By Bill Dickens
MaxPreps .com
Junior guard Troy Leaf of Foothills Christian in El Cajon has cracked the CIF-San Diego Section Top 10 for career scoring.
The 6-foot-3 Leaf has produced 2,066 points to move into a tie for eighth with El Cajon Valley’s Kemmy Burgess (1996-99). In his previous game, Leaf passed Floyd North (Helix-St. Augustine, 1998-01) who now stands 10th at 2,039.
With seven regular season games and a possible four playoff games remaining, Leaf (25.4 points per game) could add 776 points to his tab if he maintained his current average. That would lift him into third place.
Don’t forget he still has one more year.
Barring injury, Leaf would be all but a sure thing to become the San Diego Section’s all-time career scoring leader.
The CIFSDS all-time leader is Tyrone Shelley (Christian-Crawford 2004-07) with 2,962 points. Arizona’s Chase Budinger (La Costa Canyon 2003-06) is second with 2,934.
Upsets mark MLK tourney
Three of the top four ranked teams in the CIFSDS, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune’s latest Poll, lost on Monday’s (Jan. 19) — three falling in the Martin Luther King Classic at Hoover High.
The host and top-rated Cardinals were buried by 10 three-pointers as La Costa Canyon scored a 65-59 victory; No. 2 El Camino succumbed to University City 69-62; and No. 4 Torrey Pines was edged by No. 5 Foothills Christian 48-47. It was El Camino’s first loss to a CIFSDS team in 18 starts. Troubled No. 3 San Diego went on the road to Ohio and lost to Buckeye State teams Northland of Columbus (56-39) and Cleveland Heights (64-57).
Former Santa Fe Christian mentor moves on to SDSU
Brian Sipe, who twice earned honorable mention All-America honors as a quarterback at San Diego State before embarking on a 12-year NFL career with the Cleveland Browns, has accepted an assistant coaching post at SDSU.
After the NFL era, Sipe served as the head football coach at Santa Fe Christian for eight seasons where he went 75-21-1. A product of Grossmont High and Grossmont Community College prior to taking snaps at SDSU, Sipe has agreed to coach the Aztecs quarterbacks for new head coach Brady Hoke.
Wrestling history at Brawley
Brawley has won eight straight section wrestling titles, so it is not exactly like the sport is new to the Imperial Valley campus. The headliner at the moment is Alfonso Osuna, who captured the 112-pound weight class championship by whipping Courtland Hacker from Broomfield (Colo.) 5-1 in the Five Counties Invitational at Fountain Valley High
Saturday (Jan. 17). Folks at Brawley report that Osuna is the Wildcats’ first Five Counties champion in more than 30 years.
Knights recruit youthful leader
The Bishop’s School of La Jolla has hired 24-year-old Joel Allen as head football coach. Allen, who was offensive coordinator at Bishop’s in 2007 when the Knights captured the CIFSDS Division championship, was also the El Cajon Christian quarterback who guided the Coastal League rival Patriots to the 2002 section title.
Other Top Performances
— Poway’s Conrad Snell finished second in the 135-pound weight class at the Five Counties Invitational in Fountain Valley where the Titans captured the team title.
— Vista senior center Quincy Lawson scored 25 points in a 75-48 nonleague win over San Pasqual and 17 points in a 60-42 nonleague win over Mission Hills.
— Maggie Doremus of Mt. Carmel tallied 21 points in a 68-25 win over Valley Center and 22 points in a 71-29 win over San Marcos.
— San Dieguito Academy’s Megan Warner scored a hat trick in a 4-0 win over Calvin Christian and followed with a goal in a 2-1 win over Escondido Charter.
— Westview’s Ryan Inghilterra scored three goals in a 5-1 win over Mira Mesa and kicked in a goal with an assist in a 5-2 win over Oceanside.
Coming Attractions
The Orange County-San Diego Challenge is a quality girls’ one-day tournament on Saturday (Jan. 24) featuring some of the best at Santa Margarita. Here is the lineup: Cathedral Catholic vs. San Clemente, 3:30 p.m.; Spring Valley Mount Miguel vs. Tustin Foothills, 5; Ramona vs. Santa Margarita, 6:30; Santa Ana Mater Dei vs. La Jolla Country Day, 8.
Dickens Dealings
El Cajon’s Foothills Christian is a bad fit in the Division V Citrus South League, a circuit that is based exclusively upon small enrollments. To be blunt it is more recreational style than it is competitive. So why are the Knights (16-4), a team that could easily be ranked the No. 1 in the CIFSDS polls next week, playing against these intramural-type teams?
According to CIFSDS rules, a team must show league affiliation in order to be eligible for postseason play. Thus, in trying to find Foothills a spot, the section commissioner Dennis Ackerman aligned the Knights with San Diego Academy, Midway Baptist, Lutheran, Mountain Empire and Chula Vista Calvary Christian.
It has made for some one-sided league games, which could easily have been even more lopsided. Case in point: Foothills scored 47 points in the first quarter of a 95-29 rout of Lutheran. If not for coach Brad Leaf’s heavy substitution policy, who knows how many points the Knights might have put up against outmanned Lutheran.
Who does that benefit? The Knights’ starters are on the bench by the second quarter, which hardly helps prepare them for the playoffs. If they remain on the floor much longer than that they are considered bullies.
Let’s face it – playing in the Citrus South League creates a hardship on all involved. Foothills has beaten Torrey Pines, University City, Eastlake, Bishop’s, Junipero Serra, Westview, Valhalla and Rancho Bernardo to name a few of the upper echelon teams.
“The Citrus League has been everything we feared it would be,” Foothills Christian assistant coach James McHugh said. “This season we've already been asked not to score a certain amount of points, not to win by a certain margin, not to play a press defense etc.
“The league games are just becoming unbearable, it's like we have to dish out 35 apologies before we walk in the door and take a laundry list of what we're allowed to do against each team.”
It’s a dilemma that the CIFSDS powers must remedy even if it takes a major overhauling of all the section’s leagues. Some have suggested making two private school leagues – large school and small.
Whatever it takes…
