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John Zant: SBCC Baseball and Beach Volleyballers Streak into Weekend |
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By John Zant
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Friday, May 04 2007 |
There are two big questions about what's happening in sports Saturday, but I'm not confident about my answers.
Who's going to win the Derby? Twenty young horses pounding around the track at a
distance none of them has raced before - anything can happen. Anything did happen
two years ago when 50-1 longshot Giacamo won. So I'll take Tiago, the half-brother of
Giacomo, in another upset victory for the same trainer (John Shirreffs) and jockey
(Mike Smith).
 John Zant
Two outstanding streaks have brightened the local sports scene. City College's Vaqueros have won 13 consecutive baseball games, and the beach volleyball duo of Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser has won four AVP tournaments in a row going back to last season.
SBCC has captured its first baseball championship in 35 years. With a 20-4 record in the Western State Conference North Division, and a 34-7 overall record, the Vaqueros are vying for the top seed in the upcoming Southern California playoffs. Although they clinched their title a week ago, the Vaqueros continued to play with intensity Thursday. They defeated Ventura College 1-0 in 11 innings at Pershing Park. They'll wrap up the regular season with another home game against Hancock College at 1 p.m. today (Friday, May 4), then await the announcement of the playoff seedings. Santa Barbara will host another team in a best-of-three series May 12-13.
"It's very exciting," said coach Teddy Warrecker after the Vaqueros beat Ventura on
Dave Klein's bases-loaded single in the bottom of the 11th. "We talked all year that if
we go where we want to go this season, we have to win the 1-0 and 4-3 ballgames."
Warrecker pointed to a sacrifice bunt by clean-up hitter David Harris as an example of
his team's unselfish ways. Harris moved runners to second and third with one out, and
after Steve Cook was walked intentionally to create a force at every base, Klein
slapped a single into left field.
"I wanted to be aggressive early in the count," said Klein. "He (Ventura pitcher
Jeremy Berg) struck me out on the my previous at-bat, and I knew he had to throw
strikes. I got a pitch up and drove it to the opposite field."
Two former Santa Barbara High pitchers shut out the visiting Pirates. Freddy Vazquez
went nine-plus innings, and Vinnie Agapito relieved him after a leadoff double in the
top of the 10th. Agapito prevented a run by knocking down a hard liner up the middle
by Tim Polacek and throwing him out.
In beach volleyball, meanwhile, Rogers and Dalhausser will try to continue their
winning ways at Huntington Beach this weekend. They have yet to lose a match this
year while taking the top prizes at Miami and Dallas. They have the inside track to win a $100,000 bonus offered by Cuervo to the team that accumulates the most points in the first three tournaments - just making the final on Sunday will assure Rogers and Dalhausser the 100 large. They are also glad to be playing on a California beach after competing in artificial settings outside stadiums - American Airlines Arena in Miami and Arlington in Dallas.
One reason the pair is so tough is their between-tournament workouts. They did the
following at La Playa Stadium earlier this week after a warm-up jog on the track - 15
split squats on each leg with 120 pounds of weight; tossing a medicine ball back and
forth overhead; 25 jumps; 25 crunches while heaving the medicine ball; hopping to the
top of the stadium, four stairs at a time; calf raises; clean weight lifts; bounding
sideways, forward and straight up; and a sprinting up the stadium bleachers.
"Then we did it all over again two more times," Dalhausser said. "Once I'm done, I feel
the rest of the week is nothing."
ALSO THIS WEEKEND: The Santa Barbara Breakers, 3-3 in the International
Basketball League, have yet to put together a winning streak. They'll try to do so this
weekend when they play the Phoenix Flame tonight and Saturday, both games tipping
off at 7:05 p.m. … UCSB is staying close to the leaders in the rugged Big West baseball
race. The Gauchos (19-21, 7-5) are tied for fourth with Cal State Fullerton and play a
big weekend series in Fullerton starting tonight. . . . The Gauchos women's softball
team plays its final three home games against UC Riverside, a double-header Saturday
and single game at noon Sunday. . . . Rain washed out the dedication of Santa Barbara
High's new dugouts two weeks ago. The event will now take place Saturday before the
Dons play San Marcos at 2 p.m. It's become a Cinco de Mayo celebration as well, with
the Mexican Baseball League cooking up tortas and tacos.
GAUCHOS OFF THE HOOK: There was some concern about the future of UCSB
women's basketball when the NCAA disclosed this week that the program had been
penalized two scholarships because of a sub-par Academic Progress Report. But the
Gauchos paid the penalty during the past season, head coach Mark French said, when
they had just 13 players on scholarship. Next year they will return to the maximum of
15 rides. The unforeseen departure of some players in recent years skewed the
Gauchos' APR, which tracks the progress of athletes toward their degrees. French
conceded it was "an embarrassment" for UCSB to receive sanctions. "We're going to
make sure it doesn't happen again," he said. "I made mistakes in recruiting kids who
did not fit the overall program. We want to have kids who won't leave. I feel really
good about next year's team, including our new recruits." |
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