The Nosebleed Section

I covered three basketball games today (Friday) in Palo Cedro and all three were whitewashes with our local teams getting thrashed. Obviously as a reporter it's no fun having to interview coaches and players from a team that lost by 40, but it could be worse: I could be on the team that lost by 40.

You don't get to see the heat of competition when a blowout is happening. The game kind of just lulls on and the end result isn't in question. If you're winning it's obviously more fun, but I'd like to think in all honesty that someone would rather see a close game than a whitewashing.

The section championship games are supposed to be the biggest of the year, yet the three I watched weren't even close. The Tulelake vs. Liberty Christian boys game went overtime to top off the night, which was rad, but I was writing three stories so I couldn't really watch. To see more about the games I covered, check out the Saturday edition of the Enterprise-Record and Mercury-Register.

Unfortunately there are going to be a lot more blowouts coming up in the CIF Northern California playoffs, in my opinion, given the Northern Section's sad showings in state playoff competition.

That being said, though, I think it's important to let all the prep basketballers from the north state know just how much fun it was to watch the season unfold. I'm sure I'm gonna miss basketball really soon.

Posted by Leland Gordon at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The CIF State Wrestling Championships begin today (Friday) with action at Rabobank Arena in Bakersfield. Last year I had the opportunity to travel down there as a freelance writer and cover the happenings for a boatload of newspapers across California, including the Chico Enterprise-Record and the Oroville Mercury-Register, to name a couple.

This year, the combination of me being a full-time reporter and the Northern Section basketball championship games have relegated me to the north state for this weekend, though I’d rather be in Bakersfield.

Of course this year we don’t have Kyle Bergstedt and Joseph Mount, the wrestlers from Paradise and Chico, respectively, who each placed third. In all honesty, there aren’t any local kids ranked in the top 10 in the state, meaning the chances of a state medal coming back to Butte or Glenn counties isn’t likely.

But rankings don’t mean anything now. Every guy in the bracket has the chance to win it all.
Here is the skinny on the local competitors who will be wrestling today, and hopefully Saturday if they make it that far:

105 pounds — Willows senior Shoua Yang won the NSCIF Masters last week and will face Carlsbad’s Daniel Romero in the first round. (It should be noted that there is a slew of outbracket matches in each weight.) Romero is the No. 3 competitor from the San Diego Section and is just a sophomore. Yang has age on his side. Chico’s Jesse Silva, a freshman, placed second in NSCIF and has an outbracket match against Chris Mecate from Redlands East Valley. Mecate is also a freshman and placed fifth in the Southern Section.

114 pounds — Corning’s Kodie Brown, fresh off being selected as the Male Prep Athlete of the Week, drew Rancho Bernardo’s Nik Sirin in the first round. Sirin, also a junior, was third in the SDS. Chico’s Jake Bolen was second in NSCIF and his outbracket match is against a fellow junior, Estevan Canabas from Canyon Springs, the fifth-place finisher in the SS.

121 pounds — Chico’s Phong Lee has a first-round pairing with Sergio Aguiniga, the eighth-place finisher in the SS. Lee, a junior, placed second in NSCIF and the seedings say that he has a great matchup here. Don’t be fooled, though, because the Southern Section is brutal. An eighth-place guy from there could easily be a section champ here up north.

142 pounds — Deniko Sisk from Gridley has a brutal draw here. His second-place finish in NSCIF drew him a first-round tussle with the SDS champion, Dustin Hernandez of La Costa Canyon.

147 pounds — Desi Rios, from Pleasant Valley, is just a sophomore and will have to face senior Daniel Couts from Santa Fe. Couts is the SS’s No. 3 wrestler and Rios placed second in NSCIF.

154 pounds — Another PV wrestler who was second in the section, Brandon Nickas, has a first-round meeting with the winner of an outbracket match. That means Nickas will be one match fresher than his opponent and he’ll get the chance to scout both guys. Whoever wins between Bellarmine’s Eli Sanchez and Laguna Hills’ Stephen Mills will face Nickas. Sanchez was fourth in the Central Coast Section and Mills was third in SS.

