3:45pm | There are times when we finish the weekend searching out the proper noun, adverb and adjective to put the flavor in your LBSU sporting soup. Do fans have a “grimace of disapprobation (an involuntary or spontaneous distortion of the countenance, expressive of pain or great discomfort, or of disgust, disdain, or disapproval)?” Or perhaps we see that hopeful trio of… “Would of, could of, and should of?”
The first part of the season had elements of unhappiness and “what if” or “would of.” The past weekend, with a rebound in both volleyball and soccer, there is no clear path to the postseason but hope and optimism have replaced despair and desperation. We will start with volleyball where last weekend CSULB’s senior sideline skipper, Brian Gimmillaro, had to digest the disgust, disdain and disapproval of road losses to UCSB in five and then Cal Poly in three.
On Friday the then-sixth place LBSU played first place UC Davis and 70 minutes later they rounded up the Aggies in a 3-0 sweep, 25-13, 25-19, and 25-13. The ‘Niner Pound machine hit a season-high .457 with a just-over-the-flu Caitlin Ledoux flashing an amazing .619 on the night with a team-high 13 kills and no errors.
Saturday was a mixed bag of ups and downs and this time it took 137 minutes to escape with a 3-2 win over old foe Pacific. The rollercoaster had LB losing two tight sets, and blowing out the Tigers in two sets before the Black and Gold recovered in the rally-scoring fifth and won 25-19, 23-25, 25-14, 23-25, 15-11. Lauren Minkel flew around the ‘Myd for 32 digs, part of a total of 100, the eighth-most in school history. The best news on the block was, well the block and scoring by Haleigh Hampton. The 6-6 freshmen middle took over the overtime with four kills down the stretch in game five. On the season she has the team bests in blocks (101 with 23 solo) and attack percentage (.401).
This weekend pits the Beach against UC Irvine at home and UC Riverside on the road. Oh yes, the team (in fifth place in the Big West) still has a nifty 13-5 overall record and Brian credits some rotation switches for last weekend’s improvement. “There are thousands of combinations you can try but we just moved the order of our players to make our offense more comfortable.” My idea, the players have all switched to uni-tail hair stylings, as opposed to the old Misty May pig-tailed terror look. Whatever works.
On the soccer side of things, the team extended its unbeaten streak to six games as the 49ers (9-3-2, 2-0-1) strolled past Big West weakling UC Riverside 3-0 in an actual Soccer Stadium, good experience since next Sunday night they play at Elephant Downs, the whimsical name for Titan Soccer’s home facility, built for football before the budget mess killed regular football.
After a scoreless half, in the 52nd minute Nicole Hubbard took a slick pass from Shawna Gordon for the first goal of the game and then Karina Camacho and Jazz Strozier finished off the scoring while goalie Emily Kingsborough chased away all the Highlander attempts.
“Riverside is very tough defensively,” 49er head coach Mauricio Ingrassia said. “Not an easy game by any means, so it feels good to have solved it convincingly the way we did. We received key contributions from many players. It was a good win on the road.” Yep, but the even nicer road win would be this weekend’s deal with perennial problem people at Fullerton.
THE PLUS DUST—One of the new Dirtbag coaches, Justin Ramsey, knows his way around Blair since he played for three seasons in the Golden Baseball League with the Long Beach Armada. In tennis the doubles finalist for the Fullerton tourney will decide the trophy at Long Beach State on Monday afternoon but that’s okay, like the singles ladder the Beach was so dominant that all the rest of the schools had already packed up and gone home by Sunday afternoon. Anais Dallara beat teammate and highly anticipated newcomer Klaudia Malenovska for the singles crown. The fall exhibition show moves to San Diego on the 21st for a tough field at the ITA Invitational.
Last add fit-faces, when you go into almost any LB sports venue those young folks working are likely student athletes helping to pay the bills. Last weekend I had a chat with Randi Hicks, who took over the school mark in the javelin from my first female 49er role model, Kate “the great” Schmidt, who attended and trained at LBSU in the seventies before going on to UCLA and the Olympics (1972, 1976, 1980). She had seven national titles and a wall full of medals but now is battling cancer but I have a hunch she will come through again.
Randi was called by her Coach Andy Sythe a “team player in an individual sport,” and she is aware of the trail blazing that Ms. Schmidt did for women athletes back in the day when they didn’t even have access to the weight and training room and had to compete under the Pacific Coast Athletics banner. Randi, however wears the Beach gear and you may want to get out to Mt. Sac in April where I have another hunch, Ms. Hicks will set a national javelin mark and earn her own Olympic ticket to London.