Page 6 January 29, 2015 EL SEGUNDO HERALD Soccer Teams Running with a Winning Formula By Gregg McMullin Photos by Gregg McMullin The boys’ and girls’ soccer teams sit atop the Ocean League standings for the first time in the school’s history. Both teams have had their share of injuries but continue to put together a winning recipe. “It’s been a challenge with our injuries but the girls keep working hard to pick each other up,” said girls’ coach Tony Hobbs. The girls’ team got some devastating news early in the week when they were told that Rhianna Rich would be lost, for most likely, the end of the season. Rich, who was the team’s leading goal-scorer and named to the South Torrance All-Tournament team, has torn her ACL. It was discovered after an injury that resulted in having an MRI. The Eagles will miss her on-field presence. Besides being the team’s leading scorer, she was one of the team’s captains. Though the team’s 2013-14 MVP will be sorely missed the remainder of the team has picked up their game according to Coach Hobbs. Without Rich in the lineup the Eagles were challenged offensively against Hawthorne and the game ended in a 1-1 tie. The Eagles pounded shot after shot but could not score until the second half. Hawthorne goalie Vanessa Perez made seven saves and too many open shots missed. The Eagles stout defense was pressing all game long. The only Cougar score came off a free kick; their only shot on goal of the game. The Eagles lone goal was scored by Isabella Gutierrez midway through the second half. The Eagles were once again bit by the injury bug when goalkeeper Brenda Cervantes was unable to play. Katrina Mathews was called up from the frosh/soph team and filled in nicely as a last minute replacement. El Segundo continued their winning ways against Lawndale with a 2-0 win. Goals by Nikko Van Eimeren in the first half and one by Maddie Hobbs in the second half. Katherine Burner was back in the lineup for the first time in a few weeks. She returned from an injury that was still bothering her but played through the pain.. The Eagles (7-2-6, 3-0-1) faced Santa Monica (7-6-2, 4-0) yesterday to complete first half of league. The Eagles host Beverly Hills on Friday at 3pm and next week the team is on the road at Culver City and Hawthorne. The boys’ team played a rare night game on Hawthorne’s dilapidated field. The Eagles, ranked second in the latest CIF Southern Section Division IV polls, played a hotly contested game with the Cougars but in the end drew a 2-2 tie. The tie halted an eightgame win streak but the Cougars are still unbeaten in their last 12 games. El Segundo trailed early 1-0 but tied the score just before halftime. Jake Grundman was yanked to the ground in the Hawthorne penalty box and the Eagles were awarded a penalty kick. Cardenas’ first shot was saved by Hawthorne goalkeeper Fernando Portillo, but it didn’t count because he came off the goal line too soon. Cardenas scored on his second chance to tie the score 1-1. Hawthorne took a 2-1 lead in the 53rd minute when Manuel Flores was taken down the El Segundo penalty box and Edgar Navarro netted the ensuing penalty kick. Six minutes later the Eagles responded when Noah Stone scored on a header off a perfectly placed throw-in pass by Grant Bemis to tie the game at 2-2. Both teams had opportunities late in the contest but Hawthorne’s Edwin Gonzales’ shot hit the post and El Segundo’s Grundman’s shot was blocked near the end of regulation. In a pivotal Ocean League matchup, El Segundo scored in the first overtime period to edge Lawndale 1-0. The Eagles had two starters out but continued to play tough defensively and come away with an inspirational win. Grant Bemis was sidelined with a sore hamstring so the Eagle’s offense was challenged without its playmaker. The game’s only goal came when Stone took the ball down the sideline into Lawndale territory and worked a corner kick. Then See Soccer Teams, page 16 Lakers’ Future Remains Uncertain By Adam Serrao Nothing about the season that the Los Angeles Lakers are having is predictable. One week, the team will come out and win two-straight games against the Atlanta Hawks and the Houston Rockets; the next, they’ll drop seven games in a row. One week Kobe will notch a triple-double and his team will play tremendously; the next, they will look like they are the worst team in the league. Well now, midway through the season, certainty has surfaced around the Lakers. The certainty is that their best player, Kobe, is badly injured and is expected to miss the remainder of the season with a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder. Though it sounds like horrible news and certainly is for any fan of Kobe Bryant’s, him missing the rest of the season is perhaps the best thing that could happen to the Los Angeles Lakers. It is never good news when a player gets injured. Especially when that player is Kobe Bryant and has the legacy that he has built for himself. But when Bryant