Sports Roundup — Swimmers best Mercer Island/Spikers streak ends to Prep/Soccer team looks for heart/Gridders blanked by tough O’Dea

Published 2:00 pm Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Swimmers best Mercer Island

More history was made by the Spartan girls swim and dive team last Friday.

Their 95-91 dual championship victory over Mercer Island marked the first time in 13 years they’ve defeated the Islanders.

“It’s a great win for us,” head swim coach Greg Colby said. “We had some good swims and not so good swims, but we were able to come out on top.

“We placed pretty much how I predicted,” he continued. “It’s been a balanced attack. We’ve had our second and third swimmers score us some points.”

It was the usual suspects and some new faces behind the scoring, as Isabel Williams, Anne Scott, Tessa Griffin and April Isa achieved another state qualifying time in the 200 medley relay with a time of 1:55.25 as they finished first.

Williams and Scott, along with India Wade and Keziah Beall scored a state qualifying time of 3:45.09 in the 400 freestyle relay with their first place finish.

The 200 free relay team of Ceanna Leake, Mary Kirk, Martha Slichter and Gabrielle Goodlin finished second, but still achieved a state qualifying time with their mark of 1:43.23, just missing the meet record of 1:42.50. Colby believes their and Mercer Island’s mark of 1:42.74 are the fastest times in that race in the state this year.

Scott scored another state qualifying time in the 100 free with her first place time of 52:16, but also scored a state time in the 200 free with her mark of 2:00.12.

Griffin missed out on a state qualifying time in the 50 free by 0.05 seconds, but Williams scored state qualifying times in the 100 butterfly and 100 yard backstroke with times of 59.74 and 1:01.85, respectively.

Stephanie Whalen scored 217.60 points in the diving competition to place first.

While Colby knows Mercer Island is a tough team, he felt his squad should have won by a lot more, which makes their rematch this Saturday even bigger.

“I’m going to change the lineups, and I think he (Mercer’s head swim coach Jeff Lowell) is too,” he said.

But, he’ll keep his squad in check.

“It was a great win, but we can’t look too far ahead,” he said. “We’ve got to take one thing at a time here.”

The Spartans defeated the Sequim Wolves 109-67 last Tuesday.

Bainbridge swam against Kamiak and Gig Harbor yesterday. They’ll travel back to Mercer Island this Saturday to face the Islanders at Mary Wayte Pool again.

Spikers streak ends to Prep

They had to lose sometime.

After the Spartan volleyball team defeated Holy Names three games to one last Wednesday, they lost to a vastly improved Seattle Prep on Monday 23-25, 19-25, 25-23 and 10-25 in what head coach Julie Miller said was an off night for her team.

“We didn’t play very well,” she said. “It was one of those games where everything wasn’t going well. If we passed, it would go out of bounds. If we set, it was going over the net.

“We couldn’t hold a serve for more than two points. They got every single break under the sun. They were digging everything. What are you going to do?”

Miller also acknowledged that not having practice on Saturday or Sunday and then traveling across the sound rather than playing at home as they’ve usually done this season might have been factors as well.

The loss puts Bainbridge back into a tie for the Mountain Division lead with their rival Bishop Blanchet with just three games to go. Miller said the loss will help them realize they have work to do before they can think about any kind of title, divisional or otherwise.

“We just weren’t mentally prepared to play,” she said. “Everybody wants to beat us, so we have to match their ‘A’ game or be better. You just can’t be average and play people like that anymore.”

She felt her squad was disappointed in the loss, but “they knew they were going to lose after the first game. If they would have won the first game, then I think it would have been a different match.”

With the loss comes some soul-searching, and Miller will let them get it out of their system for a short while.

Then, it’s back to work.

“It will depend on them,” she said, when asked if the loss will affect her team long-term. “It will depend on how they respond to it. If they played well and lost it would be one thing, but since we didn’t play well that was a bigger deal. If we work hard in practice and improve, then I think wins will come.”

Tan had nine kills and 14 digs, while Hannah Stuart had 16 kills, 22 digs and three blocks. Kelcey Dunaway had four kills and four blocks. Alexa Seidl and Allie Post had 20 and 13 assists, respectively.

Bainbridge travels to face Lakeside at 6 p.m. today.

Soccer team looks for heart

If the Bainbridge girls soccer team are to hang on and make the playoffs, the turning point could stem from a heartfelt locker room speech from one of their co-captains.

“I basically said the attitude of the team on and off the field, the aura of the soccer team (is not positive),” Alana MacWhorter said of her pep talk to teammates. “I said it really hurts me to see my peers say that they had just given up.

“I stood up and started bawling. I think it really was an impact upon them. They needed a scene to think that it’s not time to say that we’re done.”

