The California Interscholastic Federation has just announced that Veterans Memorial Stadium, on the campus of Buchanan High School in Clovis, will host the CIF state track and field championships for the next three years.

The venue has a Mondo Super X track which was installed in 2007. In an e-mail, the CIF also stated that the scoreboard will display real-time timing of running events as well as event results. It stated that Veterans Memorial Stadium has more than 8,500 permanent stadium seats and additional seating will be added to bring the capacity to more than 12,000.

Next year will mark the first time since 1984 that the CIF state championships will not be held at either Cerritos College in Norwalk or Hughes Stadium in Sacramento. It will also mark the first time since 1973 that the state meet will be held at a high school venue.

Woodward Park in nearby Fresno has hosted the CIF state cross country championships since its inception in 1987.

The 2009 CIF state track and field championships are scheduled to take place on June 5-6.

When a successful program returns a majority of its starters, it’s a recipe for success. That’s the situation that the St. Patrick-St. Vincent team enjoys this season, as the Bruins return seven starters, including outstanding pitcher Ashley Jackson. Piedmont also returns seven starters, including the league MVP of last year, pitcher Mina Duffy. But it may take some time for the Highlanders’ bats to get revved up. After opening the season with a 2-0 victory over Redwood Christian, Piedmont lost to St. Francis-Sacramento 1-0 on Thursday. Albany has four returning starters, and freshman Sara Muse gives the Cougars a powerful one-two punch at pitcher with junior Nicole Presher. Two of St. Mary’s three returning starters were first-team all-league picks last season (catcher Paige Freiberger, shortstop Courtney Moore). St. Mary’s also has a very good pitcher in senior Bijou Felder. The rest of the league’s teams have new starting pitchers, and time will tell about the impact of the pitchers and their teams.

After watching Pinole Valley’s girls basketball team dismantle a good Hercules squad 71-40 on Tuesday, it appears that the Spartans have no weaknesses. DeNesha Stallworth and Marnique Arnold dominated the boards, Jaleesa Ross ran the offense expertly and Mishan Schexnayder was deadly from beyond the three-point arc. Defensively, the Spartans consistently caused havoc and never let the Titans get their offense rolling. This is the best Pinole Valley girls basketball team that I’ve seen in my years with the Times, and that’s saying something considering what the Spartans have achieved in the past few seasons.

After watching four league meets this season (BSAL, BVAL, EBAL, DFAL), here are some observations. Bear in mind that I understand that many teams/individuals were not tapered at these meets.

The best team I saw, male or female, was the Carondelet squad. The Cougars have two league champions (Nicole Hood and Sara Aliotti, who won the BVAL title last year) and Ashley Chavez (who has finished in the top eight at the BVAL championships the last three years) in their top five. They not only placed five runners in the top eight at the BVAL championships, but they had seven in the top 11 in that race. They are talented and certainly deserve their No. 1 Division II state ranking on DyeStatCal.com.

Three local runners have already shown that they are could be contenders for individual state titles: Hood, St. Mary’s Matt Duffy (Division IV boys) and Valley Christian’s Robbie Knorr (Division V boys). Knorr won the CCS Division V championship last Saturday with the ninth-fastest time for all divisions.

This is becoming the Year of the Freshmen in local girls cross country. Besides Hood, the outstanding freshmen include DFAL individual champion Alycia Cridebring of College Park and California’s Colleen Lillig, who finished second in the EBAL championship race

There’s good news for local teams who didn’t want to possibly travel to Southern California for future state championships: the CIF has announced that Woodward Park in Fresno will remain the home of the CIF state championships through 2009.

It’s early in the season, but what the Cougars have achieved the last two Saturdays is quite impressive.

At the De La Salle/Carondelet Nike Invitational on Saturday, Carondelet went 1-2 with Nicole Hood (18:13 for the three-mile Newhall Park course) and Kellie Houser (18:30) respectively, and placed four in the top 19 to edge St. Francis-Sacramento 83-86 for the team title. The Cougars had a 1 through 4 gap of 65 seconds and a 1 through 5 gap of 1:36. At the Ed Sias Invitational on Sept. 9, Carondelet had a 1 through 5 gap of 43 seconds, which is outstanding for a winning team this early in the season. I’m looking forward to seeing how Carondelet fares throughout the season.

Well, Nicole Hood and Carondelet didn’t take very long to show that they will be a power to contend with this season on the North Coast Section cross country scene. Hood, a freshman, won the Ed Sias girls individual title and Carondelet posted a dual meet-like score of 31 to easily win the team title. De La Salle looks like it will continue to be a power after a strong showing in the boys large school race. St. Mary’s Matt Duffy won the boys small school race by nearly 17 seconds. 

