“The Team of the Month” is a monthly content series presented by Sansum Clinic of Santa Barbara and produced by Presidio Sports that recognizes the great teams in the Santa Barbara athletic community.
Over time the series will mature into a historical chronicle of the most memorable groups of athletes that our community has seen.
Beyond that, the Team of the Month Series seeks to spotlight great examples of teamwork in the local sports community and the success that comes with it.
Thank you to sponsor Sansum Clinic for making this effort possible.
DOS PUEBLOS GIRLS GOLF
Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” would be an ideal theme song for the Dos Pueblos girls golf team.
In a sport that requires tremendous focus and concentration, the DP players have a way of staying relaxed and keeping things fun on the golf course.
This fun bunch also knows how to get results. The Chargers won their 17th straight Channel League team title and finished the regular season with an 11-1 record. Sophomore Bella Vigna captured the league individual title for the second straight year, leading six DP golfers in the top 10 at the tournament at Soule Park.
SAN MARCOS GIRLS TENNIS
For the first time in school history, San Marcos reigns as the outright champion of the Channel League in girls tennis, ending Santa Barbara High’s 33-year hold on the title. The history-making accomplishment is a dream come true for Royals senior captains Julia Frohling, Summer Bosse and Renee Handley and their coach Fred Hartzman.
Frohling says she’s still trying to wrap her head around the fact she is part of school history. Bosse describes it as an amazing feeling. And Handley calls winning the title a reward for all the hard work she’s put in the last four years.
SANTA BARBARA ROYALS HOCKEY
They shoot, they score!
Ice hockey has arrived in Santa Barbara. The Greater Santa Barbara Royals hockey team will begin play in the inaugural Los Angeles Kings High School Hockey League at the end of this month.
The Royals will play their home games at the new Ice in Paradise complex in Goleta. The team is comprised of 16 players (15 boys and 1 girl), 13 of whom attend San Marcos High. One player is from Santa Barbara High, one from Dos Pueblos and another from Oxnard.
Steve Heinze, a 13-year veteran of the National Hockey League, is the head coach. Heinze played nine seasons with his hometown Boston Bruins and finished his career with the Kings in 2003. He played for Team USA in the 1992 Olympic Games.
GOLETA VALLEY ALL-STARS MAKE HISTORY
When he decided on the 11 players for the Goleta Valley South Little League 10-Under All-Star team, manager Ryan Fell felt this group could achieve something special. The players proved him right. Game after game they delivered in tournament play and ended up making league history.
The GVS 10U Stars captured the District 63 and Section 1 titles and became the first 10-under team from the league to win the So Cal Sub-Regional tournament and play for the Southern California State Championship. They finished a banner summer as state runners-up.
BOYZ of SANTA BARBARA
When the Ice in Paradise rinks open this fall in Goleta, a group known as the Boyz of Santa Barbara is going to feel like that Iowa farmer who built a beautiful ballfield in his cornfield in the movie “Field of Dreams” and reunited with his late father.
“Is this heaven?,” the Boyz will probably be thinking when they step on the ice to play hockey. A voice in their heads will respond: “It’s home.”
Instead of playing catch like the son and father in the movie, the Boyz blissfully will be passing pucks back and forth.
SPIRALS GYMNASTICS
When Jordan Andreoli completed her uneven bars routine and the scoreboard flashed 9.50, Jordan and her coach, Andy Klunder, were beaming with joy.
Jordan’s score held up at the USA Gymnastics Region 1 Level 7 Championships in Long Beach, and the Santa Barbara Spirals Gymnastics Level 7 team member was crowned regional champion.
Her performance was one of many stellar efforts turned in by Spirals team members at the regionals earlier this month and the state championships in April. Spirals gymnasts earned 20 medals between the two big meets.“We peaked our athletes at (regionals),” said coach Klunder, who also serves as the director of Spirals Gymnastics. “We happened to peak them at the right time. All the kids performed at their very, very best.”
