Bonebright Tries Travel to Get a Grip

Tim Bonebright has run out of teammates to practice with.

The 145-pound senior was the only Thousand Oaks High wrestler to advance to the state championships this weekend in Stockton. Bonebright is one of five area Southern Section wrestlers still competing, all from different schools.

Thousand Oaks Coach Larry Mortensen brought in teammates to practice with Bonebright, but it’s been difficult to motivate athletes whose season is already ended.

So Mortensen has turned to other schools for help.

On Monday, Chad Payne of Agoura, a state qualifier at 125 pounds, came to Thousand Oaks to work out with Bonebright.

Tuesday and Wednesday, Bonebright and Mortensen traveled to Rio Mesa to work with Tom Nelford, a 152-pound qualifier for the Spartans, before heading to Stockton this morning.

“It seems to work out well, at this stage there are only a few wrestlers left in the area,” Mortensen said. “They do drills together and coaches are cooperative because we all want to them to do well this weekend.”

PACIFIC LEAGUE

Up Is Down

Fearing his team would be thin on experience, Crescenta Valley Coach John Goffredo petitioned to have the Falcons moved up from Division II-AA to I-AA. Yes, up.

“I figured that we were really young and I knew our division was really loaded,” Goffredo said. “I hoped that we could win a game or two (in Division I-AA) before we’d have to hit a top-notch team.”

It looks like a good move now. The Falcons are playing Long Beach Poly in the championship game Saturday night in the Anaheim Arena.

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One of the superstitions around Crescenta Valley is that center Blake Jacobson’s rebounds in a game will be the same as the number of times Goffredo sprays Jacobson’s leg with a special adhesive before he tapes it.

“Half of the time I hit it right on,” Goffredo said.

Saturday against Santa Ana Valley, Jacobson was sprayed 15 times, and he had 15 rebounds.

ALPHA LEAGUE

Long Road to Glory

In 1991, the Village Christian girls’ basketball team was 5-14. The Crusaders were so bad that then-freshman Jeanne Beauchamp was called up to the varsity, then sent back down to the freshman team midway through the season because the varsity campaign was deemed a lost cause.

Since then, under the direction of Coach John Domke and the leadership of Beauchamp, Village Christian has improved by leaps and bounds.

“When she came in is when the program started developing,” Domke said.

Village Christian improved to 13-10 in Beauchamp’s sophomore season and went 21-5 last year.

The 5-foot-6 senior point guard--she also is the school’s student body president--has not received much recognition playing alongside precocious sophomore Lindy James (17.2 points, 10 rebounds a game), but Beauchamp’s floor leadership has been invaluable.

This season, she has averaged 11 points, 5.8 assists and 4.5 steals and has helped lead the Crusaders (25-1) to Saturday’s Division IV-A championship game. They will play defending champion Cerritos Valley Christian.

“Her court awareness is amazing,” Domke said. “It’s really rare in girls’ basketball when you have someone who sees the whole court, but she has excellent court vision.”

WEST VALLEY LEAGUE

Kennedy Gets Defensive

The Kennedy boys’ soccer team advanced to the semifinal round of the City Section playoffs for the seventh time in Coach Fred Singer’s 14 seasons with the Golden Cougars.

Defense has keyed the Golden Cougars’ success, and the back line was solidified when Singer moved forward Shaun Dudra to fullback early in the season.

The 6-foot-4 Dudra, a talented scorer, also was a wide receiver/kicker on the Kennedy football team and was a Times All-Valley selection.

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El Camino Real senior Clint Marcus will play second base and pitch for the Conquistadores, so he’ll need two gloves. Marcus, a right-handed batter, throws right-handed in the infield but pitches left-handed.

GOLDEN LEAGUE

Tall Order

Forgive the Quartz Hill baseball players if they look down at opponents: Six of them are 6-foot-2 or taller.

Aaron Brown and Darrell Hussman are both 6-4, Roger Worley and Jeremy Daum are 6-3, and catchers J.D Smith and Sean Potter are 6-2.

“I think our baseball team is taller than our basketball team,” Coach Mike Nielsen said. “And me being 5-11, I’m looking up to most of them.”

Around the Leagues . . .

* Chad Snyder, younger brother of Dodger outfielder Cory Snyder, is fighting for a starting position in the Rio Mesa outfield. A junior, Snyder is moving up from the junior varsity. Cory Snyder starred at Canyon in the early 1980s.

* St. Genevieve Coach Dan Donovan predicted last week that Village Christian would beat defending state champion Serra in the Division IV-A quarterfinals. Serra won, 84-68.

* Village Christian forward Clancy Lehman scores only five points a game, but averages 11 rebounds. Crusader guard Trisha Palmquist averages 12.5 points and nine rebounds.

* The Pacific League again made a good showing in the playoffs. Crescenta Valley is in the Division I-AA championship game. Pasadena and Muir lost in the quarterfinals of Division II-AA and II-A, respectively. All three made the semifinals last season.

* Glendale senior Tamer Iskander barely missed setting the school career assist record. Iskander finished with 173, six shy of breaking the mark. He likely would have made it had the Dynamiters not been upset by Long Beach Jordan in the first round of the Division I-AA playoffs.

* E-3? Hope it’s not an omen: Cleveland’s first baseman is Shaun Brickhandler.

* With three City Section champions (Andy Becker, Casey Lee, Rick Ullman), El Camino Real advanced more wrestlers to the state championship than any school in the area.

Kennedy Cosgrove and staff writers Jeff Fletcher and Mike Lazarus contributed to this notebook.