Sailors

LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE — Three matches into the season and it's already time to go back to the basics for the members of the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy water polo team. From Flintridge Sacred Heart sixth-year Coach Robert Curreri's viewpoint, that's not necessarily a bad place to retrace the steps toward success. "We haven't had a lot of time to practice and we are going to need to work on our offense and conditioning," Curreri said after the Tologs began Mission League competition Thursday afternoon with a 16-5 home loss against Marymount.

Newport Harbor High football coach Jeff Brinkley knew going into the Sailors' contest against host Dana Hills Friday night that Dolphins' quarterback Grant Schwartz was a gifted athlete. Still, the Sailors weren't able to contain him. Schwartz, a senior who has had offers from Oregon, Boise State and Colorado State, accounted for five touchdowns and the Dolphins defeated the Sailors, 39-13, in a nonleague contest. Schwartz ran for two scores, threw for another two and returned a kickoff 92 yards for a touchdown while also anchoring a stifling pass defense.

The Newport Harbor High football team typically emerges from its preseason scrimmage with an upbeat feeling of anticipation. This season, the Sailors came away with laundry list of areas in which Coach Jeff Brinkley wants to see immediate improvement. Brinkley enters his 20th season at the helm of the Sailors tonight at 7, when future Sunset League rival Fountain Valley visits for the nonleague season opener for both schools. The Sailors, coming off a 12-1-1 campaign in which they reached the CIF Southern Section Division VI title game, were humbled in Friday's scrimmage with visiting Trabuco Hills.

SOUTHEAST GLENDALE — The schedule makers did the Glendale High girls’ tennis team little favor when it came to this year’s playoff bracket. On one hand, the Nitros were able to secure a home match in the Division II wild card round. On the other hand, they were pitted against Newport Harbor, which hails from Orange County, long considered a hotbed for successful tennis programs. “We didn’t get a great draw,” Glendale Coach Bob Davidson said.

If you had a choice of how you'd like to start your season, defeating a perennial power wouldn't be a bad one. Chalk up a stellar start for the Newport Harbor boys water polo team. Clay Jorth netted four goals as the Sailors opened their season by defeating four-time defending CIF Southern Section Division I champion Long Beach Wilson, 9-5, on Tuesday afternoon at Newport Harbor High in a nonleague game. "I thought we played pretty well for the first game of the year," Newport Harbor Coach Jason Lynch said.

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- After a night filled with comeback rallying, the Newport Harbor High girls volleyball team fell to host Huntington Beach, 26-24, 25-23, 25-21, in an exciting nonleague game Wednesday. The Sailors (2-3) were led by junior talent Bryana Carey, a second-team All-Sea View League middle blocker last season who finished the night with eight kills and four aces. Sophomore Jamie Heenan also had four aces to go along with her eight kills. Setter Megan Munce and Megan Toman added six kills each, while Munce tallied five blocks and Toman had four.

There is one certainty this season for the Newport Harbor High boys cross country team, barring injury: Senior standout Kenny Rakestraw is set to be the Sailors' horse. With the loss of Nick St. Andre and Martin Bernard to graduation -- two highly consistent runners, according to coach Nowell Kay -- Newport Harbor will be counting on Rakestraw to gather some points. Kay said he's confident in Rakestraw's abilities. "He's going to have a breakthrough season this year," said Kay, entering his fourth year.

Some players hung their heads and the coach called the whole evening a total disaster. And that was the winning team. Indeed, Friday night's 21-17 nonleague triumph over a valiant Marina High squad at Westminster High was far from typical for Newport Harbor. Newport Harbor senior quarterback Tom Jackson, however, prevented even deeper gloom for the Sailors by triggering a dramatic game-winning drive in the final 1:01. It capped a strong performance by the 6-foot-1, 185-pound Jackson, who threw three touchdown passes and also tossed a two-point conversion.