There’s not much else to say after the Spartans suffered two key losses last week – 4-1 to Lakeside and a 3-0 whitewashing by Seattle Prep.

“We’ve been on a downer for a while,” MacWhorter said. “So I was noting that ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ to quote FDR. Honestly, that’s what we’re doing. We’re feeling like if we focus on something superficial, like the score, then we just give up.”

Head coach Mark Grindrod felt that the team was in great shape coming into Tuesday’s game

“We had a great practice on Monday,” he said. “We played a hard game. I wasn’t disappointed. We were in there.”

The Spartans scored first against the Lions – Lizzie Seligmann put one in on a penalty kick in the 11th minute – and were tied at one going into halftime on what Grindrod described as a “weird goal. But Lakeside came back in the second half thanks to two goals from their star player Lauren Whatley.

“We had some good opportunities,” Grindrod said. “Alana is super fast. But Whatley just ran her down and got the ball and put it in. Same thing happened with her and Lizzie. She’s super fast.”

On Thursday, the Spartans fell behind quickly as the Panthers put in a free kick from 20 yards out two minutes into the game. They never got back into it, physically or mentally.

“The only time I was disappointed was in Thursday’s game,” Grindrod said. “The only thing was mentally we just gave up. Physically they were working hard and trying to make it happen, but mentally they just got frustrated and didn’t make it happen.”

“That’s kinda been the story this year. We just haven’t been able to score. We’re not here (mentally). We’re not here thinking ‘I’ve got to put the ball in the goal.’ They’re not mentally in the game one way or another.”

Bainbridge (3-4-1, 4-4-3) played West Seattle yesterday and take on Holy Names at 5:15 p.m. tomorrow at Memorial Stadium. With just five games left, four of which are at home, Bainbridge must win to keep their fourth place standing intact and make the playoffs.

Gridders blanked by tough O’Dea

The Bainbridge football team did all it could to defeat O’Dea last Friday.

The Spartans forced the Fighting Irish to fumble the ball four times, two of which the Spartans recovered, and intercepted an O’Dea pass. They kept USC-bound all-star wide receiver Taylor Mays from breaking out for a big game, and even shut them out in the second half.

Unfortunately, they allowed O’Dea to score in the first half and, most importantly, the Spartans couldn’t score themselves, finally falling 19-0 at West Seattle Stadium.

The loss evens Bainbridge’s Mountain Division record at 1-1 and leaves them tied for second with Seattle Prep.

“Our expectations year in and year out are to compete for a league title, and traditionally it’s been getting through O’Dea,” head coach Andy Grimm said. “We want to win that game. We knew we had to keep the scoring low.

“Our kids fought hard. They played hard all the way through the fourth quarter, so it’s a victory in that sense. We told them win or lose, you wake up Saturday and you figure out what you’re going to do.”

O’Dea rushed for 238 yards and scored all their touchdowns on the ground, as Quinton Johnson ran for two scores and Johri Fogerson rushed for another.

Bainbridge was without Carter Williams, who was out with a high ankle sprain. In his stead, Max Kauffmann carried the load along with Dan Peck and Nick Stone, who split time at fullback.

Also making a positive contribution was quarterback Quinton Agosta, who came off the bench to relieve Cameron Johnson. He finished with 10 carries on 47 yards and went 7-15 for 48 yards but was intercepted in one of Bainbridge’s drives into the red zone.

“They (Peck and Stone) give us a bigger breakaway threat, but O’Dea has better speed, so you’re not going to get the balance and break, so it’s kind of a tradeoff,” Grimm said.

“We passed with some success, but you’re not going to run away from them, so you’re not going to get big plays. If we would have gotten more chunks of yardage, we would have been OK.”

Grimm also pointed out the group size of his team – they only bring about 30 to 34 players on the road – is dependent on what they can afford to take, and not having to pile his entire program onto buses when many of them wouldn’t get into the game at all.

“I’d much rather take 20 guys that can play, versus taking 55 guys who 30 of them are never going to play,” he said. “It’s kind of that military approach – that ‘Special Ops’ – I want to take the guys that are going to battle.

“I’d give our kids even more credit because going into it, I thought we played them pretty dang tough. The best part is that we forced them to play our 11. For most of the night it was 11 on 11 and we matched up pretty well except for a couple of plays.”

Now with a loss marring their record, Bainbridge must win their next three league games and hope either Lakeside, Seattle Prep or Eastside Catholic – currently tied with O’Dea for the league lead – can upset them and force a tie for first.

Grimm said he and his coaching staff will do what they can to keep their team motivated.

“We still have a great opportunity to have a great season,” he said. “Theoretically, you’re still in the playoff hunt. How hungry are you going to be?”

Bainbridge travels to Bishop Blanchet at 1 p.m. Saturday.