Grant’s Fortunes Taking Plunge

Last Friday, Grant High was one minute away from reaching the Simi Valley girls’ tournament final and readying for a run at a second consecutive Sunset Six League championship.

By Saturday, the Lancers were just trying to make it to the end of a third-place game with five players, their future uncertain.

All-City guard Alexis Weatherspoon was home nursing an injured neck suffered in a 66-61 semifinal loss in which Grant (4-6) led in the final minute.

In a 56-41 loss to Camarillo in the third-place game, all-league guard Deja Cruz badly injured her knee and was taken to the hospital, leaving only five healthy players, including All-City forward Krystal Clay, who had a third-quarter asthma attack.

“We were trying to revamp our offense,” said Coach Steve Brumwell, whose team opened the Thousand Oaks tournament on Tuesday. “We have to reassess what we’re going to do now.”

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The best free-throw shooter in the region, among boys or girls, is probably Gillian Lillich of the Camarillo girls’ team.

During a preseason fund-raiser, the senior guard made 232 of 250 free throws (92.8%).

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That wasn’t a sleigh flying over the coast last week.

Murad Siam scrambled from work last Thursday in Los Angeles and chartered a small plane to fly from the Valley to Goleta to see his daughter, Karina, and Harvard-Westlake play a tournament game at UC Santa Barbara.

“He’s incredible,” Karina said of Murad, who took a cab with the pilot from the nearby airport to UC Santa Barbara, arriving just in time for tip off.

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Jenni Munroe, a senior at Hart and a former basketball and tennis player at the school, is one of several Indian athletes to appear in a dance scene in the movie “What Women Want,” starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt.

Munroe is the daughter of Hart girls’ Coach Dave Munroe.

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The Chaminade girls’ team (9-0) is off to its best start in several seasons but was relatively untested in winning championships at the Fillmore and Campbell Hall tournaments.

The Eagles will face tougher competition this week in the Santa Maria Righetti tournament and against Harvard-Westlake, ranked No. 3 in the region, in a Mission League game next week.