20
Youth/Sports
The News Enterprise
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Cypress wins
Los Al boys beat Marina
Empire League
By BRIAN SMITH
News-Enterprise
Coaches have been urging their
players to keep fighting in close
games since the dawn of times with
mixed results.
Los Alamitos Coach Cary
Kutzke did just that with his
Griffins locked in a 50-all deadlock
with Marina Thursday night. His
players responded in kind, getting
a 13-0 run over a 2:30 span of the
fourth to take control and wind up
with a 71-60 victory to close out
the regular season on Senior Night
at Los Al.
The Griffins, who won the Sunset League title outright, head into
the postseason Wednesday night at
home vs. San Clemente with a 216 overall record. Marina, which
handed Los Alamitos its only
league loss, is 16-9.
Kutzke’s troops led 50-47 going
into the fourth where he told his
players not to change a thing.
“I wanted them to stick with
what got them to this point and
they did,” Kutzke said. “We just
needed to keep executing and keep
playing hard.”
Marina tied the game at 50 on
J.J. James’ first of three threes in
the final quarter. The Los Al sen-
iors came right back and broke
things open, starting with a threepointer from Tim Chung. Jack
Haley followed with a thunderous
dunk which ignited a capacity
crowd.
Aaron Jenkins and Chung sandwiched threes around a Camryn
Crocker bucket as the lead ballooned to 63-50 with just over five
minutes left.
As they did all night, the Vikings
came storming back, using the
backcourt duo of James and Brendan Holmes to get within 63-57
with 2:23 left. Haley, who had a
team-high 21 points and 12 rebounds, snapped the run with a
basket.
Down the stretch, Haley and
James Walker III would convert
free throw chances to preserve the
win.
Marina had itself in foul trouble
all evening long, sending Los Al to
the free throw line 22 times compared to just nine for the Vikings.
Walker, the Griffins’ leading
scorer, was in foul trouble throughout the contest, but was able to
come through when he needed to.
Late in the game, Walker drove to
the bucket and was hammered in
the process but managed to get an
off balance left handed shot off that
fell. The subsequent free throw
would put the lead back into double figures where it would stay the
rest of the way.
Los Alamitos led early on but a
pair of threes by Dane Okuda gave
Marina its first lead at 12-11. A
Holmes basket would extend the
lead to 14-11 after one.
Los Al, which made just 31 percent of its shots from the floor in
the first, caught fire with Haley’s
basket and free throws getting the
Griffins the lead back just 20 seconds in. Holmes, who led Marina
with 26 points, would come
through with a pair of threes and a
basket to give the Vikings a threepoint lead. Los Alamitos would
close the quarter on a 12-0 run, getting a pair of three pointers by
Chung and baskets by Haley and
Henry Igboke to take a 35-29 lead
into halftime.
Los Alamitos led by as much as
seven in the third but Marina used
James and Okuda to retake the lead
briefly at 41-40. The lead then
went back and forth until the
Griffins’ decisive run in the fourth.
Chung had 15, Walker 12 and
Crocker 10 for Los Alamitos.
Okuda tossed in 16 and James
added 14 and 11 rebounds for the
visitors.
LAYB offers CPR training
Photo by Marilyn Smith
Jimmy Jackson (25) of the Cypress Centurion varsity basketball team
scores on a layup during Friday night’s win over Kennedy, 59-39.
Cypress clinched the Empire League championship with the victory.
Jackson, who is only a sophomore, led the team with 18 points. The
Centurions will begin the first round of the CIF playoffs Wednesday night
at 7 p.m. at home against Saugus.
Local AYSO Region
wins organization’s
highest award
American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) Region 159 of Los
Alamitos, Rossmoor and Seal
Beach has been awarded a Platinum Regional Assessment award
for the 2008-09 AYSO season. The
award honors the regiona for overall excellence and its commitment
to serving its communities and
other AYSO regions.
AYSO has almost 1,000 regions,
which are the national soccer organization’s community based
leagues. Only 135 regions in the
nation received the Platinum
Award.
The Platinum Award is the highest award an AYSO Region can receive. Platinum regions represent
the best that AYSO has to offer.
These regions model AYSO’s
philosophies and commitment in
providing the best family friendly
youth soccer experience for all
players and volunteers. They nurture the generous spirit of their participants plus devote extra effort to
providing assistance to worthy
charitable causes.
To qualify for a Platinum level
award, a region must complete 78
requirements, including all requirements for other award levels. The
requirements include providing assistance to a new, disadvantaged or
sister AYSO region, having a community relations program in place
and utilizing short-sided games to
enhance the soccer development of
its players.
The Region Assessment Program
is an evaluation of a region’s performance compared against a list of
best practice from regions across
the country. Levels are bronze, silver, gold and platinum.
Courtesy photo
Los Alamitos Youth Baseball had all its managers take part in a CPR class last Saturday. The league recently
purchased a defibrillator after an incident last summer to a Los Alamitos youth who was hit by a ball in the
chest. The training was conducted by SureFire CPR, a company located in Huntington Beach. 76 members of
our baseball family were CPR certified. LAYB is one of, if not the only youth baseball organization in Orange
County to both purchase a defibrillator and to make the CPR training mandatory for our managers. The
organization hopes to make training available to other members of our community in the future.
Send sports stories and photos with captions to
Editor Brian Smith at [email protected]