A California junket

When parents and grandparents plan to attend an athletic event of their offspring it might involve leaving work early, packing snacks and bringing along a couple of lawn chairs. Those people are not the Syriacs.

Linda and I hopped a plane in Hartford and headed off to California to catch a couple of Santa Rosa Junior College women’s soccer games. Caina Field, whose dad, Kevin, excelled in soccer when at Lenox Memorial High School, is carrying on the family tradition on a very talented and successful team.

Santa Rosa has an enrollment of over 25,000 students – yes that is thousands – and teams they compete against are also heavily populated. They have been conference champs the last five years and were State Champs in 2011 (and it is a big state).

It was a good move to upgrade the rental car from a Kia Soul to a full-size ride because we were about to see a great deal of the Golden State. The first trip from our base camp in Santa Rosa was an 89-mile junket to Diablo Valley Community College for an afternoon contest.

Glad we brought the shorts: it was 73 degrees for the game. The best the Lady Bear Cubs could do was a 1-1 tie, but it was better than a loss and the grandparents didn’t get lost.

Venture no. 2 was a night maneuver to Cosummes River Junior College for a 6 p.m. start. This was a 109-mile journey to a beautiful stadium with an artificial surface.

If anyone has driven through Sacramento traffic during rush hour, they have my sympathy. I wish that I had packed the Carharts, duofolds and the gortex boots, because it was now raining and 50 degrees with winds that made me think that I took a wrong turn to Candlestick Park.

A 2-0 victory made it all worth the distractions. Caina played two solid games on defense and wanted to make sure she sent her best to her favorite Lenox merchant, Dan O’Brien of O’Brien’s Market.

We met many Division 1 and 2 college scouts, as they follow this brand of soccer very closely in California. In the past dozen years, Santa Rosa has sent over 30 gals on to play at the next level.
Good luck in the upcoming playoffs Lady Bear Cubs, and thanks for the entertainment.

Things about California I did not know:

*Gas is expensive.
*You can get a cup of tea for $4.
*People drive very fast on the highways.
*Cigarettes are only $4.50 a pack. The state is broke, why don’t they put a $5 tax on smokes? Their problems would be over (at least some of them).
*They have 32 beer taps at the bar at the Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, Calif.
*They have the death penalty there. Charles Manson is still alive so I would say it needs some tweaking.
*The Sonoma County Fair was not running horses, but the Jockey Club simulcast was in operation.
*In the why didn’t I think of that department: The infield of the race track also serves as a nine-hole golf course.
*Look on the bright side department: The next time your car breaks down, be thankful you are not in Oakland.

Local updates

It came late in the year and also late in his golf career, but it came. Al Cole of Lenox recorded his first hole-in-one when he knocked it in the ground on the 112-yard 15th hole at Bas Ridge on Nov. 12.

His crisp nine-iron to the uphill green found the bottom of the cup and was witnessed by Carol Tuggie, Lisa Love and Richie P. (Richie must have called in sick at work that day.) Nice going, Al.

With the constantly increasing lengths and challenging layouts of most golf courses, Bas Ridge has become a most interesting venue for golfers. It is a shot-maker’s course, where every hole is a potential birdie, but it is best not to get too complacent. The greens have always rolled nice and the conditions are always favorable.

MLB legend has local ties

The Beacon always looks for the local angle, and we found it after reading of the passing of Lee MacPhail at age 95. He was president of the American League and general manager of the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles and quoted as saying, “My whole working life was baseball.”

He must have forgot that he was a history teacher at Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts in his younger days.

Posted by Dick Syriac on December 13, 2012. Filed under Berkshire Sports Guy,Columns,Opinion,Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry