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By Christina [email protected]
The uniform will say Liberty, but for the 2012-2013 wrestling season, the Patriot wrestlers will have to call Maywood Middle School home due to construction going on at Liberty High School.
It’s been an adjustment for the squad, Liberty coach Manny Brown said. The team practices at Maywood but must wait to use the wrestling mats until the middle school team is done.
“Since Liberty is in construction mode, we will have all of our home matches over at Maywood Middle School,” he said. “It’s worked out well for us, but we still miss be-ing home at Liberty High School.”
Despite the inconve-nience, Brown said the team is excited and eager to build upon its fourth-place finish at last year’s KingCo 3A Conference championships.
“I’m hoping to end up in the top three in KingCo,” he said. “Mercer Island is go-ing to be pretty tough this year and so is Mount Si. So, hopefully we are up there competing with them.”
Last year, the team sent two wrestlers to state, where Hamilton Noel placed sixth in the 160-pound division and
Joanna Moreira acquired valuable experience as a freshman in her first state tournament appearance.
Noel has since graduat-ed, but Moreira is back for her sophomore campaign and ready to improve on last year’s performance, Brown said.
“She’s ranked about sixth or seventh this year in the state,” he said. “She’s working hard dur-ing the week in practice.”
Moreira became the first female wrestler in Liberty High School his-tory last year.
“We’ve got to re-ally work on getting her matches against other females, which is kind of difficult to do,” Brown said.
Noel will be a tough act to follow, after several
strong finishes at the state tournament, but Brown said he expects captains Nate Sjoholm and Luke Oman to play key roles for the team.
The Patriots were a young team last year, but the expectation is that last year’s experience bodes well for the future.
“We’ve got some sopho-mores that were with us as freshman last year that are really coming along,” Brown said.
In particular, Brown said he is excited to see how sophomores Jimmy Andrus and Conner Small improve upon their fresh-man seasons.
“We’ve got about 28 peo-ple on the team and we’ve been working really hard,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to the season.”
By Lillian O’[email protected]
With 32 athletes already signed up and several returning state qualifiers, the Skyline High School wrestling team is hopeful as it continues to hunt for a heavyweight competitor to complete the lineup.
“We are strongly opti-mistic. We have a good bunch of returning young men and we have some good athletes that are turning out,” coach Gus Kiss said.
The Skyline Spartans finished 7-3 last year in KingCo dual meets and qualified four wrestlers for the State Mat Classic, including Kara Alden. The team’s only female went on to become the team’s top finisher after taking sixth place in the 145-pound girls division. She returns this year as a junior.
The Spartans may be struggling to fill the top of their roster, but there is no shortage of
SPORTSs s
The Issaquah Press
Page B4Wednesday
November 28, 2012
B4
BY GREG FARRAR
Andi Scarcello, Maria Volodkevich, Kristaley Umezawa and Stephanie Muñoz (from left) enjoy their moment on the podium as the Skyline High School 200-yard medley relay team cel-ebrates their state 4A championship title Nov. 10 in Federal Way.
By Lillian O’[email protected]
Maria Volodkevich has always been a team player.
It was teammates who motivated her, at age 6, to dive headfirst into competi-tive swimming. Seven of her eight state titles were for team relay events, and it’s the aspiration of being a part of something greater than herself that motivates the Skyline High School senior to pursue a military career.
“I prefer winning in a team atmosphere,” Volodkevich said. “I’d rather come out of the pool winning with three other girls because that is more exciting than winning by yourself. It’s all of our work coming together to pay off instead of just one person.”
It was the group of girls that she started swimming with as a child, she said, that kept her in the sport. And looking back over
her nearly 12-year career in the pool, that’s a good thing.
Volodkevich was a fresh-man when she won the 2009 Washington 4A Swim-ming State Championship in the 100-yard breast-stroke with a time of 1 minute, 4.25 seconds. For the next four years, that would be her only indi-vidual state title. She went on to swim as a member of seven state championship relay teams, including the 400 freestyle relay in 2009 through 2011, the 200 freestyle relay in 2009 and the 200 medley relay teams in 2010 through 2012.
