Over the past several seasons, Gardena High’s football program has been struggling and gone through several coaching changes.
Enter Vincent Smith as the Panthers’ next head coach. Smith replaces Deon Toliver, who opted to be an assistant to Jason Miller at Inglewood High.
Over the past several seasons, Gardena High’s football program has been struggling and gone through several coaching changes.
Enter Vincent Smith as the Panthers’ next head coach. Smith replaces Deon Toliver, who opted to be an assistant to Jason Miller at Inglewood High.
Toliver got Gardena a respectful 7-4 2012 season and helped the Panthers into the CIF-Los Angeles City Section Division I playoffs where they fell in the first round to host Birmingham High in Lake Balboa. A lesser experienced Gardena squad fell to 2-8 overall and 0-5 in Marine action last year.
On top of that, a rash of academic ineligibilities that occurred from the new L.A. School District standard grading policy that dropped the “D” grade and increased their standard percentage passing for tests and other assignments from 60 to 70 percent, caused the Panthers to lose several key players. These grading standards focus to college prep; something used by a number of private and college prep charter high schools.
Smith, who has been around through Arizona and Southern California schools as head and assistant coach in earlier seasons, feels that Gardena High should improve some but he knows that the players have to improve particularly in the classroom, especially with these harder standards.
“I want to change the mental focus for the kids,” Smith, who graduated from Locke High in South L.A. in 1988 and played college football at Universities of Colorado and Arizona, said ”They got to get better academically. Life is more competitive than it was in the past. Last year, we lost a lot of players who were academically ineligible.”
Smith is a former All-L.A. City Section offensive lineman at Locke High School. He received a scholarship to Colorado University and played one season there before transferring to the University of Arizona. Smith started for the Wildcats for three seasons. He was not drafted by the National Football League, so he tried out for the then L.A. Raiders in 1993. He was cut and he opted to end his NFL hopes for coaching.
Smith spent four seasons from 1996-1999 as a line coach at Manual Arts High in South L.A. before becoming defensive coordinator at his alma mater, Locke, from 2000-02.
A year later, Smith went back to Arizona and became head coach at the newly-open Desert Ridge High in Mesa. He was there for three seasons. Being a new school, Desert Ridge struggled where, today, is one of the top powers in Arizona. Last year, in fact, it played Gardena’s big Catholic school power Serra as the Cavaliers won a close game in a classic at Torrey Pines High in Del Mar (San Diego County).
From 2006-10, Smith headed Tucson High. In 2008, Tucson made the Arizona state playoffs for the first time in 20 years and finished with a 6-4 record, Smith’s best season as a prep football coach anywhere.
He, then, coached one season at Mesa High.
Smith came back to Southern California as an offensive line coach in the 2012 and 2013 seasons at Long Beach Cabrillo High.
Last year, Gardena had a small roster that was a little as just 23 players, much due to player losses from academic ineligibilities and injuries.
This year, the Panthers still have a small roster, although it has improved to around 40 players.
Gardena has some talented players including senior linebacker-running back Christopher Plunkett, senior wide receiver-defensive back Michael Thompson, junior offensive-defensive lineman George Bucio and junior offensive-defensive lineman Daniel Farias.
“We want to improve from what they did last year,” Smith said. “The kids need to be healthy and eligible. If they do things they’re supposed to do, record wise, we won’t be ashamed of.”
The Panthers start their season at home against southeast L.A. Verbum Dei on Sept. 5 at 7 p.m.
Gardena will have a scrimmage at Long Beach Millikan tonight at 6 p.m.
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Errors prove costly as Gardena falls to Warren
By Joe Snyder
GVN Correspondent
For four innings, the Gardena High BUYA (the school team’s summer name) baseball team looked like it would win its Summer League title with a win over Warren High from Downey in the league championship game Saturday morning at the Gutierrez Learning Center in Downtown Los Angeles.
The BUYA was winning 8-3 after 4 ½ innings but Gardena’s pitching and defense broke down in the bottom of the fifth. The BUYA gave up six runs (four unearned) as Warren pulled off a 9-8 victory.
Gardena, which ended the summer at 10-2, was still ahead 8-7 and one out away from the title until a critical error by second baseman Esteban Garcia allowed two unearned runs to score as the Bears pulled out the contest.
The game went five innings due to a two-hour time limit.
A key offensive play was a run-scoring triple from Gardena High incoming freshman Daniel Storley.
