SCVAL wins nationals at Corporate

By DICK SPARRER

The sports season has yet to begin for the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League. Heck, the school year hasn't even started yet.

But already the SCVAL is a winner, thanks to a solid performance by teachers and coaches at the National Corporate Relays in Seattle, Wash.

The SCVAL teachers and coaches teamed with employees of MetroSport, a Cupertino shoe store, and SST to compete at the nationals, and they ended up topping the field.

The local squad, competing in the Division II-AA classification, beat everyone in its division, and also all of the A teams in the competition.

"It was the first time in any division that an AA team won the overall division title," said Hank Lawson of Lynbrook, who served along with Kirk Mansfield of Monta Vista as the co-captain for the squad of 25 athletes.

"It was fantastic," said Lawson, who had figured the squad for a fourth-place finish when he doped out the anticipated results prior to the meet. "Boy, was I off!"

The SCVAL ran up 145 points to win the team title with UNUM second at 140, Sempra third at 138, Ruan fourth at 134 and Aerospace fifth at 129.

It was the second appearance for the SCVAL at the corporate nationals. The SCVAL won the Winter Corporate Relays the last two years in a row, and has placed third in both the 1999 regionals and '99 Nationals.

This year, the local squad beat such teams as Lockheed, IBM, PacBell and Lucent at the Bay Area Regionals in July.

Members of the SCVAL/ MetroSport team include Darrin Garcia, Andrew Sample, Sean Hook, Anne Hammond, Ericke Brigham, Ray Russell and H. Lawson (Lynbrook); Ernest Lee (Gunn); Grace Voss, Mark Stauffer and Pat Lawson (Fremont); Mansfield (Monta Vista); Laura Lopez (Saratoga); Walt Van Zant (Wilcox); Roger Edwards and Steve Headley (Homestead); Julie L'Heureux (Santa Clara); Ray Russell (SST); and Mike Regan, Rob Stucky, Steve Lopez and Verdine Baker (MetroSport).

The SCVAL's two championship trophies are on display this week at Metrosport in Cupertino and at SST.

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