrained.”

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Former San Pasqual High and Palomar College quarterback Andy Loveland, now at Oklahoma State, watched from the sidelines Saturday as freshman quarterback Gary Porter led the Cowboys (3-3) to a 28-26 victory over Missouri. Loveland (sprained knee, sprained ankle) sat out after he was roughed up in a 55-0 loss to Nebraska the week before.

The Cowboys (3-3), have gone 2-2 in games that Loveland (15 of 34, 143 yards, one touchdown, three interceptions) has started. Porter (37 of 68, 550 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions) has played in five games.

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In Saturday’s 58-36 victory over Cerritos, Palomar College amassed more than 700 yards offensively for the second time in three seasons. In 1990 against Grossmont, the Comets gained 707 yards in a 63-44 victory.

Against Cerritos, whose only previous loss was to top-ranked Saddleback, the Comets compiled 701 yards.

Still, Palomar is the only Mission Conference team to surpass the 700-yard mark.

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Under the heading of go figure, USD’s men’s soccer team was ranked 22nd the first week the Toreros broke into the national rankings. USD went 1-1 the following week and jumped to No. 16. The week after that, the Toreros again went 1-1 and rose another two spots to No. 14.

Here’s the crazy part. After USD went 2-0, it dropped to No. 18 when rankings came out Oct. 13; after a 1-0 performance last week, the Toreros dropped to the nation’s 23rd-ranked Division I team.

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Preseason Hoopla: UC San Diego men’s basketball team is ranked 15th in preseason Division III polls. The Tritons’ Chris Moore, a senior forward, is listed as one of the top five players to watch in the West.

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When the unranked USD women’s soccer team meets Portland in a West Coast Conference game Saturday, the Toreros (13-8, 4-2) will match skills against two of the nation’s top scorers.

Fourth-ranked Portland (14-1, 1-0) features Tiffany Millbreet (57 points) and Shannon MacMillan (37 points), the Nos. 2 and 4 scorers in the country. Portland’s only loss is to North Carolina, the defending national champions.

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Monica Clancy of Point Loma Nazarene is the lone Crusader to qualify for this weekend’s small college division of the National Tennis Championships in Corpus Christi, Tex.

Clancy, PLNC’s No. 1 player the past two seasons, had a 21-4 record and reached the finals of the District 3 championships last season.