San Pedro Top-Seeded in Soccer

San Pedro will be the top-seeded team when the City Section boys’ soccer playoffs begin Friday.

The Pirates (21-1), whose only loss of the season came to Lawndale Leuzinger in the championship game of the South Torrance tournament, will play host to North Hollywood in a first-round game of the 32-team bracket.

Van Nuys Grant, Los Angeles Jordan and Los Angeles Franklin are the second-, third- and fourth-seeded teams, respectively.

Woodland Hills El Camino Real, the two-time defending City champion and winner of three of the past four section titles, is seeded sixth.

The Conquistadores will play host to Los Angeles Bell in the first round.

-- John Ortega

The Wilmington Banning girls’ soccer team could face some rough terrain when the Pilots, seeded last in the 32-team City Section girls’ soccer playoffs, travel Thursday to take on top-seeded and two-time defending champion Woodland Hills El Camino Real in the first round.

But the match against the Conquistadores (18-1-3) will not take place on a cross-country course, and that’s unfortunate for the Pilots (12-6-0) because 12 of the 17 players on the girls’ soccer team are runners.

Banning Coach Kenneth Stumpf was coaching cross-country when he became girls’ soccer coach two years ago. He plans to retire in June after 17 years at Banning.

The soccer team’s top scorer, sophomore forward Jessica Gonzales with 33 goals, also was the No. 1 runner on the varsity cross-country team in the fall. cer history.”

-- Lauren Peterson

Long Beach Wilson will open the Southern Section boys’ soccer playoffs as the top-seeded Division I team, but the Bruins (21-0-5) will be without center midfielder Sammy Rivas on Saturday when they play host to Bellflower St. John Bosco in a first-round game at 3 p.m.

Rivas, who has 11 goals and 14 assists, must sit out the game after being issued two yellow cards in a 1-1 tie at Lakewood in a regular-season finale last week.

Junior Jasmine Lee was the No. 3 sprinter on Long Beach Poly’s powerhouse girls’ track and field team last year, but Saturday she accomplished something that more renowned teammates Shalonda Solomon and Dominique Dorsey have not.

She beat Allyson Felix of North Hills L.A. Baptist.

Felix, the defending state champion in the 200 meters, ran an indoor career best of 23.57 seconds in that event Saturday in the Simplot Games at Idaho State. But that left her .02 seconds behind Lee, whose 23.55 effort moved her to third on the all-time national list behind 23.22 and 23.41 clockings by Sanya Richards of Fort Lauderdale St. Aquinas last year.

Lee, who placed sixth in 100 and fifth in the 200 in the state championships last year, also teamed with Dorsey and sisters Shalonda and Shana Solomon to win the 800 relay in 1:36.69, just .14 seconds off the national record set by Moore League rival Long Beach Wilson in 1997.

-- John Ortega

The Southern Section Division II-A first-round boys’ basketball game Friday between top-seeded Santa Ana Mater Dei (26-2) and the winner of a wild-card game between Cerritos Gahr (11-16) and La Habra Sonora (11-16) has been moved to Santa Ana College. Game time is 7:30 p.m.