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Breakers off to strong start

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Vivian Mendoza medaled with a 48 and the Laguna Beach High girls’ golf team ran its record to 2-0 in Golden West League play Wednesday by scoring a 270-333 victory against visiting Orange at Bella Collina Towne & Golf Club in San Clemente.

“The girls played well today, but we are going to need to improve if we want to challenge for the Golden West League title,” Laguna Coach Val Quigley said. “Bella Collina is a tight and hilly course, probably the toughest course we will play on this year and our better players are not posting any big single hole scores, so that is encouraging. Vivian Mendoza shot a 48, her lowest score on this course, which is a great accomplishment this early in the season.”

In addition to moving to 2-0 in league, the Breakers are 3-0 overall. They began the season with a league win against Costa Mesa on Aug. 31 and nonleague victory against Sage Hill on Sept. 2.

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Laguna is coming off a 2009 season that saw the Breakers go 7-2 in league and finish second to Estancia. Individually, Grace Komoroczy, last year’s team Most Valuable Player, qualified for the individual playoffs and reached the CIF Southern California Regional finals. Komoroczy graduated last June.

The 2010 squad includes Mendoza — a junior and newcomer who last year was the program’s junior varsity MVP — senior captain Christianne Kinder, senior Devin Altieri, junior Taylor Weiss, junior Laura Kawashiri, and newcomers in senior Hilary Jonus and freshmen Jackie McMahon and Sara Simmons.

“I anticipate that we will contend for the league title again this year, along with Estancia,” Quigley said. “As a team, we have to replace the scores of our team MVP of the past two years, Grace Komoroczy. She is playing in college this year and was probably the most talented female golfer to ever play for Laguna Beach High. So, we have a big challenge ahead of us.

“However, overall we have a balanced team this year with several players able to consistently shoot competitive scores. For the last several years, we’ve had one or two players on the team who could go real low at any time and since we don’t have that this year, we need to be consistent throughout the lineup, top to bottom. It looks promising so far, as we have had three different girls from our team, Taylor Weiss, Christianne Kinder and now, Vivian Mendoza, earn medalist honors in our first three matches.”

Laguna takes on host Estancia on Wednesday in a key league match at 3 p.m. at Mesa Linda Golf Course in Costa Mesa.

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