In regular season Gardena Parks and Recreation Pee Wee Baseball action, the Freeman Park Royals handed the Thornberg Park Pirates one of three losses.
Last Thursday, the Royals hosted the Pirates but it was Thornberg in the City championship game that more than turned things around with a 23-0 thrashing.
The Royals scored at will, getting at least four runs in each inning before the game ended with a four-inning mercy rule.
The Pee Wees are for age 10-11 youth.
In regular season Gardena Parks and Recreation Pee Wee Baseball action, the Freeman Park Royals handed the Thornberg Park Pirates one of three losses.
Last Thursday, the Royals hosted the Pirates but it was Thornberg in the City championship game that more than turned things around with a 23-0 thrashing.
The Royals scored at will, getting at least four runs in each inning before the game ended with a four-inning mercy rule.
The Pee Wees are for age 10-11 youth.
Doing the biggest damage for the Pirates was Raul Medina who had six hits, including going for the cycle (single, double, triple and home run). Medina hit two home runs, two doubles, one single and one triple and drove in six runs. Elijah Fonseca had three hits and three runs batted in.
Adam Vital drove in a run with a hit.
“We were second seed,” Pirates manager Joe Vital said. “We lost three games. We switched around and some of our players batted left handed. Our players showed up to play.”
The Pirates’ regular season losses were to the Nationals, Bluejays and Royals.”
The Royals were tough luck. This is their third consecutive time in the finals and they lost all three championship games.
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Serra gridders have strong summer, seek banner year in top division
By Joe Snyder
GVN Correspondent
Serra High’s football team has several returning key starting players and some transfers and it did well in this summer passing tournaments.
Recently, the Cavaliers advanced to the Huntington Beach Passing Tournament semifinals where they lost to eventual champion Hart High from Newhall.
Perhaps the biggest battle appears to be on who will start at quarterback. It looks like nit could be a battle between returning junior Khalil Tate and senior Caleb Wilson (transfer from Georgia) to replace previous starter Jalen Greene. According to head coach Scott Altenberg, both had strong performances in the summer passing tournaments.
Serra also has senior Deontay Burnett, who recently committed to Washington State University, and standout Culver City High transfer Stanley Norman, a senior wide receiver who helped key the Centaurs to the Ocean League crown and was Ocean Player of the Year as a junior in 2013.
Another transfer for the Cavaliers is senior lineman Oluwole Betiku from Maryland. Betiku moved to the Los Angeles area due his legal guardian and former National Football League standout LaVar Arrington accepting a job with the NFL Network. Betiku immigrated to the United States from Nigeria a few years ago.
Betiku is expected to be one of Serra’s top defensive players, along with returning starters Rasheem Green, John Houston and junior Blake Walls.
After being out of sports action all of last year and returning to athletic action as a sprinter-jumper on the Cavaliers’ boys’ track and field team midway last season, senior Malik Roberson will resume in action as a running back. In 2013, the season that saw Serra win the California State Division II title, Roberson was an all-CIF Southern Section Western Division performer.
Serra, along with other CIF-Southern Section and Los Angeles City Section schools, will begin practice next Monday for this upcoming season.
The Cavaliers will playing in the Mission League but with a different look and moving up to the prestigious Southern Section PAC Five. Serra’s league opponents include Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, La Puente Bishop Amat, Encino Crespi, Mission Hills Alemany, West Hills Chaminade and L.A. Loyola.
Serra opens the season at home against Moore League (also with the PAC Five) team Lakewood on Aug. 29 at 7 p.m. before playing Washington State power Bellevue at Oceanside High on Sept. 6 at 7:30 p.m. Other non-league opponents are CIF-L.A. City Section Marine League powers Carson and Harbor City Narbonne.
The Cavaliers begin league at home against Notre Dame, a team Serra played the past several seasons in non-league, on Sept. 26.
