Football:
As the middle of October approaches, the high school football season enters its reality stage. After the next two weeks of preseason games — against sometimes exotic opponents — the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League’s championship will be decided, along with Central Coast Section playoffs participation for the top teams.
San Lorenzo Valley High School and Scotts Valley High School are 1-2 and 2-2, respectively, and both look like they’ll be peaking out at the right time for the league action. So far, though, they didn’t manage to share a weekend of victories for both schools. On week 1, SVHS lost in Los Banos while SLVHS had a bye. On week 2, SLVHS beat Homestead while the SVHS lost to Carmel. Then in week 3, both schools played in Santa Clara — SLVHS lost to that city’s high school 21-20, while SVHS beat the Watsonville Wildcatz 7-0 at Levi’s Stadium. Last week, again, one school lost, the other won, each score lopsided.
But that will all be irrelevant come the weekend of October 16 and 17 — SVHS plays at Harbor on Friday night, while SLVHS hosts Soquel on Saturday afternoon in their inaugural league games. Maybe they’ll both start winning in unison.
Water polo:
At 5-0, SLVHS girls are still unbeaten in league play, notching a difficult 8-5 win last Tuesday against hosts Carmel HS. The boys’ water polo team is 2-3 at mid-season, and, unlike the SF Giants, is still very capable of making the playoffs, although they had a bad day last Tuesday, losing 22-9 to visiting Christopher HS.
Cross-country:
At the 42nd Stanford Invitational on September 26, SLVHS boys placed 6th in the field of 32 Division III teams, Chris Anderson finishing 22nd and Ian Gallagher 28th in the field of 223 runners. The remaining teams were all in Division 4.
Girls: SLVHS’s Abbey Mack came-in 6th, SVHS’s Jessica Kain 11th, with her team in 8th place.
Boys: SVHS’s John Ross was 8th, Luke McCartney 18th. In the field of 244 runners, their team placed 10th.
Volleyball:
Girls: both teams came off first league wins last week, and despite identical 1-4 league records, both SLVHS and SVHS still have chances of making the playoffs. SVHS is perhaps unlucky and is much better than the record indicates.
Tennis:
SVHS girls’ tennis is still unbeaten in the league. They visited Santa Cruz on October 1, just after we went to press, and will host Aptos on Tuesday, October 6th, at 3:30 p.m. Both matches will be crucial in the championship race.