Volodkevich also holds Skyline’s school record for the 100 breaststroke, 200 freestyle relay, 200 medley relay and 400 freestyle relay.
This year’s state swim meet marked the end of her high school swimming
By John [email protected]
According to the book of Revelations in the Bible, 666 is the number of the beast.
That is also the number of points Skyline High School’s relentless gridiron juggernaut has scored on its unsuspecting prey in the 13 contests it has en-gaged in during the 2012 campaign thus far.
Perhaps Bellarmine Prep, a religious school out of the Tacoma area, which the Spartans will lock horns with at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 1 in the WIAA
4A state championship in the Tacoma Dome, should graciously accept this as an omen of things to come.
Maybe Skyline will show compassion.
When the Spartans tangled with the Camas Papermakers in the semi-final round of the WIAA’s Gridiron Classic at the Tacoma Dome Nov. 24, Skyline was the scissors to Camas’ paper, though.
The Spartans started slow, at one point in the first quarter falling behind, 14-0. Eventu-ally, the Spartan swords were able to cut through the Papermakers like a hot knife through butter, and douse out the furious flame of the blazing 12-0 contingent from Vancou-ver, 51-28.
As the highly touted skirmish began to un-
ravel before enormous representation from both schools, Papermaker fol-lowers thought they must have been dreaming, as only three minutes into the initial stanza, their beloved Camas crew had already notched seven points against a vaunted Skyline defense that had allowed well under 200 points in its previous dozen outings, or an aver-age of 18 points per game defensively.
After the ensuing kick-off, Skyline could manage very little offen-sively against a seemingly stingy Camas D, but on the fourth down of its second fruitless drive, Skyline senior Sean McDonald, who does both the kick-ing and the punting for SHS, booted a skyscraping punt that didn’t allow any
By John [email protected]
As another Issaquah High School wrestling campaign gets under way, there can be little doubt that if any group of mat men has a head start on the rest of the conference, it would have to be the guys in the purple-and-gold grappling gear.
The Eagles began the season with 32 young men vying for starting spots in the varsity lineup, 17 of which are returning let-termen. The Eagles swing
back into wrestling filled with confidence, after forg-ing a 9-1 league mark in 2011-12, as well as wrap-ping up the KingCo 4A title and taking a half-dozen wrestlers to state a year ago.
One of the six wrestlers representing the IHS ban-ner at the state tourney was 285-pound heavy-weight Jonathan Norris, who took sixth in state as a junior.
Eagle wrestling coach Kirk Hyatt said Norris
Eight-time swim champ strives to serve country
BY GREG FARRAR
Nic Sblendorio, Skyline High School senior wide receiver, is finally taken down by Camas junior defensive back Jorden Payne after making a long pass reception in the second quarter Nov. 23 at the Tacoma Dome.
ONE AND DONESpartans are one win away from another
state title
return and pinned Camas back on its own 2-yard line.
After Camas understand-ably went the conservative route, sending its run-ning back between the tackles for a minimal gain in treacherous territory juxtaposed to its own goal line, on the very next play, the Papermakers surprised everyone in the build-ing, by going for all the marbles.
Trying to buy time in the pocket in the midst of a fierce Skyline pass rush, talented Papermaker quar-terback Reilly Hennessey scrambled around for as long as he dared, and then hurled the pigskin as far as he possibly could. The ball found the outstretched arms of Hennessey’s receiver Zach Eagle, in midstride 50 yards away and streaking for pay dirt.
After Camas kicker
See FOOTBALL, Page B5 See SWIMMER, Page B5
2012 wrestling preview
Issaquah sees return of 17 lettermen
BY GREG FARRAR
Jonathan Norris, Issaquah High School junior, wrestles his opponent in the 285-pound class on the way to winning with a pin, during the Eagles’ match against Woodinville last January.
BY GREG FARRAR
Joanna Moreira, Liberty High School freshman (top) wrestles Garfield junior Amanda Triandafilou in the 132-pound wom-en’s match in an exhibition match last January at Issaquah High School.
Patriots adjust to home away from home Skyline struggles to fill top of roster
See SKYLINE, Page B5 See ISSAQUAH, Page B5
