Sports

Falcons use heads in playoff rout

Scotts Valley High School bounced back from a shut-out loss to Aptos by scoring seven touchdowns in a 50-19 win over valley rival San Lorenzo Valley High School last weekend.

Cougar girls soccer team falls to Harbor

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. 

Through the first four innings, it looked like Soquel High’s softball team was poised to upset its second-consecutive first-place opponent. The Knights defeated then-first place Aptos High 1-0 on May 13, and were knotted up 0-0 with new league leader San Lorenzo Valley heading into the top of the fifth inning Friday, May 15.

The Steelheads threw superstition to the wind, dawned brand new jerseys for the first time this season, and for the fourth year in a row, won the IOOF San Lorenzo Valley co-ed softball crown.

San Lorenzo Valley High junior Damian Aguilar took command of the mound and he was on full display for the Cougars baseball team in last week’s decisive win over Soquel High.  Aguilar finished with eight strikeouts in a 7-0 shutout win against the Knights in...

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