Sports Edition Oct. 7, 2011

HIGHLIGHTS VOLUME II, ISSUE TWO · TODAY WELL LIVED · OCTOBER 7, 2011thesportsedition

Boys’ water polo opens Ocean League with loss

David Hakakian winds up to pass the ball to a teammate in the Swim Gym. Alex Menache

Ryan Feinberg

On Thursday, Sept. 22, the girls’ varsity vol-leyball team lost 0-3 to the Torrance Tartars in a nonconference game.

Middle blocker Taylor McBride believed everyone played well, but they all “had their slumps” during the match.

Outside hitter Liat Hackman also believed they had satisfactory play.

“Even though it was a loss, I think we really played hard,” Hackman said.

Head Coach Marla Weiss thought the team lacked the con-sistency needed to beat Torrance.

“We beat Tor-rance over the summer,” Weiss said. “We had a slow start and lost a very close third game that would’ve extended the match.”

The team played their first league match against Morningside at home on Wednesday, Oct. 5, winning 3-0, placing Beverly in a first place position.

The team held the Monarchs to under eight points in all three rounds.

Following the loss to Torrance, the team returned to the basics to perfect the “simple things,” as outside hitter Allison Wolff said, to ensure successful play and more opportunities to score.

Middle blocker Alex Sams said the team was able to hold them off by “focusing on [Morn-ingside’s] weaknesses.”

Wolff said the team knew they were up against a weaker opponent, but never relaxed their play.

“We tried to get in there, do our job and leave,” Wolff said.

Weiss believed that this was a huge win for the team.

“Emotionally, the team needed a win, and then of course it puts us tied for first in league,” Weiss said.

Weiss also thought that setting both indi-vidual and team goals aside were a huge factor of their success.

The team is set to play Inglewood in the Swim Gym at 3:15 p.m., on Friday, Oct. 7.

The team feels confident as they prepare to face Inglewood and hope they can

start off the season with a 2-0 league record.Weiss believes that by keeping the same

goals as they did against Morningside the team will be in good shape.

“Our goals will be the same: to try and mini-mize unforced errors and play as clean of a vol-leyball match as we can,” Weiss said.

Wolff said that although the team’s first pri-ority is playing Inglewood on Friday, they look forward to playing at Santa Monica on Tues-day, Oct. 11.

The team has high hopes for playing SAMO, their archrivals.

“If we do well enough, we’ll get an ice cream party,” Sams said jokingly.

With a brand new starting lineup, Norman Nation’s varsity water polo team is swimming into season with a preseason record of 8-9.

Eight seniors graduated last year, leaving younger players to fill the gaps on the team.

Head Coach Robert Bowie hopes that the lack of experience will not hold back the squad.

“After gradu-ating eight sen-iors last year we’ve had a lot of younger guys have to step up to the varsity lev-el,” Bowie said.

The team par-ticipated in the South Bay Tour-nament on Fri-day, Sept. 9 and Saturday, Oct. 1. The results include beating El Segundo 16-7, beating Cul-ver City 15-14 and losing to Mira Costa 10-13. Captain Dillon Silverstein, Captain Zak Zu-koski, Nick Goncharov and David Kotlarenko all had helpful performances and scored.

Although it was a successful performance, the team is looking to improve.

“We’re still working on team defense and better communication,” Bowie explained.

“It’s a work in progress that gets better with each game.”

As of Oct. 5, the squad’s record was 8-10, and they plan on finishing within the top three spots of league in order to have a spot in CIF.

The team’s first Ocean League game was away on Wednesday, Oct. 5 against El Seg-undo. The team suffered a defeat of 12-18.

“We were close and then fell apart in the third quarter,” senior Tyler Neman said.

Still, Bowie is confident the team is develop-ing well.

“The team is growing as a unit. They are becoming more of a team in and

out of the pool,” Bowie said.Tyler Neman is confident the team can

have a successful season once the team as a whole fulfills its potential.

“We need more confidence,” Neman said. “We need to realize [we] are better than we think we are.”

The team had an away game against Brent-wood on Thursday, Oct. 6; however, the re-sults were not available as of press time.

“We need to realize [we] are better than

we think we are,”Neman said.

