The LookOut sports

Santa Monica Sports Notes

The Santa Monica West Cardinals had a good run in the Little League playoffs but lost in the District 25 championship game to North Venice, 7-1.

The A's of the East Division won the Santa Monica City championship with a 3-0 victory over the Cardinals. Then both teams were awarded berths in the District 25 event.

The A's lost in the first round to Culver City North but the Cardinals defeated Beverly Hills and advanced to the championship game, where they were halted by Venice pitcher Mike Orr.

Some of the Cardinal stars were Devin Antin, Dakota Peterson and Gave Macario.

There will be all-star play coming up...

The Santa Monica Sea Splash of the Ultimate Soccer League lost their season opener to the Malibu Wave Breakers, 61-27 at Orange Coast College. Santa Monica trailed by only 10 points, 37-27, after three quarters but was outscored in the fourth, 24-0.

Erica Florez and Kelli Barrett scored for Santa Monica in the second quarter and Jen Fodor in the third. Katie Peck was the Santa Monica goalkeeper.

The Sea Splash will play the Pomona Sand Storm next Saturday, July 7, at 9 a.m. at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo...

The league is for women from collegiate teams. It is an amateur league that prepares women for their college schedules...

http://www.samohi.org http://www.nba.com/
lakers/index.htm

St. Monica Has New Basketball Coaches For Boys and Girls

By Mitch Chortkoff

In recent years St. Monica has had it about as good as it gets during basketball season. Both the boys teams coached by Scott McDowell and the girls teams coached by Michelle Rice have reached the CIF playoffs.

However, neither one will be the head coach next season.

McDowell has chosen to leave to pursue other opportunities after spending 10 years at the school, the last six as head basketball coach. He was also Vice-Principal.

The new head coach is Chris Quinn, an assistant the last two years and before that an assistant to James Hecht at Santa Monica High. It should be a smooth transition as Quinn is familiar with the team's personnel. And from the talks I've had with him I think he's ready to move up.

Mrs. Rice has decided to stay but step down to assistant coach in order to devote more time to other school matters. A new head coach has been hired, Alvin Zeidenfeld, who was an assistant at Harvard-Westlake.

McDowell did one of his best coaching jobs last season, getting his team into the playoffs and a first round victory that brought on a playoff game at Crossroads in a battle of Santa Monica powerhouse teams. Crossroads won and went on to win the CIF championship.

McDowell leaves as Sean Cole graduates. The 6-foot-7 forward was the team's star and is going on to Texas A&M- Corpus Christi.

Rice is happy that Zeidenfeld has arrived.

"Al brings a lot of valuable experience to the program," she said. "He likes to bring in the run-and-gun and create points off the defense. He has a very good idea of what we must do to be successful."

It will be an entirely different look than last season, when 6-foot-4 Danielle Adefeso played center. She went on to the University of Arizona.

"We'll be smaller but quicker," said Rice. ``The last three years we were a post-oriented team. Now we'll be more of a perimeter team. My first year here we were small and aggressive.''

The team does have talent despite the fact all-CIF point guard Heather Holguin also graduated. Several experienced players return, leading to the notion the Mariners will find ways to win.

High school basketball is played for real in the winter but there's a lot of summer activity too, including the upcoming Fairfax Summer Tournament
July 16-20.

``It's a time when you can see what you have," said Rice. ``We're putting together a team that will have a whole different look. But I'm confident. I think the girls are hungry too.''
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