DOS PUEBLOS MEDLEY RELAY
With an all-star lineup of three signees to Pac-12 universities and an up-and-coming sophomore, the Dos Pueblos boys 200 medley relay team has its sight set on winning a CIF championship.
Seniors Walker Bell, Blake Parrish and Alex Valente and sophomore Theo Velikov make up the DP relay team. Bell and Valente are both headed to USC on swimming scholarships while Parrish is Stanford bound for water polo.
“They’re really good,” DP coach Chris Parrish said of his three seniors. “They came in highly touted out of junior high, but you don’t know if they’re going to pan out in high school. And they’ve just continued to improve and improve, and all of it at a pretty remarkable rate.”
UCSB’s 1990 MEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM
It was one of the finest moments in UCSB men’s basketball history.
wenty-five years ago, the Gauchos shocked the college basketball world as they beat Jerry Tarkanian and the famous UNLV Runnin’ Rebels in an ESPN Big Monday nightcap before a delirious crowd at the Thunderdome. That remarkable victory all but clinched an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament, where, for one March Madness weekend, UCSB was the talk of the nation.
Playing in the Southeast Regional in Knoxville, Tenn., the ninth-seeded Gauchos upended No. 8 Houston, 70-66, and then gave region No. 1 seed Michigan State all it could handle before falling 62-58. The win over Houston remains UCSB’s only NCAA Tournament victory in five trips to the Big Dance.
DOS PUEBLOS WRESTLING
The list is full of check marks: beat Buena in a dual meet, check; snap losing streak against Ventura, check; capture Channel League dual meet team title, check; beat two CIF division foes in a three-way meet, check; earn team titles at two tournaments, check.
It’s been a terrific season for the Dos Pueblos wrestling team. But there’s still more to accomplish before it ends. Still to be checked off the list of goals is a CIF Duals team title, Channel League individual championships and CIF State Meet qualifying berths.
DP coach Anthony Califano had high expectations for this team, and for good reason. The squad was senior-laden (22 total in the program) and most of the guys were experienced wrestlers.
COAST CLUB VOLLEYBALL
It wasn’t just winning the USA Volleyball Junior Nationals Qualifier that impressed David Rottman, coach of the Santa Barbara Coast Volleyball Club 14s boys team. It was how his young players responded to challenges and competed at a high level throughout the tournament.
“This group of boys has bought into the competing-and-not-folding aspect of what I’m trying to teach,” Rottman said. “I still can’t believe what they did that weekend.”
Santa Barbara Coast went 8-1 and knocked off top-seeded Balboa Bay Club in a three-set championship match to earn a trip to the USA Junior Nationals in Columbus, Ohio in July.
CATE GIRLS VOLLEYBALL
The Cate girls volleyball team isn’t loaded with club players. Most of the girls on the roster play other sports once the season is over. Coaches Greg Novak and KC Collins molded this collection of athletes into a championship team this fall.
The Rams completed a dream season, going 24-2, taking the Frontier League title in their first season in the league, capturing the CIF-Southern Section Division 4A title and winning their first state tournament match in program history.
“Going into the season, we knew because integral senior starters had graduated it could potentially set us back,” Novak, the fifth-year head coach, said. “But we also knew that the returning squad had a desire to go further than the year before.”
SANTA BARBARA CITY COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Team Photo by Sevilla Photography. Artwork by Presidio Sports
Texas A&M football has a tradition called the 12th Man, which started when a former player was called from the stands during a game against the top-ranked team, suited up and stood ready to play when called upon.
The fans have carried on the spirit of that gesture with their undying support of the team.
The SBCC football team has an “Every Man” approach, and it’s catapulted the Vaqueros to a record-tying seven straight wins in a season.
SANTA BARBARA CITY COLLEGE WATER POLO
Brian “Chuckie” Roth realized he made a mistake in recruiting players for the first women’s water polo team at Santa Barbara City College when only five showed up on the first day of practice.
