And you thought you were safe from reading another year-end, wrap-it-up, here’s-a-list-of-things-that-already-happened-so-I-don’t-have-to-do-original-work piece.
Ha. Ha, I say!
The calendar says 2008, and it’s been 2008 for most of the week, but we in the local sports world will never be done with 2007 until we list the high-, low- and weirdlights of the past rotation of the Earth around the Sun.
So here we go.
Playoff fever
Starting with the 2006-07 basketball teams — which count, because, you know, they played in 2007 — 14 teams from Tracy and West qualified for postseason play last year, including both football teams, both softball teams, both boys tennis teams, both girls basketball teams and both girls soccer teams. That’s gotta be some kind of record.
To add fuel to the crosstown fire — because, you know, this newspaper is slanted one way or the other — it’s six teams from Tracy (football, girls soccer, girls hoops, boys tennis, softball and baseball) to eight from West (football, girls soccer, girls hoops, boys hoops, boys soccer, girls tennis, boys tennis and softball). A slight edge to West — thanks to the freakdancing? Only time will tell.
Unkindest cut of the year
Tracy High’s boys basketball team went 7-3 in league play — after losing 11 out of its first 14 games — only to just barely miss out on its first playoff berth since 2005, and first Division I playoff berth since West High opened. Which leads us to the …
Game of the year
Sorry to everyone else who plays sports in this town — whatever you did was great and your family is very proud of you, but it didn’t match the night of Feb. 14, the night of the Valentine’s Day Spectacular, when said Bulldog hoopsters handed undefeated Lodi its one and only San Joaquin Athletic Association defeat of the year. The Flames — or as some of us in the local sporting press refer to them, the Fighting All Whites or the Boys from Brazil — at one point led by 13, hadn’t lost to Tracy since 2004 and blew the ’Dogs out by 40 the previous time they stepped into Swenson Gym.
Beautiful.
That could also qualify as the …
Comeback of the year
But we ought to spread the love around.
For ages, the wrestling power of the SJAA — the old one, the big one — was Tokay, whom West had never, ever beat. That changed on Jan. 25, when the Wolf Pack, whose coach is a Tokay alumnus, rallied from a 24-0 deficit to beat the Tigers, 33-32, for the first time in program history. Class of 2007 West grad Anthony Segoviano, who recovered from serious and potentially paralyzing injuries after someone hit him in the face with a baseball bat in 2005, recorded one of the key pins.
This is also the upset of the year, which is the polar opposite of the …
Foregone conclusion of the year
Whenever West plays St. Mary’s in girls soccer or girls hoops. Love them or hate them — and depending on whom you ask, this newspaper does both equally — there’s something very 21st century about a school whose most dominant programs are both girls sports.
Near-disaster of the year
When the West High softball team trekked to Sacramento for the opening day of the playoffs, they were missing something: their pitcher, who went to the beach instead (to be fair, I’d take Santa Cruz over North Highlands, too). Somehow, they inserted senior Brittany Astle, who hadn’t pitched much for the Pack since her sophomore year and managed to go out and win both of their playoff games that day.
Nice work.
Encouraging sign of the year
The West High stadium/pool complex. The Wolf Pack will soon have some of the finest athletic facilities in the area — a truly high-class gymnasium; a newly-renovated, full-size baseball diamond; a big old pool; and a stadium of their very own with FieldTurf. Beats anything that would ever be built down on Schulte Road. Now, about that soccer field.
Disappointment of the year
This might have to go to the Little Leaguers. The Tracy Major National All-Stars had the Western Regional title in San Bernardino in their sights — or at least the Division 2 title game — when Visalia erased a 6-2 deficit to win 7-6 in San Lorenzo. Bummer.
But it might not have mattered. The San Jose team that ended up winning the Division 2 title had a home-run hitter more than 6 feet tall. These are 12-year-olds we’re talking about.
Also up there: The West High football team, 19 new starters and all, laying an egg in the playoffs a week after taking the section finalist down to the wire; Tracy pole-vaulter and 2006 Peter B. Kyne Trophy-winner Brian Ramsey barely missing out on the school record; and the Tracy High softball team losing three games in three tries by a combined score of 6-1 to Elk Grove in the section playoffs.
The Tracy softball team probably had the best shot at winning a section title of any local team all year. But what can you do?
Bizarre thing we’ll never forget of the year
The Franklin football scandal. It seemed everyone knew for years that there was something foul in southeast Stockton, that there was something fishy about the large, powerful young men with Samoan last names who “mysteriously” “appeared” on the Franklin varsity roster. So when the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section finally stepped in, investigated and meted out a penalty, the reaction was “about damn time.”
But then it got weirder, and Tracy had a front-row seat. The Stockton Unified School District Board of Trustees elected to thumb its nose at the section and play the players in a “win” over Tracy High, which led to the (since-overturned) harshest penalty in national prep sports history, one job suspension, two resignations and the biggest dramatic episode ever played out on a football field.
It was interesting, it was exciting, but it made a mockery out of high school sports and turned teenage kids into pawns in some cheapjack political power struggle. Never again!
Bizarre thing we’ll never remember of the year
If rumors could kill, Altamont Motorsports Park would have been six feet under years ago. But the track, in its second season under a NASCAR sanction, survived legitimate financial worries, a last-second general manager change, a host of lawsuits and a bad relationship with county government and stayed open all year long — something not a lot of people thought would happen.
Performance of the year
Goes to the West High track team’s 4-by-100 relay team. The foursome had an established track star in 2007 West graduate Stanley Arukwe, who had already been to the CIF State Track and Field championships as an individual, but the team set a school record as soon as Arukwe was joined by classmate, football teammate and friend Montrel Richardson, West’s 2007 Male Athlete of the Year and a current football star at Delta. With Kevin Cox and Chris Gauthier, both of whom should run this spring, the team put out one of the best performances in Tracy track history.
Also up there: current West High senior Sarah Rico winning a third-straight TCAL cross country title; the Tracy High football team making the playoffs and setting all kinds of records; Tracy High football and softball coach Greg Smith cutting his decade-long ponytail. Who saw that one coming? It was almost the …
Surprise of the year
This was a tough one. I thought for sure the West baseball team would make the playoffs; was pretty sure the West softball team wouldn’t; thought at least one of the hoops teams would win a playoff game. Wrong, wrong and wrong.
While it wasn’t a mind-blower, maybe it was the Tracy High baseball team, which became the first set of Bulldogs to qualify for the playoffs in back-to-back seasons despite facing a very strong SJAA without its projected No. 1 pitcher. Fun team to watch, too: great snack bar, easygoing coaches, interesting set of parents.
Streak of the year
No coach is more careful with his words than Tracy soccermeister Phil Kalis, whose postgame interviews are as exciting as instruction manuals.
But then his team reeled off eight straight shutouts to put itself in a position for a playoff berth. He gave the usual “We played well. The team is good” spiel to the local media — but once the microphones were off, he cackled: “Eight shutouts? Sick!”
And because I said I would
The owner of Rusty’s — the bar on Grant Line Road formerly known as Tracy Joes — once told me he’d kick me out of said bar if I didn’t mention that same said bar is the only bar in town with Tracy and West jerseys hung on the walls. It’s true.
There. Can I come back now? I’m sick of The Shamrock.
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