191 pounds — Corning’s J.T. Minto has a good draw in his outbracket match against Nasar Mohammad, the Los Angeles Section champion. Minto was second in NSCIF and will battle a senior who comes from a section that rarely makes waves at state. Minto has the slight edge here. If he wins, he gets Hesperia’s Danny Reyes in the first round, who was second in SS.

I’ll be in Palo Cedro covering basketball all day so I won’t be able to keep you all up to date as much as I wish I could. Try visiting the CIF Web site throughout the day and the brackets should consistently be updated. Click here to visit the site.

Posted by Leland Gordon at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a yin and yang to life, or as I like to refer to it as, a law of averages. For every ounce of jubilation after a team wins a big playoff basketball game, there is almost always an equal amount of frustration from the losing team.

While I haven’t hassled Patrick Kinmartin yet for some details about how the Hamilton High boys basketball team lost tonight in a home game against Tulelake, he mentioned that it came on a last-second layup. I’m sure that hurt the Braves fans and players extra hard, because they came so close to making it to the Northern Section title game.

The tears are justified after a loss like that. I’ll never fault a player who was that close and came up empty.

However, if your team loses a big playoff game by 20 or some other blowout margin, crying maybe isn’t justified.

The losers, however, represent a vital part of the story when it comes to a game like that. Their sorrow serves as stark contrast to the joy of winning, and that’s powerful stuff. I’ve been on both sides of it, I sure know.

Some may say that it’s inappropriate to interview coaches and players after a crushing loss, but I don’t buy that. It’s part of the story and it deserves to be told, even if the interview is done while the subject is crying.

Since I posted this before deadline, I don’t have a link to Patrick’s story. Go here to find it for yourself, or just wait for me to update the blog on Thursday afternoon.

Posted by Leland Gordon at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This weekend I can work a lot or I can work a little. How it ends up depends entirely on how our prep basketball athletes play.

The Northern Section championship games will be played Friday and Saturday, with 10 total games between all the divisions and both sexes. As the semifinals begin tonight in some divisions (otherwise known as Tuesday), we still have local teams with the chance to play the title game in eight of them. That could potentially be a lot of work for me. If you want to see how the brackets have progressed, Click here !.

I’ll take one for the team here folks, and by “the team,” I’m referring to my wonderful readership. If I have to cover four games Friday night at Foothill High in Palo Cedro and then another four the next day at Chico State, I’ll do that. Because I aim to please. And I like my job. And paychecks.

This will require a lot of driving, at the speed limit of course, and likely a few massive cups of coffee from Dutch Bros. And I may also end up missing sleep.

That’s fine. I’m prepared to cover eight games. Bring it. I'm over the mystery flu sickness and ready to get back to the quality you all are used to getting!

Posted by Leland Gordon at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hand shaking is a hard part of my job as a sports writer. That and high-fives, though I save those for my coworkers.

I’m a schmoozer and love to chew the fat with all sorts of people I encounter at prep sports events. So you can imagine how weird it’s been for me to have to say “No way” to hand-shaking lately.

As you may or may not have noticed, I have been a whiny little boy this week and some of last due to a few different types of sickness. With no mommy nearby to take care of me, I am recovering the best that I can.
And part of that effort includes working while sick, something nobody wants to do.

But I haven’t been shaking hands lately because the last thing I want to be accused of is getting a whole team sick.

So the pathetic blog posts will continue in this fashion for a few more days, as I fight off a ho-hum sickness while complaining that it’s the sickest I’ve ever been.

Cough, cough, sniffle, sniffle, body ache. Goodbye, for now.

Posted by Leland Gordon at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've got our game faces on here. Actually, I hate that term, just like Bobby Knight. (Speaking of Bobby, take a look at his top ten sounds bits by clicking here . His infamous "Game Face" rant is No. 2).

That's enough digression for now. The truth is that here at the Enterprise-Record we have to get in gear for a heavier workload over this and next week. There is a significant amount of playoff basketball going on around here and we also have the Northern Section Masters wrestling this Friday. So on the bright side, or maybe the exact opposite, you all will get to see some articles from guys like Patrick Kinmartin and Ryan Klocke covering the prep basketball action.

