Samohi’s teams eye elusive title LEARNING FROM LAST YEAR
SAMOHI Things could hardly have gone any smoother in Norm Lacy’s first year as the high school athletic director.
Next week, all six Samohi winter sport teams — boy’s and girl’s basketball, boy’s and girl’s soccer, water polo and wrestling — will begin the second season of high school sports, also known as the CIF playoffs.
“We have some outstanding coaches and a talent base,” Lacy said on Friday.
All six teams have fared extremely well this year, with almost all of the teams placing first in the Ocean League. Boy’s basketball placed first in the Ocean League, finishing the season 7-3 in conference; girl’s basketball finished undefeated in conference, also placing first; ; 6-2 and second place for water polo; 10-0 and first place for both the girl’s and boy’s soccer teams.
The wrestling team, the only winter Samohi team that isn’t in the Ocean League, finished its season at 3-1 — second place in the Pioneer League.
Based on the run of successes this season, Lacy hopes to move all the Samohi teams out of the Ocean League, where the competition from other schools is perceived to be weak, to the Bay League, which is renowned for its quality programs, with the likes of Redondo Beach High School and Mira Costa High School.
“The (Bay) league is a stronger league, overall, in competition,” Lacy said. “We’ve completed the second part of the season and now we get to see how good we are.
None of the winter sports teams have a CIF championship except for men’s basketball, which captured the state title in 1928 and 1987.
After going 8-7 in preseason tournaments, nothing could be sweeter for first year girl’s basketball Coach Marty Verdugo than finishing undefeated in the Ocean League.
“I knew we could play with almost anyone in the state of California,”Verdugo said.
The experience from last year’s short-lived run in the playoffs, when the basketball team lost in the first round to eventual state champions Long Beach Poly, is expected to be a beneficial factor in this year’s playoffs. The team returns four seniors from last year’s squad.
“We know what it feels like to leave after the first round and we want to go far this year,” said senior point guard Allie Southam. “We don’t want to exit early.”
“The competition gets stiffer.”
Her counterpart, senior guard/forward Emily Foshag, agreed, saying that the high caliber teams that she saw in last year’s tournament made her and the rest of the team work harder in the offseason.
Foshag, who hopes to play Division 1 women’s college basketball next year, is now aware that any game this postseason could be her last.
“You want to leave everything out there so you don’t have any regrets,” Foshag said.
The girl’s team will not find out until later this week who they will play against in the first round of the tournament, but they are anticipating a home-court advantage for Saturday’s game.
In preparation, the team will meet to reinstill the fundamentals and endure some long practices. Following a mid-week scrimmage, Verdugo said he will give his girls a break for a few days prior to the game.
The pre-game plan also includes some down time to watch the film of the opposition’s most recent game.
“I felt all along I was handed a very talented team,”Verdugo said. “My goal is to get them to the right path of being better basketball players.”
Soccer Coach Frank Gatell also hopes to avoid an early bounce from the playoffs after both his girl’s and boy’s soccer teams were eliminated early in last year’s playoffs.
The experience from last year’s CIF play-offs caused Gatell to work his players immediately in the offseason.
“Usually, we take a more relaxed approach in spring because we don’t have a lot of training space,” Gatell said on Thursday. “But this year, Coach (James) Chapman and myself wanted to work on fundamentals.”
Spring training seemed to have an effect, as the girl’s finished the season with an overall record of 21-1 with three ties, and the boys 15-5 overall.
Both the girl’s and boy’s soccer teams also return a wealth of experience in the postseason from last year. The girls bring back with them 12 players while the boy’s soccer team returns 15.
“The number-one thing is to always keep focus,” Gatell said.
The coaches for the men’s basketball, wrestling and water polo teams did not respond to requests seeking comment.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 10, 2007. Read the original PDF.