JUCO Journal for 10/25/09

I had forgotten how much I enjoy standing on the visiting sidelines at a San Bernardino Valley College football game. I think it may be because SBVC’s football stadium has such a unique look.

The home half of the stadium, at least the portions that sit the fans and house the press box, was built upon the outside of the school’s gymnasium. Seems reasonable that this was done because of money and space constraints (we’re talking about a community college in West San Bernardino here) but for whatever shortcomings it may have, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it, in my experience. It’s almost functional art.

The giant paw-print graphic at the far end also is well done. It’s plastered, very distinctly, upon the multiple levels of the structure. It’s really something to see.

I covered the Mt. San Jacinto College-San Bernardino Valley College football game for the Riverside Press-Enterprise on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009 and witnessed the Wolverines lay an egg in the 1st Half only to completely dominate the second half. Football is a game of halves, after all.

Watch a video from the game here.

On its first drive of the game SBVC had a punt blocked and returned for a touchdown. An interception was thrown by QB Dom Carr on their next drive and the next three possessions? Punt, fumble, punt. Not a good start by any means.

The Wolverines awoke in the third quarter and starting makng positive things happen. The team was also aided by a series of personal foul calls against Mt. San Jacinto players. Each penalty was 15 yards and an automatic first down for SBVC, which obviously helped keep even the most inept drives alive. By the end of the third quarter MSJC led by just three points,17-14. By the end of the fourth quarter, SBVC had won 28-17.

I wondered what Wolverines coach Kevin Emerson had told his team at halftime to make such a dramatic turnabout.

“We challenged them. We basically just challenged them. No more mistakes. Let’s make plays,” Emerson said. “It tells me that the kids can put all that aside, forget about the first 30 minutes, and play a new half of football. This is a good win for our program because we pulled ourselves from behind.”

Standing on the Mt. San Jacinto sidelines was also a tale of two halves. I overhead a player saying “I want to smoke these fools! AAAHHHH!” after the Eagles scored their first touchdown on the returned block punt. It was much of the same in the second quarter as the jumped to a 14-0 lead over SBVC.

In the third quarter there was a lot of barking a the referees for the personal foul penalties. SBVC scored to make it 14-7 and there was pressure put upon the offense to respond. MSJC’s QB, Courtney Pete, was intercepted on the Eagles’ next possession and the mood changed instantly. Players were now barking at the refs and one another. It got worse when the Wolverines tied the game 14-14.

MSJC got a field goal and the lead, 17-14, near the end of the quarter and the Eagles’ hopes were buoyed for a moment.

It was only for a moment, though, as SBVC’s Carr produced 14 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to give the Wolverines the lead for good. On the MSJC sideline there were dozens of dour looks, a few thrown helmets and a metric ton of f-bombs.

There had been an avalanche of negativity on the MSJC sideline following back-to-back personal foul penalties in the third quarter and play on offense and defense subsequently suffered. It was a collective collapse. Even special teams, which allowed a kickoff to go uncovered, became a mess.

Eagles coach Casey Mazzota was nonplussed after the game.

“We’re a football program that needs to learn how to win football games. I think we’re talented enough to win football games but we need to find a way to win. It’s tough to do some times. Winning games at the college level is always tough.”

Former SBVC keeper stays ghetto

Former San Bernardino Valley College goal keeper Josh Wicks has received a five-game suspension for stomping an opposing player during a match last month.

Wicks, who made his MLS debut for the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2008, is currently the starting keeper for the D.C. United. He played for SBVC from 2000-’01. I wrote several articles about the Wolverines, uncluding a feature on Wicks, for the San Bernardino Sun newspaper during that time.

Wicks received the suspension for stomping Seattle Sounders forward Freddy Montero after Montero scored on him during the second half of this year’s U.S. Open Cup final. Wicks received an automatic red card and his team lost 2-1.

If you view the video you can see that Wicks doesn’t stomp in the traditional sense but sort of allows himself to land his jump upon Montero’s mid-section. It’s definitely a red card offense – reprehensable — but it was hardly vicious. Which can also be used to describe Wicks — hardly vicious.

Wicks is such a fish out of water in the MLS. He’s tall and rangy but I’ve never seen him as a professional keeper. He’s just never really looked the part of a professional. His actions in the U.S. Open Cup final go along way toward proving my point.

How he even found another home in the MLS with D.C. United is amazing. I happened to  Wicks play in the Galaxy’s 2008 season finale and he allowed two goals and looked overmatched. I figured he had seen his last match — the dream had died.

How D.C. United managed to advance to the U.S. Open Cup final with Josh Wicks in goal is astonishing. The United routinely field a good side but Wicks must be playing the best soccer of his life or the United brass are seeing something I never have — professional talent.