Aside from my regular responsibilities I'm doing more work this week and our phones are surely going to be ringing off the hook for the next few nights. Not only are we ready, but we're stoked for the chance to bring the action to the Internet and the newspaper.

I'm pretty sure I'll be covering at least one championship game for basketball, maybe as many as six. I sure hope I do, that way we can get some bragging rights goin' on here in Butte and Glenn counties.

Tonight I'm off to Durham to watch the Trojan girls host Chester. Wish me luck!

Posted by Leland Gordon at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just wrote my story from the Pleasant Valley vs. Paradise boys basketball game. It wasn't very fun to watch or to write about.

On a happier note, though, I have to send some props out to people like Cliff Kitayama and Aerin and Kornel David. They're the ones who leave comments on my blog and on our comments section on ChicoER.com. You folks should be commended, because journalism is not a one-way street, and you see that.

I am always happy to hear what people have to say. I believe that reporters should be accountable to the people who read their work every day. In fact, those people should be questioning their local journalists.

Now that I'm done being all emotional and appreciative ... Click Here! for the recent basketball playoff points!

Posted by Leland Gordon at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Road trippin’ is one my favorite all-time activities and the upcoming prep playoffs will give me and my BMW some wonderful time together. Yet it’s not going to be as fun as it was after the fall sports, mainly because my automobile will be traveling at the speed limit the whole way.

Most of the playoff championships take place in Redding and playoff games are a good enough reason for my bosses to send me to wonderful places like Red Bluff and Oroville and maybe even Corning. But because I got busted for speeding — twice in two weeks, to be exact — you won’t see my white car fly past you like a blur.

Your sympathy is appreciated. I don’t deserve it. Really.

Getting in trouble with the law isn’t really my type of thing, mainly because I’m smooth enough not to get caught. I like to think of myself as a decent, law-abiding guy who doesn’t litter and holds doors open for people. But seeing that I have a pair of cases pending against me in separate counties due to my need for high amounts of velocity, I must not be the goody two-shoes I come off as.

Last Saturday’s drive to Red Bluff was a pleasant one at 55 mph most of the way. It was gorgeous outside, I had the sunroof open, some awesome tunes blasting through the speakers and a fresh pack of gum with a big bottle of water. It definitely took longer to get there than it would have if I was driving in my normal fashion, yet it didn’t bother me. After all, I was on the clock for the drive.

Driving fast is way more fun (and more dangerous, I suppose) than driving the speed limit, but speeding tickets are no fun at all and traffic school is a drag, even online. Therefore, I’ll be putting around at a moderate rate of travel for the next few months while I voyage to wrestling tournaments and basketball battles all over the north state.

So if you pass a white BMW going ridiculously slow and holding up traffic on Highway 99 north of Chico, be sure to wave and say hi! And not with just one finger, please. Thanks.

Posted by Leland Gordon at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The last couple days have been rough, between some terribly painful work at the dentist and a disgusting bout with food poisoning. Finding time to get the basics done has been hard enough. Therefore, it'll be one more day before the Nosebleed Section gets a new post.

Sorry to keep y'all waiting. All five of you loyal readers are appreciated! -L

Posted by Leland Gordon at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

THE HAPPY
Pleasant Valley High senior Tyler Rigsbee came back down to Chico from the Woodleaf Camp long enough to mingle at a party where he signed his National Letter of Intent to go to the University of California. And then he was gone, back up to the mountains to continue his work. So I won’t have any quotes here from him, which is a bummer, on account of a noon-time event ruins my gym schedule.

But I talked with his father, Craig, and got some great insight into the whole football scholarship race. Here are a couple excerpts:

-- When Craig was the head coach at Butte College, he took his team to watch Cal practice. His son Tyler (then 7-years old) told him on the ride back that he was going to play at Cal someday.

-- Craig knows that a scholarship is just a chance for his son to prosper, not a guarantee: “Whether he plays or not or becomes a star or not, he’ll get a great opportunity. He’ll get a fair shot and that’s all you can ask.”