Brittani McCormick of La Cañada Flintridge is on the first deployment of her Naval career on the USS Stennis in the Middle East. She recently graduated from boot camp in May from Great Lakes, Ill., after graduating from a postgraduate program in Pensacola, Florida, in September. McCormick was privately home schooled most of her life and attended Pasadena City College before working toward becoming a sailor in 2010. She is supported by her grandparents, parents and siblings.

NORTHEAST GLENDALE - For the second consecutive season, the Flintridge Prep girls' tennis team ran into talented Newport Harbor in the second round of the playoffs. For the second straight postseason, the Rebels once again couldn't match up with a Sailors team that featured a dominant doubles lineup. In the end, Newport Harbor's doubles teams proved too difficult for Flintridge Prep to handle. “They have great doubles teams,” said Flintridge Prep Coach Ron Catano, who saw his team's season end Monday afternoon with a 10-8 loss against third-seeded Newport Harbor in a CIF Southern Section Division II second-round match at Scholl Canyon Tennis Center.

The sleek, 130-foot yacht dwarfed the wooden replica tied up alongside. Five hundred years of maritime progress was on display. During a brief stay in Frankfort Harbor, the Niña drew the curious to this small northern Michigan town, providing a unique opportunity to step back in time and envision the daring of those who braved the open ocean in such apparently unseaworthy craft. At 67 feet long, the Niña was constructed in 1991 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the new world.

Mail received by students in the third-grade class at St. James Catholic School in La Crescenta has a distinctly international flair. Cards and letters are postmarked from Malaysia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. But as exotic as the locations are, what most fascinates the students are the men and women who author them. Five months into a pen-pal project with United States sailors stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, students are enhancing their writing skills while also getting to know members of the Armed Services.

SOUTHEAST GLENDALE — The schedule makers did the Glendale High girls’ tennis team little favor when it came to this year’s playoff bracket. On one hand, the Nitros were able to secure a home match in the Division II wild card round. On the other hand, they were pitted against Newport Harbor, which hails from Orange County, long considered a hotbed for successful tennis programs. “We didn’t get a great draw,” Glendale Coach Bob Davidson said.

The Newport Harbor High football team is hoping to halt one trend by continuing another when the Sailors meet visiting Woodbridge in the Sea View League opener Friday at 7 p.m. The former refers to two straight losses by the Sailors (3-2), the first such occurrence in preleague play since 1995. But the latter is a five-game winning streak against Woodbridge (0-5), against which the Sailors hold a 14-3 series advantage. "It all starts over now," said Newport Harbor Coach Jeff Brinkley, whose team has won seven straight league contests and is the defending Sea View champion.

First comes the devastation, then the dissection. Sometimes, the latter can be more excruciating than the former for high school football coaches, who seldom wait 24 hours to pick through the videotape remains of their latest loss. For Newport Harbor High Coach Jeff Brinkley, this meant scanning the images of Friday's 23-20 nonleague overtime setback to visiting Mira Costa. In the process, a handful of potentially game-changing plays emerged.

Alyson Jennings was one of the most decorated girls volleyball players the Newport-Mesa area has seen. Jennings was the Daily Pilot's 2003 Newport-Mesa Player of the Year, as well as the Sea View League Player of the Year. She led Newport Harbor High to the CIF Southern Section Division II-AA final and the quarterfinals of the CIF State Division II tournament. The former Tar was also played in the Dave Mohs Memorial Orange County All-Star match. After a stellar high school career, Jennings signed with the University of Texas.

What was supposed to be a hard count, turned out to be an awfully hard way to lose for the Newport Harbor High football team Friday night. But the Sailors didn't go down without first finding a miraculous way to push visiting Mira Costa into overtime as the Mustangs came away with a 23-20 nonleague triumph. Newport Harbor went 84 yards on 12 plays after falling behind, 20-12, with 3:05 left to tie the game in dramatic fashion. Tom Jackson's pass went into and out of the hands of Mira Costa defender Kevin Romero at the Mustangs' 5-yard line, and Jarrett Daniel hauled it in and ran into the end zone.