That Wicks, a kid from San Bernardino, received a red card for stomping is comical. Wicks was a goofy kid when I wrote about the SBVC soccer team. His teammates made fun of him. He was the “ghetto goalie,” as one player put it. And now there he was, on TV, using his cleats as a weapon. That is pretty ghetto.

JUCO Journal: MSJC baseball

Mt. San Jacinto College baseball coach Steve Alonzo is different from any other baseball coach I’ve ever interviewed.

College baseball coaches are mostly reserved and strict, unable to laugh at anything but their own jokes. Not Alonzo. Happy to get some attention, he opened up to me like I was Barbara Walters.

He invited me aboard his golf cart and we drove around the warning track at MSJC’s baseball field as I asked him questions about his team, which is about to enter the Southern California Community College Regional Playoffs as a No. 7 seed.

I had heard that Alonzo was a different kind of guy, but I didn’t expect a tour or his ballpark, which he built from the ground up. Heck, no coach has ever invited me along for a ride on anything but the team bus, so I was kind of having a good time.

I asked him my first question: “What makes your team, this program, unique?”

And he gathered himself and gave me a great quote, the results of which I put into my Press-Enterprise article published May 6, 2009 that you can read here.

He had plenty more to say, the best of which, “This is the most disorganized organized program there is,” is as accurate an attempt at describing his program as I could ever conjour. This great thing is, the players absolutely love Alonzo’s style and because the team is succeeding, the whole system seems to be working.

To be fair, the MSJC baseball team has toiled throughout much of Alonzo’s 21-year tenure, usually finishing somewhere in the middle of the Foothill Conference. But it isn’t a meddling program, he graduates players, “anywhere from eight-to-12 this year,” and helps promote young ballplayers to the pro and collegiate ranks. The Eagles have had 28 alumni turn pro and another 114 receive scholarships at four-year universities.

The most interesting aspect to Alonzo? He claims to have been baseball executive Dan Duquette’s personal hitting coach while Duquette was the general manager of the Montreal Expos and then the Boston Red Sox. I haven’t done any fact-checking on this but it’s interesting, nonetheless. He also claims to have been the first professional hitting coach of a bunch of guys with the BoSox, including Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis and Jason Varitek.

So if what Alonzo says is true, then he’s worked with some perennial All-Stars and might know some things about making it at the next level. His experience and charisma seems to have charmed the Eagles’ two best players, Drew Madrigal and B.J. Salsbury, a couple of sophomore’s with their baseball futures in the palm of the respective hands.

Madrigal (Menifee Paloma Valley HS) is a strikeout monster. He’s averaging just over 1.3 strikeouts per inning two seasons after leaving a full-ride at Cal State Northridge. Salsbury, the best high school player in Riverside County his senior year at San Jacinto HS, is 12-1 with a minuscule ERA. Salsbury says he has his passion for baseball back after he soured on the game while trying to find the right fit for his talents. His full-ride to UC Riverside didn’t work out. Neither did a stint at Riverside Community College.

Two other players, Garret Caldwell (Palomar HS) and Jeff Bunch (Phelan Serrano HS) also left scholarship offers and are now playing for Alonzo. Caldwell left NCAA D3 power La Verne and Bunch, like Madrigal, left Cal State Northridge. Both said that they weren’t “fitting” at their respective university.

Everyone seems happier now. And the Eagles are 31-10, so that helps.

Alonzo says his team plays a style called “Gorilla Ball.” When pressed to find an answer to what that means, he says, off the record, “We let the players be themselves. We don’t bunt. We only have three signs. We don’t scout other teams. Never have. That’s how we do it.”

I say “Sounds kind of like ‘Moneyball.’ Are you a fan?”

He says he is, which goes a long way toward explaining why his team is so successful this season. They can get on base and score runs, sure, but now the Eagles have a second quality starting pitcher to help carry the workload.

So to go with his lights-out pitching tandem, Alonzo, ever the hitting coach, has MSJC hitting the ball and scoring runs better than any team in the state. The Eagles’ Johnny Eshleman has a state-leading 75 hits this season and the team is scoring an average of 10.7 runs per game, also tops in the state. And nothing makes a pitcher look better than 10 runs of support and security.

Alonzo’s group is a loose bunch. They like hanging out in the dugout and just being ballplayers. Alonzo, unlike his contemporaries, allows this to happen because he, himself, is as down-to-Earth as the come. I don’t think he wants any unnecessary headaches. He’s much too easy-going for that. He’s likes enjoying himself and he, too, likes hanging out in the dugout… and just being a ballplayer’s hitting coach.