The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Homestead's Carole Maya battles Cortney Kelly of Los Gatos for the ball in field hockey action last week. Los Gatos pulled out a 2-0 win over the Mustangs.

'Birds, Mustangs open league

Phan leads Fremont to tennis victory

By Dick Sparrer

Stanford and Oregon have nothing on Fremont and Lynbrook.

The Cardinal and Ducks filled the scoreboard with points in the Saturday afternoon game on The Farm.

Not to be outdone, the Firebirds and Vikings almost matched that Pac-10 offensive outburst in a Saturday night game at Diesner Field.

Stanford beat Oregon 58-49 in the highest scoring game in Stanford history on Saturday. And later that night, Fremont battled from behind to beat Lynbrook in another high-scoring affair, 47-44.

"It was a wild one," said Fremont assistant coach Rob Swartz of the Firebirds' exciting victory.

Wild, indeed. The Firebirds were trailing 31-7 after a period, and 44-36 late in the game.

"But everybody kept calm," added Swartz. "We knew we needed to get back one touchdown at a time."

And that's just what the Firebirds did.

It was actually a close game early in the first. Lynbrook returned a fumble for a quick TD, but Fremont fought back to tie it 7-7 on a 10-yard touchdown run by Tully Banta-Cain and Jorge Novoa's extra point.

That's when things started to unravel for the 'Birds. The Vikings scored three touchdowns and a field goal in the final three minutes of the first period to take a commanding 31-7 lead by the first buzzer.

Fremont started to chip away in the second period, though. Ray Loya, who completed six of 10 passes for 240 yards and a couple of TDs, hit Darren Lang for 62 yards and a score.

Manuel Maes broke off an eight-yard TD run, and Chaz Dixson ran in for a touchdown and a two-point conversion. The three touchdowns cut Lynbrook's lead to 31-27 at intermission.

Early in the third, the Firebirds took a 35-31 lead, but Lynbrook came back with two touchdowns to move back in front 44-35.

Fremont, though, was not about to give up.

Loya and Gabe Atondo hooked up on a school-record setting 98-yard touchdown pass, and Banta-Cain broke free on a 41-yard TD run to lift the Firebirds to the hard-earned 47-44 victory.

Atondo ended up catching three passes for 163 yards, another school record for Fremont. He also intercepted a pass and joined with Maes as a defensive leader in the win.

Ozzie Villagomez, a 320-pound senior tackle, starred in the offensive line for the Firebirds along with Warren Rick, a 310-pound senior who came on the bench to play despite being hobbled with an ankle injury.

Fremont, now 2-1, will host Los Altos on Oct. 3, 7:30 p.m., at Diesner. The Eagles are 3-0 in the young season after beating Westmont 39-0 last week.

Girls' tennis

Liora Gelblum and Elizabeth Yu posted back-to-back wins at No. 1 and 2 singles to lead the Monta Vista girls' tennis team to a 7-0 win over Lynbrook, but the Matadors lost a tough 4-3 nod to Los Gatos two days later. The Mats are now 2-2 in the De Anza Division of the SCVAL.

In other De Anza Division action, Homestead lost 5-2 to Lynbrook and 7-0 to Los Altos.

Cupertino pulled out a thrilling 4-3 win over Fremont after beating Milpitas 5-2 in El Camino Division play last week.

Fremont's Theresa Phan won twice at No. 1 singles, but the Firebirds could manage just a split in two matches last week. Fremont lost to Cupertino, but knocked off Santa Clara 5-2.

Angelique So, Tarang Saini and Virginia Li supported Phan to give Fremont a singles sweep against the Bruins. Van-Anh Nguyen and Julie Huang teamed for a win at No. 1 singles to wrap up the team victory for the Firebirds.

Horton scores

Megan Horton had a goal and an assist to lead the Monta Vista girls' field hockey team to a 3-1 win over San Jose Academy in a non-league game to open the 1997 season.

The Lynbrook girls, meanwhile, have opened the year with four straight wins over Prospect, Cupertino, Monta Vista and Homestead.

The Mustangs battled back with a couple of wins after losing to the Vikes. Tricia Ignaitis scored the lone goal for the Mustangs in a 1-0 win over Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ignatis had two goals and two assists and Julie Anthony added two goals in a 6-0 victory over North Salinas.

Carole Maya drilled a pair of goals and Ignaitis popped one in a 3-0 win over Cupertino, but the Mustangs were blanked 2-0 by Los Gatos to slip to 3-2 for the year.

Pioneers third

Cupertino's Nuru Abdella and Celeste Dunlop came through with matching third-place finishes to lead the Pioneers into the top 10 in both the boys' and girls' divisions at the Central Park Invitational in Santa Clara last week.

Abdella covered the 2.3-mile distance in 12:05 to finish third in the boys' race with teammate J.J. Sclar fourth in 12:10. The two led the Pioneers to a team fifth with 142 points.

In the girls' division, Dunlop's third-place finish overall in 14:27 helped Cupertino to a team ninth.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, October 1, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.