4:30pm | We start with the Long Beach State women’s soccer team (7-3-1) who are getting hot again and on a three-game winning streak. The Beach booters begin with a Big West Conference opener against Cal Poly this Friday at 3:00pm on George Allen Field. Cal Poly is 5-5-0 after falling at Pepperdine and defeating San Diego State last weekend. Whitney Sisler has the offense with six goals and Brooke Gavin leads the Mustang defense with 40 saves and a 1.38 goals against average.
Sunday at 1:00pm the 49ers will test UC Santa Barbara. The Gauchos were picked to finish first in the BWC but is a modest 4-4-2 heading into the weekend. They tied Fresno State 0-0 last week and will head to UC Riverside Friday before making its way to Long Beach. Erica Seidman is the Gauchos’ leading scorer with three goals, while Kailyn Kugler and Kylie McDonald have each tallied two goals and two assists. Makenna Henry has anchored the defense with a 0.66 goals against average and an .829 save percentage.
Trading places and spaces with soccer is women’s volleyball as the LB travels to UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly. All three teams are picked on top of or close to the BWC lead.for a pair of matches. Both the Gauchos and the Mustangs, like Long Beach State, enter the weekend undefeated in league play so plenty is on the line, even early in conference play. The 49ers start with UCSB on Friday night and then head to San Luis Obispo for a Saturday night meeting with Cal Poly. Both matches will start at 7:00pm, UCSB, with former 49er setting czar Debbie Green Vargas now in their bench survived CS Northridge, winning in five sets then swept UC Irvine. Stacey Schmidt leads the offense, averaging 3.10 kills per set on .378 hitting and Debbie’s youngest Nicole is the Gaucho setter,
Miserable in 2009, last week Cal Poly beat UC Irvine and CS Northridge to start Big West play 2-0 and build an outstanding 12-3 overall record. The Mustangs started the year by upsetting No. 18 Arizona and have won 10 straight matches. Kristina Graven leads SLO with 3.65 kills per set. Meanwhile the Niners also had a perfect weekend sweeping LMU and Fullerton. Playing at LMU for the first time14 years the reliable Caitlin Ledoux got to 999 in kills and then before the fans could find their seats she picked up #1,000 and senior setter Ashley Lee kept talented freshmen Ashley Vazquez on the bench with another almost triple double.
DEADLINE DUSTING—The last of the weekend competition comes across the pond at the Twenty-Ten Course in Newport, Wales. That’s where the Ryder Cup US bench coach for skipper Corey Pavin is legendary Niner golfer “Sunshine” Paul Goydos. The course was designed specially for Ryder Cup play and the final four holes are set in a bowl beneath a hill that, get this, could handle 60,000 spectators. Now 60,000 is a bigger crowd than any LBSU football game that Goydos went to in his student days back in the eighties. Actually, more folks then the Beach had in all their home games during Paul’s student days. You either set your recorder or your alarm clock to watch the red, white and blue chase the Euros.
Beach-boy style basketball will have a number of TV games this season including Dec. 11 at North Carolina (it’s on Fox Sports South so you may have to do it via sports bar); Dec. 28–at UC Santa Barbara (ESPNU) and three more contests in which you best pick out a nice shirt and put on some make up since they are home games, Jan. 12–UC Davis on (ESPNU); Jan. 15–Pacific at Long Beach State (FS WEST/PRIME) and Jan. 29–Cal State Fullerton on (FS WEST). The maybe TV games are in the later rounds of the Paradise Jam in late November and the Feb. 19—Bracket busters games which you get on if both teams are “interesting” at that time.
On the baseball beat the biggest news comes from Berkeley where Cal has decided to drop the wildly popular intercollegiate Rugby program and the, regrettably, not so popular baseball program. Big buck boosters have an idea that if they dig deeper and pay for a Title Nine friendly women’s rugby side. No decision on that gambit yet but baseball doesn’t have any deep pockets to rescue the team. The rule is that they have now released all their current players to receive contact from interested schools, including LBSU, but folks inside the Bear establishment suggest that emails and phone calls are okay but if you make a campus visit turn in your spikes and seeds. Last of the local baseball notes Head Coach Troy Buckley announced the hiring of Scott Lemone, Justin Ramsey for the volunteer and operations posts.
Odd chemistry at the US Open of Volleyball in Manhattan Beach last weekend featured a pair of LBSU talents. The women’s champions (splitting $12,000) were Brittany Hochevar and a 42-year old 6-4 fountain of youth, Dianne DeNocochea. The runner up on the men’s side was former Beach player, assistant coach and all around guy Matt Prosser and a Canadian Josh Binstock. Alas, with the demise of the AVP who knows when the next payday will come?
Really last add Cal baseball events. From one of my readers this note. “I think in a few years we could all look back on this day as a great U turn or car wreck in not just the BCS but in all of college athletics. Seriously, this is an 8.0 earthquake in my opinion; it could give tens of schools the shove they need to cut budgets, to cut sports, to reel in spending…I truly think the possible permeations of this are enormous!” My view, from a distance, is that the next six weeks will be like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Film at 11.