Despite the critical error, Garcia had several very good defensive plays, according to Gardena head coach Robert Romero. Shortstop Christopher Lopez also played fine defense.
Starting pitcher Chris Perez went four innings, allowing three runs (one earned) on five hits for the BUYA.
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MB beach volleyball gives preview of Rio Games
By Joe Snyder
GVN Correspondent
Last Sunday’s Manhattan Beach Association of Volleyball Players Open Finals might be a taste of what is coming up in the next two years at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.
It was Kerri Walsh-Jennings and April Ross that captured the women’s title and for Walsh-Jennings, her record seventh crown in what is billed as the “Granddaddy of Beach Volleyball” and among the most popular classics, who won by default over Brooke Sweat and Lauren Fendrick is big.
Surprising Sweat and Fendrick gave powers Jennings (a three-time Olympic Gold Medalist) and Ross a run for the money with a stunning 21-19 first game win.
Sweat and Fendrick held an early 4-1 lead in the second game, but, from there, Walsh Jennings and Ross were overpowering, outscoring them 20-9 the rest of the way for a 21-13 victory.
Under very warm conditions, with Manhattan Beach temperature at about 82 degrees, Walsh Jennings and Ross surged out to a quick 9-0 lead before Sweat called a medical time out having back spasms. Sweat was unable to go further as Walsh Jennings celebrated her seventh Manhattan crown with Ross and their second together.
Sweat had back spasms a week earlier in Salt Lake City, Utah. She thought it was better before it returned in the final.
After falling in the final to Casey Jennings, husband of Walsh Jennings, and Matt Fuerbringer last year and Phil Dauhauser nursing abdominal strain but he and popular Redondo Beach sensation Sean Rosenthal pulled through to down Dauhauser’s former partner, Todd Rodgers and\Theo Brunner, 21-17, 21-14, for their first Manhattan title together.
It was Rosenthal’s third Manhattan crown but first in four years. In 2010, the year the highly regarded classic had to be given to the lower level California Beach Volleyball Association with prize money coming from the City of Manhattan Beach and a few corporations and businesses, Rosenthal won with his ex-Redondo High friend and volleyball standout Aaron Wacthfogel. That was because, a few days earlier, the AVP abruptly went under due to financial woes. The AVP slowly returned in 2012 and now has nine season tournaments, down from about 15 or 16 when it had in its hey days.
Rosenthal also won with his ex-partner, Jake Gibb, in 2009.
Each of the Manhattan Open champions also captured the more prestigious and international Long Beach FIVB Grand Slam on July 27. They are leaders in the FIVB tour, which is the main source of Olympic development. They both won in Long Beach for the second consecutive time.
Dalhauser, who hails from Switzerland and Florida, won his fourth Manhattan Open. He and Rogers won three straight times from 2006-08. Both were Olympic gold medalists in 2004 (Athens, Greece), 2008 (Beijing, China) and 2012 (London, England).
Both will return to FIVB action in Poland this week.
Injuries ravaging Dodgers, again: For awhile, things looked great for the Los Angeles Dodgers Major League Baseball team in their quest for their second consecutive National League Western Division crown and a possible World Series championship which would be their first since 1988.
After getting swept a three-game series for the first time this season by the National League Central Division leading Milwaukee Brewers at Dodger Stadium over last weekend, things are questionable for the Dodgers, who still lead their rival San Francisco Giants by 3½ games.
They suffered losses of five overall pitchers, three relievers and two starters including Josh Beckett (possibly for the remainder of the season) and Jung-Yun Ryu (at least 15 days) and four other players who are on the disabled list.
On top of that, the Brewers 3-2 win over the Dodgers ended ace Clayton Kershaw’s winning streak at 11, tied for the second most in L.A. Dodger history with the legendary Sandy Koufax (1965) and behind Burt Hooton with 12 in 1975.
Despite the loss, Kershaw pitched a complete-game five-hitter with 11 strikeouts but the Dodgers’ lack of offensive and defensive support behind him proved costly. Also the Brewers made several spectacular defensive plays to prevent the Dodgers from further scoring chances. Kershaw needed to give up two home runs to lose his first game in nearly three months.
The Dodgers host the San Diego Padres, who won 10 of their last 15 games, from last Tuesday through tonight.
Let’s hope they can get back healthy and pull off the title.
Correction: In last week’s issue of the Gardena Valley News, the name Caleb Wilson in the article on Serra High quarterbacks, “Wilson and Khalil Tate,” was misspelled. We apologize for the error.
