Photos by Steve Galluzzo
Pali Rec Center Girls Minor Basketball Team Wins West Region
By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor
The Palisades Recreation Center Girls Minors Division All-Star basketball team found itself behind at halftime of last Wednesday’s West Region championship game at Westwood Recreation Center—the first time it had trailed at any point of any game in the tournament—and coach Blake Schinto’s message was simple: relax and play ball.
“It was the first time we’ve ever been behind so I told them to smile, share the basketball and we’ll win this with our defense,” Schinto said. “We hadn’t let any of our previous opponents score in double digits so we wanted to keep that streak going and we knew if we did we’d have a great chance of winning. It was only a matter of time before our shots started falling.”
To their credit the players responded to their first taste of adversity by outscoring Mar Vista 11-0 in the second half to prevail 17-7 and join last year’s Girls Minors team and the Boys Minors team in 2017 as the only Pali Rec Center regional hoops winners. The talent-laden roster of 9 and 10-year-olds featured guards Caroline Schinto, Joey Hansen, Catie Sterparn, Nicole Sacks and Soy Yoon and forwards Vivienne Kremser, Brinley Long, Sabrina Ma and Georgia Thomas.
Coaching beside Schinto was Brian Hansen, who guided last year’s Girls Minors All-Stars to the region and Citywide championships along with Kori Elliott. That team proved to be a juggernaut and this year’s group has looked like one thus far also, sweeping through pool play with a 34-4 victory over Westchester, a 19-6 triumph over Mar Vista and a 32-7 win versus Cheviot Hills.
The other pool consisted of Stoner, Westwood, Barrington and Penmar.
In the semifinal round, Palisades trounced host Westwood 29-8 to move into the finals and a rematch with Mar Vista, which outscored Stoner 18-12 in the semifinals and was looking to avenge its 13-point loss to Palisades on March 14.
Early on it looked like Palisades was on its way to another easy win as it built a 5-1 lead in the first 10 minutes. However, the fouls began to pile up, allowing the opposition to erase its deficit at the free throw line.
Mar Vista led, 7-6, at intermission.
In the second half, Palisades upped its defensive intensity and took the lead for good, 8-7, on a pair of free throws by Caroline Schinto at the 17-minute mark. She and Hansen are the only returners from last year’s championship team and their pedigree showed as the game progressed.
Schinto led all scorers with seven points, Sacks and Ma had four apiece and Yoon and Long each added one free throw. A Sacks jumper made it 12-7 and Schinto swished two foul shots to increase the margin to 14-7 as the clock ticked under five minutes. A last-second basket was waved off, but once the final buzzer sounded and the 10-point victory was secure, players took turns posing for pictures with the first-place trophy and had medals placed around their necks. The celebration, however, was somewhat subdued because there is still basketball left to be played. The mission was not over for this group. There was still one prize to be claimed.
Sacks teamed with Schinto and Ma to capture the Pali Rec Center’s regular season title with the Sun and played with Sterparn on the Palisades Predators, a local AYSO Extra 10U soccer team that placed third at the Western State Championships in Moorpark a few weeks ago.
Thomas and Long were teammates on the Sky which lost to the Sun in the regular season finale. Now, after several weeks of practices and games together, all of the players have bonded and headed into this week’s Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks Citywide Championships full of confidence.
The semifinals were yesterday against the Pacific Region champion and, if victorious, Palisades will play either the Valley or Metro Region winner for the championship at 12:45 p.m. this Saturday, April 1, at Obama Sports Complex (formerly Rancho Cienega Sports Complex).
Last April, Pali Rec’s Girls Minor All-Stars surrendered a total of 10 points to Yosemite and Northridge in the Citywide tournament.
The day after the girls’ triumph, Palisades’ Coed Minor and Major teams took the same floor to see if they, too, could win the regional crown.
The Minors, piloted by Matt Unger and David Cacciapaglia, had to defeat another Palisades squad (coached by Vijay Srinivasan and Derek Kroeger) 48-21 five nights earlier to earn a spot in the finals against host Westwood. Despite the spirited efforts of Cameron Mackay, William Hill,
Nicolas Kassib, Beckett House, Will Reierson, Sean Garaty and co-captains Shiloh Unger and Peter Cacciapaglia, Palisades fell 43-34 but not before erasing a nine-point halftime deficit at the start of the second half.
In the Majors Division, Palisades traded baskets with Cheviot Hills until the clock ticked under two minutes, before four free throws allowed Cheviot Hills to pull out a 44-39 victory. Coached by Jeff Konecke and David Freeman, Palisades’ 11 and 12-year-old squad was paced by Lucas May, who scored 11 points, along with Max Konecke and Tomas Tehrani, who added eight points apiece. Also contributing to Palisades’ cause were Jojo Rhodes, Jesse Wolfson, Max Miller, Ryan Freeman, Malaki Rosen and Elijah Barrett.
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