Girls’ volleyball currently tied for first in league

Arman Zadeh

Violet Shorman spikes the volleyball while Alex Sams prepares for the return. Arman Zadeh

Meet the captainsHalle Beesen, setter, is 5 feet 6 inches tall. Before each game, she pumps up by listening to “anything on [her] iPod.” Her favorite Gatorade color is orange. Beesen has three years on varsity.

Ginelle Wolfe, libero, is 5 feet 6 inches tall. She

always listens to “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor be-fore games. Her favorite

Gatorade color is light blue. Wolfe has one and

a half years on varsity.

“Emotionally, the team needed a win,”

Weiss said.

thesportsedition HIGHLIGHTS · VOLUME II, ISSUE TWO · TODAY WELL LIVED · OCTOBER 7, 2011

thesportsedition staff

Ryan Feinberg, Benjamin Hannani, Danny Licht, Mallika Sen,

and Arman Zadeh

advisersGaby Herbst and Katie Murray

Normans surrender to Canyon and Peninsula

Varsity football has had a rough start to the season with three losses in their first four games. While the team was almost within victory in their 32-28 home loss against Palos Verdes Peninsula on Sept. 23, being defeated 56-6 at Canyon on Sept. 30 was another story altogether.

Despite the loss against Peninsula, Head Coach Donald Paysinger was pleased with the team’s effort and saw a great deal of progress. He marked the game as the first occasion in which the squad functioned well as one unit and praised the team’s ex-ecution.

“We actually played like a team offensive-ly and defensively. On offense, we moved the ball, scored some points and ran the plays we’ve been doing in practice for the past month,” Paysinger said.

With regards to defense, Paysinger was generally satisfied. Although the coach saw signs of fatigue, he was content with how the defensive line did not give up.

“The defense played well. I think they got tired toward the end, but they battled…for the whole game,” Paysinger said.

Beverly dominated early on, as the squad scored the game’s first two touchdowns. Running back Frank Brown found the end zone with 9:46 remaining in the first quar-ter, followed by a score from quarterback Brandon Adams with 8:24 left in the second quarter. However, the turning point came when Peninsula intercepted the ball with 47 seconds until halftime and returned 74 yards to give them a 18-14 lead. Despite two more Beverly touchdowns from tight end and linebacker Madison Moore and Brown,

respectively, the Normans were unable to pull away with a victory.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the game was the team’s quarterback situation. With typical starter Cameron Countryman out with injury, Adams had to step up. However, Adams was unable to practice on Monday and Tuesday because he had the flu. With only one full practice on Wednes-day prior to the game, Adams’ performance was particularly notable to Paysinger.

“Adams played great,” Paysinger said. “The kid was out sick on Monday and Tues-day, [but] he came in his first start as var-sity quarterback [and] played great.”

Whatever light appeared to be at the end of the tunnel after the Peninsula game was nowhere to be found after the Normans were routed in a 50-point loss to Canyon. Unlike the Peninsula game, the team had difficulty making plays and struggled im-mensely on defense. The squad’s lone touchdown came from Adams in the third quarter, though it was too little, too late for the Normans.

“Communication was a big weakness and we were not playing how we were taught,” Co-Captain Julian Jackson said.

After the embarrassing loss, Jackson ex-pressed that the game should be forgotten in order to move forward, but remembered for motivation. Practices will certainly be tougher.

“As a leader I’m going to do better at keeping the team focused, and the culture of practice will become more intense,” Jackson said. “The team has to take this as an learning experience, this is the best com-petition we have played so far, and things will change for the weeks to come.”

Ben Hannani

Cross-country breaks records at recent races

Danny Licht

Arman Zadeh

Cross-country continues to improve upon last year’s success.

The cross-country team has been working hard since day one, and their practice has been paying off at recent races.

“[Coach Fisher is] working us really hard,” junior Eli Flesch said. “It’s been much harder than last year.…the times are getting faster. The distances are getting longer. It’s just like overall im-provement.”

At the 2.8-mile South Bay Cup, Flesch and his teammates did a “tempo run,” where the team “start[s] out at a pace that’s, like, fresh: not too fast but comfortably fast. And then each mile we drop it down to a pretty fast pace,” Flesch explained. “It’s usually comfortable.”