Entering the North Coast Section Meet of Champions, this high school track and field season is shaping up as arguably  the best ever in this region. Fourteen athletes have region top-10 all-time marks this season in 14 events, including region records in the boys 300-meter intermediate hurdles (California’s David Klech, 35.45 seconds) and girls pole vault (Las Lomas’ Jenna Homes, 12-0). Salesian’s Jahvid Best is tied for the region record in the boys 200 (21.03). Do you think this is the best high school track and field season in the region ever? If not, what year was better?

Not much separates the top six teams in the BSAL this season. That can’t be said for many leagues in any sport, but any of these six teams could finish in first.
I picked St. Patrick-St. Vincent for a couple main reasons. The Bruins have two pitchers back who combined for 21 wins and only two losses last season and they have six starters returning, including three first-team all-leaguers. That’s a powerful combination, in my opinion.
Piedmont also has a couple of pitchers that will give opponents problems in the heat-throwing Mina Duffy and the off-speed pitcher Jessica Bixby. The Highlanders’ 16-1 win over Campolindo in a scrimmage this season also caught my eye.
St. Mary’s has a veteran pitcher returning in Bijou Felder and a good foundation with Paige Freiberger, Courtney Moore and others. Albany has nine starters back from last year, and the Cougars have shown they can score runs this season with 11 in a win against Acalanes and four in a 5-4 loss to Campolindo.
John Swett has a pitching ace back in Kelli Bailey, but just three returning starters. Salesian is a mystery team, as the Chieftains have not played yet this season. Allison Donnelly logged a lot of innings on the mound for Salesian in the past four years, so it will be interesting to see how the team does without her this season. They do have six returning starters and a coach in Dolores Bonds who has had a winning program year in and year out.
What do you think of this order? How do you see the BSAL title race shaping up?

As expected, the Bay Shore Athletic League boys basketball race is tight. After six league games, only one game seperates three teams at the top of the league. Salesian is undefeated at 6-0, followed by St. Joseph Notre Dame and St. Mary’s, which both have 5-1 records. Right below those teams are a couple more teams to watch. Piedmont had arguably its biggest win of the season when it beat Kennedy 58-57 on Tuesday to improve to 4-2 in league play. Kennedy, which has two players averaging 13 points or more in league play, is right behind with a 3-3 record.

What do you think of the BSAL race so far?

Like all preseason predictions, there is quite an amount of gray area, but here are some reasons for my Bay Shore Athletic League boys basketball predictions.

Even without Andre Wells, Salesian has amazing depth and experience. That makes it the league favorite, in my eyes. Six seniors besides Wells saw a good amount of playing time last season. The Chieftains won the Punahou Holiday Classic on Friday and now have an 8-4 record. Their first two losses occurred while David Singleton, an all-BSAL pick last season, and Wells were still playing football and leading the Chieftain to the North Coast Section Class A championship.

St. Mary’s, though, could win the league title and prove me wrong. They have won five in a row and have a budding star in sophomore Will Brew. It was also impressive how they came back from an 18-point deficit at the start of the fourth quarter to defeat Vashon Island-Washington 73-65 in overtime and win the Cactus Jam championship game.

Kennedy and St. Joseph Notre Dame, which are both definitely BSAL contenders, could flip-flop at three and four. But the Eagles have impressed me this season with having a number of go-to players. Brandon Tatum is still the main guy, but Tim Jones, Marvin Boadu and Josh Sims have also showed a penchant for clutch play early in the season.

The Pilots are 9-4 with six sophomores on the roster. It’s interesting to think about how good this team could be when they start to mesh.

Piedmont could be ready to join the upper echelon of the BSAL this season. The Highlanders return three starters and eight players overall, and won nine of their first 11 games this season. After the Highlanders face St. Joseph Notre Dame on Jan. 6, a lot of questions will be answered about both teams.

There has been a lot of buzz about the John Swett team’s improvement this season, but St. Elizabeth seems to consistently field a competitive team year-in and year-out, which helped me to pick the Mustangs sixth. The tallest player on St. Patrick-St. Vincent’s squad is 6-foot-1, and although the Bruins opened this season with a near-.500 record (5-7), the team’s lack of height could cause problems for them as the season progresses. Albany already has a lot of chemistry, as its starting five players all competed on a successful junior varsity team last season. But it is yet to be determined whether that success will translate to the varsity level.