-- Tyler attended camps at colleges and impressed coaches when he was a junior in high school. That aided him, Craig said: “He was able to go to the Oregon camp, the Cal Camp and be seen by people and that’s why they all offered to him early. It’s really important going to those. They saw him do some things in camp and then we got a lot of (video) tape out after his junior year.”

-- The success of former north state preps Aaron Rodgers, Brett Ratliff and Ryan O’Callaghan in the NFL aided Tyler and will make recruiters think about this part of California more when recruiting: “I think it’s easier (for players to get signed) because Butte College has been having success. It’s getting better because we’ve had some great local kids. Years ago no one came past Sacramento. There’s a lot more kids locally, and (recruiters) know we play at a high level. And over the years our kids from Butte have played well wherever they went. I think the Butte program has helped the high schools up north.”

-- Members of Tyler’s high school coaching staff, his youth football coach and PV’s strength coach all attended the afternoon function before he headed back up the hill: “I was really excited for him because it’s the culmination of a lot of hard work. I was really excited that he could share that with them. It takes a lot into making a good player. I was excited, some of his teammates were there, too.”

THE SAD
There is a ton of pressure for some kids this time of year when it comes to letters of intent, and unfortunately a boy in Fernley, Nev. looks like he caused a ruckus because of his disappointment in not being recruited. Read the story HERE.

Posted by Leland Gordon at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I have said before here on my blog, I have a huge bracket fetish.

Well, let’s use a more PG word here. How about a fascination? Yes, that’s what it is, a fascination. Playoff points will have to suffice until the actual brackets come out.

You saw what I had last week as far as playoff points in terms of basketball, and because the Nosebleed Section is all about giving (kinda like a charity), there are now SOCCER playoff points. I figure those ought to keep you readers busy for another couple minutes, thus reducing your chances of ending up in trouble with the law or your significant other.

It looks like there should be a couple section titles coming to teams in our 14-school coverage area, though nobody has ever won a banner for the gym with power points. Only wins can deliver that.

Corning and Orland, those wonderful intercounty rivals, are looking stellar in the standings for boys soccer and each lead their respective divisions, with Corning in D-I. On the girls’ side, our local squads don’t appear to be contenders — at all.

Not much changed in basketball. The Oroville girls are tied for the lead in Division III, but the next playoff points will factor in a loss to Enterprise that happened Monday. The No. 3 Hornets will definitely find themselves closer to the top spot thanks to that big Eastern Athletic League win, and West Valley will have the chance to put itself atop the standings.

The Gridley girls are 18-1 and still second to Anderson in Division IV and Hamilton’s team (16-4) is second in Division V behind the juggernaut known as Liberty Christian (21-1).

Corning’s boys basketball team (14-8) is third in D-IV and league foe Central Valley (18-2) holds the top spot and doesn’t look like it’s leaving any time soon. And in Division VI, we have two rivals sitting right next to each other in the standings. Champion Christian (13-7) is third and Princeton (14-2) is fourth, so seeing those two meet in the semifinals would be a game worth watching. The schools met for the Northern Section Division VI title game for 8-man football this fall.

If you’d like to peruse the standings for yourself, you can check out the playoff points by clicking HERE .

Posted by Leland Gordon at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm sitting here in the office about 3 1/2 hours before the Paradise and Chico High boys basketball teams tip off in Eastern Athletic League play. As I sift through the stats and records, it's obvious that Chico is having a better year than the Bobcats.

In fact, Paradise has had a miserable season. Are the Bobcats as bad as their record? I don't really think so.

Confidence is shaky in the high school game to begin with. Add in a 17-game losing streak, and it seems nearly impossible to get any confidence back. Then again, once that losing streak reaches eight games, it's probably the point when kids start questioning their abilities.

Things have gone from bad to worse after Paradise won three of the first four games this season, so it must be a really trying time up there in Bobcat country, especially considering that the team made it to the Northern Section Division II final last year. Can you blame these young men and their coach for getting a bit discouraged?

This is the EAL, where any team is talented enough to beat any other team on any given night. Paradise has the talent to win some games here and there, though it is not a title contender. What it appears to be missing is the confidence.

Keep in mind that with teenage athletes, it's not a given.

Posted by Leland Gordon at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)