At the 3.1-mile Brea-Olinda invitational, eleven runners represented Beverly.

Senior Brianna Simmons came in second place out of 31 female varsity runners at 19:31.

Flesch came in 13th place out of 37 male varsity runners at 17:57, making his time

the best of Beverly’s varsity athletes.His time, however, was seven seconds

off sophomore Aaron Karlin’s time, which was the second fastest out of 37 freshmen and sophomore runners. Karlin’s success amazed even Karlin himself.

“I was surprised,” Karlin remarked. He “didn’t know what to expect” because this was his first year on the cross-country team.

Flesch was coolly embarrassed by Kar-lin, a less-experienced runner, one-upping him.

Flesch’s friend Eli Lloyd consoled him: “Even Rocky lost the fight against Apollo in movie one. We all have our bad days.” Flesch agreed.

The team’s next meet, the Central Park Invite in Hungtington Beach, will take place this Saturday at 11:00 a.m.

Brandon Adams celebrates a touchdown against Peninsula at Nickoll Field. Oliver Gallop

Aaron Karlin broke Beverly’s record at the South Bay cup. Jeff Wolfe

Although still in preseason, the boys’ var-sity basketball team shows high hopes for success in the spring.

With a tight schedule of two to three games every weekend, the team feels they are getting to know each other better than they ever have on and off the court.

“We are a lot closer as a unit compared to last year, and I think we feel like we know how each other play better than last year,” senior Austin Mills said.

While the team seems to have the tools to win, Mills still believes the squad needs to find more of a passion to play the game, after struggling and losing all three games this past weekend against West Torrance.

“We played pretty badly this weekend. We lost all three games, but we’re looking to get back next week and win some games,” sopho-more Ronan Massana said.

Even though the team lost, Head Coach Jarvis Turner isn’t yet concerned about the teams shape for the season.

“I’m not necessarily worried about the op-ponents we play. More so, our focus is us do-ing well, playing together as a team, playing hard and trying to win games,” Coach Turner said.

Massana believes that through practice they can beat the league’s tougher contenders like Santa Monica or Inglewood, to accom-plish their ultimate goal to win league.

“We know we’re good enough and we’re ca-pable of it, we just have to go ahead and do it,” Massana said.

With the season still months away, the girls’ varsity basketball team is preparing for the long road ahead.

After last season, the team lost their sen-iors, who junior Megan Yee feels “were [their] main players.”

“Now it’s our turn to lead the team, and we just have to get used to it,” said Yee.

On Saturday Oct. 1, the team lost to Cama-rillo at home in a preseason matchup, 28- 68.

“Nobody played better than anyone else. It was a team loss,” Mehrannia said.

Mehrannia says that the team will need to practice harder and improve their game every single time they play in order to beat the majority of the league.

Coach John Braddell believes the team still has to recover a lot of lost ground fol-lowing the loss of their seniors. When asked about the team’s strengths, Braddell said they were “yet to be determined.”

“We have some kids that are throwing in some roles that they haven’t been involved with in a long time,” Braddell said. “So, it’ll be interesting to see what we have.”

The team hopes to become a tighter unit as this preseason progresses in order to be more prepared for the upcoming season. “It’s going to be a growing process,” Braddell said.

Yee believes their full effort will translate into success. “We’re definitely not as strong as last year, but we’re working a lot harder to get better,” Yee said.

Basketball Preseason

Friday, October 7: Girls Var-sity Volleyball vs Inglewood, 4:30 p.m. Saturday, October 8: Cross Country Central Park Invite, 11:00 a.m. Tuesday,

October 11: Boys Water Polo vs Torrance, 3:00 p.m. Girls Varsity Tennis vs Santa Monica, 3:00 p.m. Varsity Girls Golf vs Torrance, 2:18 p.m. Girls Var-sity Volleyball vs Santa Monica, 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, Oc-

tober 12: Boys Water Polo vs Torrance, 3:00 p.m. Thurs-day, October 13: Boys Water Polo vs Santa Monica, 3:00 p.m. Cross Country League Meet #2, 2:30 p.m. Varsity Girls Tennis vs Culver City, 3:00 p.m.

Upcoming games