“I had a lot of recruits that I thought were coming and people just didn’t show up,” Roth recalled. “I didn’t see that; I didn’t expect that to happen. I took ownership of that and apologized. Next year, I’ll make sure I recruit twice as many people.”
Roth managed to land a dozen committed players, and that group is laying the foundation of a program that has the potential to be a state power in the sport.
REEF & RUN
Ocean swimming is Jane Cairns’ passion. And, with the Pacific as her backyard, she wanted a way to share that passion with the community.
With the support of a few friends, she started Reef & Run to get people into the water once a week during the summer months. The weekly series completed its sixth year last week with a one-mile Boat to Beach swim. The event was sold out.
At sunset, Cairns was beaming on the East Beach sand as she watched happy swimmers make their way out of the water and jog to the finish line. Her baby was grown up and people loved it.
SANTA BARBARA JUNIOR LIFEGUARDS
You can’t miss them during a weekday morning in the summertime, boys and girls in red swimsuits and long-sleeve white t-shirts, heading to East Beach on their bikes, on skateboards, on foot or by car.
Once there, they learn about ocean safety and the physical demands of becoming a beach lifeguard. They work hard, compete hard and always have fun. And they come away with a feeling of accomplishment.
By the end of the City of Santa Barbara Junior Lifeguard program, kids who started out being afraid to put their faces in the water are swimming from Stearns Wharf to the East Beach Bathhouse.
SANTA BARBARA SWIM CLUB
Whether it’s providing water safety instruction, exercise options, recreation or high-level competition, the Santa Barbara Swim Club has served this community well for a half century.
The club is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a party at its home facility of Los Banos del Mar pool on Saturday, July 12.
“Swimming is not only a life-long sport, it’s a life-saving sport. And, it develops athletes with a lot of character,” said Mary Jo Swalley, the executive director for Southern California Swimming and a Santa Barbara resident whose son swam for the club and later became president.
SANTA BARBARA SOCCER CLUB U18s
There was a time when the core group of the Santa Barbara Soccer Club’s Boys Under-18 team suffered through 8-0 and 9-0 losses when it ventured down south for weekend tournaments.
That was when they were 10.
That core group has since blossomed into premier players and, together with talented players from around the tricounties, they now beat those clubs that handed them lopsided losses years ago.
“The tables have been turned completely,” U18s assistant coach Jesus Landeros said.
SAN MARCOS VOLLEYBALL
It was the perfect ending, the winning point of San Marcos High’s epic 32-30 fourth-set victory at nine-time defending champion Santa Barbara for the Channel League boys volleyball title.
Incredibly, the match-winning play involved the Royals’ “Big 3? of Baker Johnson, Christian Widmer and Shane Hauschild, standout seniors who have been starters since they were sophomores. First, Johnson made a spectacular one-handed dig of a driven ball. The ball caromed off the ceiling, but Widmer still managed to hand-set it and pushed it outside to Hauschild, who hammered a spike off a defender’s arms for the title-clinching point.
And the Royals went wild.
UCSB BASEBALL
UCSB roared into the month of March like a lion.
The Gaucho baseball team won eight of its first nine games and finished the month with a 15-4 record, punctuated by wins over perennially strong programs like Mississippi State, Pepperdine, Arizona, Fresno State and UCLA. It also received its first national top-10 ranking since 1986.
SANTA BARBARA HIGH GIRLS BASKETBALL
With only one senior in the starting five and its top scorer just a sophomore, the chance of Santa Barbara High’s girls basketball team advancing to a CIF Final seemed like a longshot at the beginning of the season.
But this group of players defied the odds. They had savvy and good chemistry, and they kept improving under the coaching of Andrew Butcher and his staff.
With all that going for them, the Dons earned a shot to play for a CIF championship for the first time since 1989.