suffered the tear in his shoulder during the second half of last Wednesday night’s loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, everyone had to start preparing for the worst. “Yeah, I’m worried,” head coach Byron Scott said. “We all in the organization are worried about it.” Kobe has apparently been dealing with the rotator cuff injury since the preseason, but re-aggravated it with just over four minutes remaining in the third quarter against the Pelicans last week when he rose into the air for a two-handed slam dunk. “It felt fine when I went up,” Kobe said. “ Didn’t feel too good when I came down.” Even after it was obvious that he was injured, Kobe continued to play in typical Kobe fashion, even going so far as to check back in midway through the fourth quarter. Unfortunately for Bryant, the 19-year NBA veteran, that may have been the last game that he will find himself checking back into this season. At Bryant’s age and with all of the basketball minutes that he has accrued over the years, overworking the superstar may have been the cause for injury once again. During the first 27 games of the season, Kobe averaged 35.4 minutes a game, good for most on the team. “I don’t know if the wear and tear of playing so many minutes early is a result of what’s happening to him now,” Scott explained. “To be honest with you, I thought about that, it made me almost sick, you know?” Well if Scott should have learned one thing about Bryant after he tore his Achilles tendon, it was that his aging basketball body isn’t quite holding up the same way it once did to being overused. That being said, the Lakers were 12-31 after their loss to New Orleans that night and clearly on the road going nowhere. With a record that currently makes them the fourth worst team in the league owning a top-five-protected draft pick, the Lakers can use every loss that they can get this season. If you’re a die-hard Lakers fan, you may not understand the concept of losing. Seeing your team win every possible game played is usually the object of an 82-game regular season. The Lakers, however, are already clearly out of playoff contention this season and while being competitive is truly great to see out of a struggling team, sometimes looking into the future is even better. In order for the Lakers to get better and back on top of the league, they are going to need players. Right now, the Lakers do not have championship-quality or even playoff-quality players. With Julius Randle on the mend from a season-ending surgery and a top pick in this year’s upcoming draft, however, the Lakers could start to build a core that championships are made out of. In order for the Lakers to get that top pick in this year’s draft, though, they will have to finish the year as one of the five worst teams in the league. The injury to Kobe Bryant will certainly help the Lakers in attaining that lowly feat. If it hasn’t become clear yet, it must be stated that the Lakers need to start looking beyond Kobe Bryant. They will not be contenders in the Western Conference until the game’s all-time great hangs up his shoes once and for all. The numbers themselves state that the team may indeed be worse off with him in the lineup. As a whole, the team scores four more points and allows 10 fewer points per 100 possessions with him not on the floor. That means that the Lakers are 14 points per 100 possessions better this season when their superstar is not on the floor. If his season were to end today, which it very well may have already, Bryant will have finished with the worst field goal percentage (37.3) for a player who averaged at least 20 points per game in the last 50 seasons. As it is now, Kobe currently ranks 124th in the league in field goal percentage (third-worst among qualified players), 103rd in 3-point percentage, 74th in player efficiency rating, and 361st in win shares. Simply put, this isn’t 2001 anymore. The Lakers are a better team without Kobe Bryant. In addition to his horrendous numbers, the Buss family has seemingly had a difficult time recruiting players to play alongside Bryant and his strict, stubborn basketball personality. With no Kobe and a young core of Julius Randle and a top-five draft pick, skilled free-agents may begin to flock to Hollywood in no-time. Kobe Bryant has made the Lakers into what they are today. He is truly one of the greatest basketball players to ever play the game and may be the greatest player to ever don the historic purple and gold. Everyone’s time eventually comes, though, and Father Time seems to have a firm grasp of almost every body part of Kobe Bryant’s nowadays. There is no discounting the player he was and the tremendous, incredible impact that he has had on the game of basketball and more specifically the Los Angeles Lakers. But now may be the time that Kobe Bryant should start thinking about hanging them up, for the good of everyone involved. •
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