Sailors

The Newport Harbor High field hockey team is just two wins away from its fourth straight Los Angeles Field Hockey Assn. Tournament of Champions title. The journey continues Wednesday, as the Sailors are at Glendora at 3:30 p.m. in a semifinal match. Newport Harbor Coach Amanda Boyer, whose team shut out Chaminade, 2-0, in a first-round match Monday, said the Tars are playing well. "They have the potential to win the whole thing," Boyer said. "I have the confidence in them.

NEWPORT BEACH - Coach Jeff Brinkley cannot really explain why his Newport Harbor High football team has played well against Los Alamitos in four of the last five years. The Sailors just have since rejoining the Sunset League five years ago. With the Sailors backs against the wall at home Friday night, Brinkley needed them to make it a game against the Griffins again. Not many picked the Sailors to beat the defending league champions. Eric Tweit, the school's former athletic director, came over and pointed that out to Brinkley, who was all smiles.

MANHATTAN BEACH - Leading up to Newport Harbor High's football game on Friday, Coach Jeff Brinkley said he talked to the opposing coach. Brinkley and Don Morrow, the coach at Mira Costa of Manhattan Beach, know each other well. Before their teams met for the ninth straight year, Morrow gave Brinkley some flattering words. Morrow watched the film of the Sailors' 28-7 upset win last week of San Clemente, a CIF Southern Section Pac-5 Division finalist last year. "In terms of watching our film, he thought that was the game he said that really looked like our old Newport Harbor teams," Brinkley said.

NEWPORT BEACH - In his 26 years at Newport Harbor High, Coach Dan Glenn called this girls' volleyball season an up-and-down one. A standout starter quit for the first time under Glenn's watch. Key players dealt with knee and shoulder injuries. The Sailors finished third in the Sunset League for the first time under Glenn. Newport Harbor has moved past all of the setbacks. The Sailors are now in position to win their eighth CIF Southern Section title with Glenn at the helm.

HUNTINGTON BEACH — Coach Dan Glenn went into Newport Harbor High's toughest two-match stretch in the first half of Sunset League play thinking he'd be fine with a split. When the Sailors stole the girls' volleyball match at Los Alamitos last week, Glenn wanted to be greedy. "Once you get that first one, you want to see if you can get them both," Glenn said. The Sailors had their chances to pick up a big road victory at Edison Tuesday night. Three times in the fourth set they had match point and each time they came up short as the Chargers forced a decisive fifth set. Newport Harbor's second five-set match in league turned out different from the first.

NEWPORT BEACH — The drop got dropped, and the press was impressive. The Newport Harbor High girls' water polo team is known for that press defense, and the Sailors went back to it Friday afternoon at the Holiday Cup tournament. It showed in the pool as the Sailors took fifth in the tournament by beating Santa Barbara, 5-2. Earlier in the day, they bested Palos Verdes, 14-6, in a fifth-place semifinal. The game against Santa Barbara didn't feature much offense. Defensively, though, the press obviously worked, as the Dons couldn't get on the scoreboard until Charlotte Hendrix skipped in a goal with 5:18 left in the contest.

PALOS VERDES - For the first four-and-a-half minutes Saturday of a CIF Southern Section Division 1 girls water polo quarterfinal, Newport Harbor was struggling to solve the puzzle that was Palos Verdes junior goalie Carley Radov. The Sailors could not seem to find a seam against the long-armed, quick-reacting goalie. Lobs hit the crossbar, hard shots found her fingers, even pump-fake shot attempts didn't work. But with 3:29 left in the first quarter, Newport Harbor patiently found a way to crack the code that was Radov, who made 11 saves, thanks to a goal by Avery Peterson.

NEWPORT BEACH – As the Newport Harbor High girls' tennis team closed in on its third straight Sunset League title Thursday afternoon, the Sailors turned their attention to a certain little girl of a similar age. Poppy, 2, is the younger sister of team member Kelsey Christensen. She is also quite possibly the team's biggest fan. She's at many of the matches, bopping around the tennis courts. On Thursday, the Sailors asked Poppy to sing some Justin Bieber, and she obliged to everyone's delight.

NEWPORT BEACH — The same three geese that Coach Patrick Murphy has seen land on the Newport Harbor High outfield appeared again. This time, the Sailors were playing a baseball game and not practicing. In a matter of minutes, the geese had the entire field to themselves. The umpires called the Sailors' season opener Friday in the top of the seventh inning because of darkness. Newport Harbor did not bat in the bottom half of the final inning and there was hardly a reason to because Beckman was on its way to winning.

NEWPORT BEACH — Newport Harbor High has a week to work out the kinks before it opens the football season at Trabuco Hills on Sept. 8. The Sailors saw live action against someone other than themselves for the first time. They held a scrimmage against JSerra Thursday night at Davidson Field. The Sailors, out of the Sunset League, and the Lions from the Trinity League played physical ball. For each quarterback's sake, they wore red vests over their jerseys, protecting them from any contact.