Sports

The Scotts Valley High School girl’s tennis team finished 11-1 in Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League play and clinched the league championship Wednesday, Oct. 27, with a convincing 7-0 win against Soquel High.

Scotts Valley senior Claire Skinner hauled in a touchdown reception and extra point attempt to help the North All-Stars defeat the South All-Stars, 13-7, in the inaugural Central Coast Flag Football All-Star Game at Santa Cruz High School on Jan. 26.   Watsonville senior quarterback Lazo...

The numbers on the Scotts Valley High wrestling program have dwindled since Nick Reyes, a former Falcons wrestler who is in his first year as head coach, was part of the team five years ago.  At one point, they were bringing in up to 30...

Scotts Valley sophomore Ashlyn Boothby is no stranger when it comes to running on the 3-mile course at Pinto County Lake in Watsonville. It’s where the Falcons won one of their league meets earlier this season. It’s also the place where she won her first...

Scotts Valley seniors Aaron Weiss and Ava Decleve had a field day at last week’s 45th annual Central Coast Section Top 8 Track and Field Invitational as each runner recorded a victory on the track. Weiss won the 800-meters boys race in 1 minute, 54.48...

Conditions for the Santa Cruz Scholastic Surf League’s opening contest of 2015-2016 were challenging, to say the least. When autumn swells from North Pacific storms hit the Santa Cruz coastline, Manresa Beach can get some heaving walls of whitewater, making the paddle out to the lineup a test of strength and courage even before a surfer spins around and takes the plunge down one of the rapidly-closing faces. On Sunday, October 25, local high school athletes from the Santa Cruz Mountains Surf Team braved just such conditions in team-on-team heats against the Harbor High/Carmel High team and prevailed with a 58-45 point win.The Santa Cruz Mountains team currently includes students from San Lorenzo Valley High School, St. Francis High (Watsonville), and several schools over the hill. Standouts contributing to their win on Sunday were: Sophie Northcott (SLV High) 2nd place women’s shortboard; and 3rd place women’s longboard; April Martin-Hansen (SLV High) 2nd place women’s longboard; Luke Colosi (St. Francis/Watsonville) 1st place men’s shortboard, 2nd place men’s longboard; Paul Colosi (St. Francis/Watsonville) 2nd place men’s shortboard — Heat 2; Liam Rielly (St. Francis/Mt. View) 1st place men’s longboard, 2nd place men’s shortboard — Heat 1.After the team heats, top finishers from all schools in the surf league advanced through some grueling rounds of individual competition. Conditions grew intense for the semifinals as the swell built steadily, and by the finals, a low tide added to the rising wave height meant surfers faced steep drops down big faces into about four feet of water.“In the finals it was more a matter of surviving than surfing,” according to SLVHS senior, Sophie Northcott. Northcott snagged several sizeable waves while some opponents chose not to take off at all, and she took second place overall in women’s shortboard, besting nearly all top competitors in the region. Also making it through the finals were Santa Cruz Mountains surfers, Casey Walsh of Los Altos Hills, who entered the contest as an alternate and surfed her way through five heats to a 5th place finish in women’s shortboard, and her sister Kelly Walsh, a freshman at Woodside Priory School, who also started as an alternate and ended up 6th overall in women’s longboard.