The San Diego Section winter sports playoffs wrapped up last weekend with teams competing for basketball and soccer championships in their respective divisions.
The weekend before that it was girls water polo, two weekends ago it was boys wrestling. The weekend before that it was girls wrestling.
As usual, East County teams and student-athletes were in the thick of things with eight teams advancing to division championship games in three sports and four teams finishing as CIF champions in two sports.
•No. 1-seeded Monte Vista (21-6-3) won the Division III boys soccer championship with a 3-2 kicks-from-the-mark victory over sixth-seeded Olympian (18-5-6).
•No. 2-seeded Granite Hills (17-3-5) won the Division II girls soccer championship with a 1-0 upset win over top-seeded Francis Parker (17-2).
•No. 2-seeded Mt. Miguel (23-8) won the Division IV boys basketball championship with a power-packed 70-48 victory over top-seeded Southwest (28-3).
•No. 9-seeded Steele Canyon (11-3-8) defeated seventh-seeded Point Loma, 3-2, in a kicks-from-the-mark tiebreaker to reign supreme in the Division I boys soccer playoffs.
•No. 2-seeded Grossmont (23-8) recorded a runner-up finish to top-seeded Cathedral Catholic (21-11) by a 51-45 score in the Division I girls basketball championship game.
•No. 3-seeded Monte Vista (23-9) finished runner-up in the Division III boys basketball championship game following a 50-36 setback to top-seeded Olympian (28-3).
•No. 2 River Valley Charter (9-11) finished runner-up in the Division V-AA girls soccer bracket following a 1-0 loss to top-seeded Tri-City Christian (13-5).
•No. 1 Santana finished runner-up in Division I girls water polo playoffs following a 4-3 double-overtime loss to No. 6 Coronado in the division championship game.
Qualified teams will now embark on winning regional and state championships.
Getting their kicks
Monte Vista finished on top of the Grossmont Hills League table with a 7-2-1 league record ahead of runner-up Steele Canyon (6-2-2). It proved to be a very competitive league as both the Monarchs and Cougars went on to capture section titles in their respective divisions.
“We’ve had a competitive season,” Monte Vista head coach Antonio Levenant said. “We’ve beaten some Division I teams, teams that have gone Open through Division II. I don’t think we’ve lost to a Division I team this year. We still have a young team — about 70 percent underclassmen. The core of our team is our junior class. We have two freshmen who start.”
Monte Vista entered the division championship game playing like a champion with 94 goals scored against 38 allowed.
Top scorers included senior Jesua Castillo with 34 goals, junior Anthony Lillo-Granger with 20 goals and junior Abdiel Castillo with 15 goals.
“We’re a very fast-paced team,” Levenant said. “We like to attack.”
The Monarchs dispatched their opening two opponents with nine goals – 5-0 over ninth-seeded Santana in the quarterfinals and 4-1 over fourth-seeded Pacific Ridge in the semifinals.
It didn’t take long for Olympian — 6-1 winners over 11th-seeded Valley Center in the opening round, 2-0 upset winners over third-seeded La Jolla Country Day in the quarterfinals and 2-1 upset winners in overtime over second-seeded Vista in the semifinals — to discover just how fast the Spring Valley team likes to attack.
Jesua Castillo opened scoring just five minutes into the game and Olympian senior goalkeeper David Medina was kept very active smothering and blocking shots for most of the first half to keep the Monarchs from running away with the score.
The Eagles managed to tie the game, 1-1, on a goal against the run of play by senior Caleb Castro in the 20th minute.
But Abdiel Castillo put the Grossmont Hills League champi¬ons back in front, 2-1, on a blast that slipped just under the crossbar and out of Medina’s reach with five minutes remaining in the first half.
The Eagles started to slow down the game to their advantage as the half wore on. Senior Nick Jester scored on a free kick to tie the game, 2-2, with 28 minutes to play in regulation time.
Playing under a rising full moon, the Monarchs returned to attacking and recorded two near-misses before time ran out to usher in overtime. Medina smothered a shot in front of the net just seconds before the overtime ended.
Monte Vista nearly won it in the 15-minute sudden victory overtime period when Medina was forced to tip a screaming shot over the crossbar.
The deadlock through 105 minutes necessitated the kicks-from-the-mark tiebreaker. It’s not the ideal way to settle a game but at least each team gets an equal chance to scurry off with a mandated victory.
Jesua Castillo and Olympian’s first shooter each scored in the first round. Medina stopped Mon¬te Vista’s Jason Flores to start the second round but Olympian captain Alex Shepard followed with a shot that glanced down off the crossbar, landing in front of the goal line to keep the shootout tied at a goal apiece.
Monte Vista’s Benjamin Salazar scored, and Monarch goal¬keeper Gerardo Alfaro Paez followed with a save to put the Spring Valley team in the lead at 2-1. But Monte Vista’s Luis Robledo hit the post and that allowed Olympian to level the shootout at 2-2.
Monte Vista’s Issac Gonzalez opened the deciding fifth round with a goal and Alfaro Paez promptly flew to his left to nudge the Eagles’ final shot wide for the game-saving block and a 3-2 shootout victory.
The win was heaven-sent, according to Monarch players.
“Honestly, it was God’s will,” Alfaro Paez said. “I asked Him for help, and He answered my prayer. When I blocked it, there were a lot of emotions. I didn’t know if I had tipped it wide until I saw everyone celebrating.”
