Vikings

SANTA MONICA ? It was Kali Cancelosi?s turn. With a much-ballyhooed Crescenta Valley High offense, a top-flight defense and fellow junior right-hander Heather Bacon to rotate trips to the circle with, Cancelosi?s still made the most of her chances to shine this season. None were brighter than her performance on Thursday afternoon at Santa Monica, as Cancelosi crafted a three-hit, shutout gem to lift the Falcons past the Vikings, 3-0, in the CIF Southern Section Division III quarterfinals.

VALENCIA ? Had you told Crescenta Valley High girls' basketball Coach Jason Perez that Falcons leading-scorer Molly Roach would score more than her season average and his defense would hold Valencia under its season average, he would have thought it a winning formula. On Saturday, Roach scored a game-high 24 points, giving the host Vikings fits all night long. The Falcons also held the No. 7 Vikings to 59 points, nearly seven under their average. And it still wasn't enough, as a valiant Falcons effort concluded with a season-ending 59-55 loss to the Vikings in a CIF Southern Section Division I-A first-round game on Saturday night at Valencia High.

    At a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Wash., a geology professor at Washington State University, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, presented his theory that the JPL-managed Viking space probes of 1976-77 may have found alien microbes on Mars and inadvertently killed them.         Schulze-Makuch contends that Viking was looking for Earth-like life, in which salt water is the internal liquid of living cells.

Scoring two goals in the first three minutes of a soccer match has its obvious positives, but the Crescenta Valley High boys soccer team found out the hard way that an early, comfortable lead does not guarantee a win. Falcons Captain, Emilio Vallejos-Baeza, got the league match-up with Burroughs started with a goal just 1:12 minutes into the game. Gabriel Ramirez also kicked a ball that found the back of the net just over a minute after the initial goal. The second goal came after forward Tade Mirzain's shot went off the top goalpost and dropped back onto the field, giving Ramirez a good look.

The La Cañada girls' basketball team only led by six points after the first quarter, but would not have a hard time beating Blair at home Wednesday night. Led by the duo of Joy Lelo and Emily Ballard, the Spartans brushed aside the Blair Vikings 62-36. The Vikings (9-6) came out with more intensity, jumping out to a 5-0 lead, however, it would be their only lead of the game. From there on, the Spartans (8-7) defense stepped up and took the Vikings out of their game plan.

BURBANK — Holding opposing teams to less than 50 points has become a staple for the Hoover High girls' basketball squad this season. It's been the main reason behind the Tornadoes starting the season on a torrid note, evidenced by a five-game winning streak in which they didn't yield more than 49 points. Those two streaks ended Friday night, as Hoover suffered a 62-53 loss to powerful Valencia in a semifinal game of the 24th annual Magnolia Park Optimist Club Holiday Tournament at Burroughs High.

Marina High will launch its football season Friday in Rancho Cucamonga against host Los Osos. Game time is 7 p.m. Marina is looking to better last year's mark of 1-9, when the Vikings didn't post a win until the ninth week of the regular season. As the record might suggest, they struggled offensively. In eight games, they were held to a touchdown or less. But with a new season, brings new hope. They'll start off by facing a Los Osos team that went 6-5 a year ago and qualified for the Division II playoffs.

BASEBALL La Canada 28, Blair 0: The Spartans scored 10 runs in the first inning and had 23 hits on Thursday in a Rio Hondo League road contest. La Canada added eight runs in the second inning and three in the third. Kelson Brown and Mitchell Maseredjian each had a team-high four hits for the Spartans, who also received three hits apiece from Stanley Kim, Kevin Thompson and Chris Walters. Maseredjian also contributed a career-high eight runs batted in and five runs.