Doherty Prefers to Be in Surf, Not on Turf

You could say Scott Doherty rode the big wave . . . all the way out of town.

Doherty, a quarterback at Pierce College last season, went to Costa Rica to surf in the summer and decided not to return.

“He’s staying there,” Coach David Banuelos said. “Isn’t that wild?”

Doherty passed for 841 yards and six touchdowns in eight games for Pierce as a sophomore last year.

But his football career is on hold.

In an e-mail from Costa Rica, Doherty said he wanted to take time off from football, especially since a handful of Division III schools offered him only partial scholarships or financial aid.

He is working for a sports book and recently organized a football game against a team from Panama.

“I recruited players, taught them the rules of the game, coached them and played as well,” Doherty wrote. “I trained my team in three weeks. We played in a major stadium in Costa Rica in front of 300 fans. We won, 8-6. After a teammate of mine returned a kickoff for a touchdown, I threw the game-winning two-point conversion with two minutes left.”

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It wasn’t the sands of Iwo Jima, but don’t tell that to the Ventura women’s soccer team.

Coach Steve Hoffman put the Pirates through their preseason paces at the beach, an annual event.

“We trained hard, but we limited them to one [practice] a day,” Hoffman said. “We try to work with the ball as much as we can because it disguises the running.”

Hoffman brought the idea with him from England, where he played youth soccer for a coach who favored beach training.

Hoffman, a former assistant at Cal Lutheran, started the Ventura program in 1996 and has a 77-11-12 record and won four Western State Conference titles.

The Pirates are 56-2-6 in WSC play, losing only to Cuesta in 1996 and 1998. The second loss came at home, when Ventura outshot Cuesta, 38-2.

But Ventura hasn’t reached the state championships, falling in the Southern California Regional final the last two years. Hoffman believes the Pirates can make their best run at the championships this season.

“This is the biggest recruiting class we’ve had,” Hoffman said. “We needed depth, so I went out and got it.”

Among the key recruits are forward J.J. Toohey and midfielder Kelly Nash from Buena High, forward Jenny Graham from Agoura and forward Natalya Dergen from Rio Mesa.

Toohey and Nash helped Buena to a 32-0 record last season and the Southern Section Division II title.

The sophomores include captain Sarah Costello, the WSC most valuable player last season after scoring 22 goals, sweeper Marisa Pittman and midfielder Bettie Mallaglanas. Costello is moving from forward to midfield.

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Recently hired Jon Strauss is the fifth baseball coach at Glendale since 1995.

Strauss replaces Chris Zavatsky, who coached one year after replacing Denny Barrett, who coached three years after replacing Andy Nieto, who coached one year after replacing Steve Coots.

All former coaches, except Coots, left to become assistants at four-year schools: Zavatsky at Santa Clara, Barrett at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, and Nieto at USC.