Alfaro Paez knelt in front of the vacant net in gratitude following the save. Teammates then rushed onto the field to swamp him in celebration.
“God led us here,” Jesua Castillo said. “I’ve been praying every practice, every match. He never fails. God kept his promise like He always does.”
“It feels great,” Levenant said in regard to the school’s first CIF title in the sport. “We put a lot of hard work into this thing. It came down to the wire. It’s the first CIF championship for the school. There were a lot of emotions going through me at the start of the game, but I tried to stay calm as an example to the team. The first goal gave us a spark, but I expected it to be a good competitive game.”
It was.
“We fell behind, but we battled back each time,” Olympian coach Joey Gonzalez said. “We had a good run in the playoffs. We almost got it. Once it goes to PKs, it’s a coin-toss. It’s hard not to be upset about how it ended. It was a great year.”
But indeed, a tough way to end it.
“When you get to this point in the game, the net shrinks,” Gonzalez said. “The pressure on these young men is huge. It’s tough.”
“We always step up when it counts,” Shepard said. “But it just didn’t work this time. I’m just happy I got to play with these boys out there.”
Sportsmanship awards went to Monte Vista’s Luciano Hermosillo and Olympian’s Medina.
While the Monarchs will return the bulk of their speedy and talented lineup, the Eagles graduate 13 seniors.
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Levenant is coaching his fourth season with the Monarchs. In that span, he’s won three league titles — the Grossmont Valley League championship his first season and back-to-back league titles the last two years, one each in the Grossmont Valley League and now the Grossmont Hills League.
“Three or four years ago, I picked up a lot of freshmen,” Levenant said. “Some of these guys will graduate with three league titles and some with two league titles.”
This was the teams’ third meeting on the season, with the Eagles failing to beat the Monarchs in each encounter. The teams played to a 2-2 draw in pool play in the Grossmont Conference Holiday Tournament before Monte Vista topped Olympian, 6-3, in the tournament semifinals.
Men of Steele
Steele Canyon upset foes in each round to wear this year’s Division I crown to become this year’s bracket buster. The Cougars, who finished runner-up in the Grossmont Hills League standings to Monte Vista, kicked off the playoff with a 5-4 KFM victory over eighth-seeded University City in the opening round after the teams had played to a 1-1 overtime standoff.
Steele Canyon then pulled off a 1-0 upset of top-seeded Cathedral Catholic in the quarterfinals on a goal by Matti Guzman. The Cougars then clawed out a 1-0 over¬time victory over fourth-seeded Westview in the semifinals on a goal by Ashton Cederwall.
Elder Ibarra recorded both shutout wins.
The Jamul bunch saved the best for last.
In the championship game, Steele Canyon rallied from a 1-0 deficit against the seventh-seeded Pointers after Point Loma’s Ethan Denny managed to knock in a bounding ball off a corner kick in the 48th minute.
But a collision between Point Loma goalkeeper Owen Purvis and a Cougar defender created a loose ball scenario and Cederwall pounced to the ball to tie the game, 1-1, for Steele Canyon.
There was no scoring in overtime and the game proceeded to the shootout tiebreaker.
The Cougars took a 3-2 lead in the fifth round of the climactic shootout whereupon Ibarra proved to be the man on spot when he made the game-winning save on a shot by Pointer Max Flores to secure the championship game victory.
Cederwall, Jordan Rojas and Sam Thornton each scored in the shootout while Ibarra blocked two of five shots.
The Cougars pulled off upsets in all four divisional playoff games.
“I’m just so proud of this team and this program as a whole,” Steele Canyon coach Justin Johnson said. “Four straight CIF finals appearances, moving up a division every year and bringing home two titles and a state title in the process. Such a testament to how hard these guys work, the trust they have in each other and in the system.
“We’ve heard a lot of doubt coming from the outside, especially this year, but these guys love it, they feed off it and it just motivates them to be that much better. So proud and excited to continue the work that we’re doing here.”
Steele Canyon was rewarded with a trip to Newport Harbor (19-5-1) in Tuesday’s opening round of the regional playoffs.
Soaring Eagles
Granite Hills finished on top of the Grossmont Hills League with an 8-0-2 league mark ahead of West Hills (6-2-2) and Steele Canyon (5-3-2).
The Lady Eagles scored a clean sheet through their three section playoff games: 5-0 over 10th-seeded Mission Bay in the quarterfinals, 2-0 over third-seeded Mt. Carmel in the semifinals on Feb. 21 and 1-0 over top-seeded Francis Parker in the championship game on Feb. 23.
Mission Bay had upset seventh-seeded Steele Canyon, 3-2 in a KFM tiebreaker in the opening round but fell behind Granite Hills 2-0 at halftime in the teams’ quarterfinal match-up. The Lady Eagles then soared over the Lady Bucs (9-5-4) with three second-half goals.
Granite Hills scored one goal in each half to subdue Mt. Carmel (17-3-3) in the semifinals. The Lady Eagles scored a second-half goal to seal the division championship.
The Lady Eagles, riding a sev¬en-match winning streak, were set to play at top-seeded Granada Hills Charter (13-3-3) in Tuesday’s opening round of the Divi¬sion III regional playoffs.
Tuesday’s winners were set to advance to Thursday’s regional semifinals. The regional champi¬onship game is Saturday, March 2.