If Serra makes the playoffs, the Cavaliers, who are reportedly ranked 19th in the United States by Maxpreps, could face the likes of other national powers in defending California State Open Division champion Bellflower St. John Bosco, Southern Section PAC Five semifinalist Santa Ana Mater Dei, PAC Five finalist Long Beach Poly, Mission Viejo and others.
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Sports Scoop
Lakers hire of Byron Scott as head coach wpending
By Joe Snyder
GVN Correspondent
After three long months of searching and interviewing various candidates, the Los Angeles Lakers finally hired ex-star Byron Scott to guide the squad starting in the fall.
Scott was offered the job and says that he will take the Lakers but they still remain in negotiations that are expected to be finalized this week.
Scott has an overall coaching record of 416 wins and 521 losses with the New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets, New Orleans Hornets (now Pelicans) and Cleveland Cavaliers. Scott, though, guided the Nets to the NBA finals in losing to the Lakers in four consecutive games in 2002 and to the San Antonio Spurs in 2003. He had a pair of playoff appearances from the Hornets.
Scott struggled with the Cavaliers, who were coming off losing prestigious player La Bron James who went to the Miami Heat on a free agency (James is back with the Cavaliers after his Heat contract expired at the end of this past season.). Among those was an NBA and major pro sports record tying 26 straight losses (with the NBA Philadelphia 76’ers in 2013-14 and the National Football League Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1976-77) during the 2010-11 season.
The Lakers were unable to get James, Carmelo Anthony nor Kevin Love in the free agency, but settled for Jeremy Lyn and Carlos Boozer who they got on waivers from the Chicago Bulls.
The team, though, will have to go through rebuilding and will take a few years to get back into NBA contention.
They have some talent and, hopefully, Kobe Bryant will return healthy enough for them to have a shot at a winning season and getting back into the playoffs. Their championship hopes, however, are none to extremely slim.
Shelley defeats Donald: Recent reports were that the judge ruled Donald Sterling’s estranged wife, Shelley, the winner in the court battle between Donald to retain the Los Angeles Clippers National Basketball Association basketball team or for him to sell it to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion. The decision was made in an L.A. County Superior Court last Monday.
Donald Sterling, an 80-year-old billionaire, bought the Clippers while they still played in San Diego in 1981. He moved them to L.A. three years later.
Sterling had been banned from any NBA activities and owed the league $2.5 million for his recorded remarks about African Americans, particularly former Lakers star Ervin “Magic” Johnson.
It’s a good move although he was suing the NBA and commissioner Adam Silver for $9 billion according to sources.
Let’s get the squad sold to Ballmer immediately and Donald will, at least, get $2 billion richer. Otherwise, virtually the entire team, especially standout guard Chris Paul, will plan not to play any games for the Clippers. That means the Clippers could be right back where they were up to a couple of years ago; horrible losing seasons.
Manchester United overwhelms Galaxy: On July 23, the Los Angeles Galaxy’s Major League Soccer team had a stiff friendly exhibition match against English Premier League power Manchester United at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
It showed that the Galaxy and Major League Soccer is not quite up there with those powerful European teams as Manchester United embarrassed them, 7-0.
In a high sports filled U.S.A., soccer is just decades old and the popularity of it is not much over 20 or 30. In England and most of the rest of the world, it’s been around for centuries.
The U.S. still needs to develop the sport. It is still mostly used to the likes of American football, basketball and baseball.
After numerous top seasons, Manchester United, under new head coach Louis van Gaal who guided the Netherlands to a third place finish in the recent World Cup, had a down year finishing in seventh place. Van Gaal hopes to bring them back up to those powerhouse years.
In the past, Manchester United even had two easy wins over the Major League Soccer all-star teams.
The Galaxy is not bad against international competition with a 40-25-9 record but had it tough against European squads that included earlier losses to another top world team, Real Madrid from Spain, 5-1 and 3-1 in 2012 and 2013.
L.A., meanwhile, resumed its regular season at Seattle against the Sounders last Monday.
