San Jose City College Basketball

Randel, Lassiter and Reggins Find Good Fortune in
San Jose City 57-55 Win in Tournament Opener

Riddled with turnovers and missed open shots, San Jose trailed Feather River for the entire first half, which ended with Feather River leading 33-25, an 8-point margin that they increased a fourth of the way in the second half to 45-34.

After a half-time adjustment session with the coaches, San Jose worked the lead down to 1-point with 5 minutes remaining in the contest when forward Chris Randel grabbed a defensive rebound, hit with a pass the streaking upcourt Quinston Reggins, who handed off to B.J. Lassiter in the right side fast break lane for the lay-up.
On the next possession, Reggins notched a stolen pass and hurled to ball to Lassiter, who when his path down the lane was blocked, stopped, stepped out, pivoted, and then hit an 6-foot jumper.

The Jags then grabbed the game's momentum for the last 5-minute run when Randel stole a Feather River look-in pass, hit Reggins who missed the downcourt lay-up when double-teamed at the other end, and then grabbed the follow-up rebound for a 2-point put-back.
Feather River missed 4 scoring opportunities with the game tied 55-55 in the last minute as Feather River set their sight on the win and San Jose defended for the overtime.

And then the Jags got an unexpected break

A Feather River turnover on an inbound pass with ELEVEN seconds left on the clock led to a missed shot by San Jose that rebounded off a Feather River's player hands, to the floor, and into the waiting grasp of San Jose's B.J. Lassiter, whose floater after the loose-ball pickup swished the Jaguar net to ice the cake with 1 second left.

It was unexpected good fortune for Percy Carr's team, which is now 3-2 and headed for the tourney semi-final game with Solano (5-2) Saturday at 6pm. If the Jags make it to final game it will be against perennial rivals DVC or Cabrillo, last year's conference champion.

Finn Lore

Finn Lore

Peter asked me to write about what makes Finns, and especially certain Finn sailors, so legendary in the sailing world. He suggested that I look at a column Corky Caroll writes about the early days of surfing in California. For you non-surfers, Corky Caroll was a champion surfer and local Orange county beach wave-rider known to all along the SoCal beaches. Caroll defined much of the “laid-back” character of surfing. The philosophy of the time could be defined by the occasion that I met Corky, years past his prime when he was doing surf reports at a San Diego radio station, and would drive along PCH to the recording studio in the early morning. This was before Caroll and other SoCal surf pioneers founded the first surfschools, which have now become the mainstay of popular beaches. It was a dark night and I was hitchhiking from near Doheny to Leucadia. Carroll picked me up in his Ford Econoline and we chatted along way about weather. He was really low-key but definitely established in what the current generation calls “his creds”.

Year later, Henry Sprague showed up at my house, an out-of-shape grownup who’d hadn’t sailed a Finn in a decade and a half. The famous Andy Kern of Chicago had moved from the Midwest to find Sprague, rescue him from oblivion, and give him a Finn to sail. That first training day Sprague fell asleep on my living room floor still in his wet sailing clothes, worn-out from a normal Spring day on the Richmond Southhampton.

Now the Finn sailors of this generation know Henry as alternating personalities between Super Henry, the kid who port-tacked the fleet at the 1974 Gold Cup on the way to winning the USA’s first FGC, and the pure-evil maniac portrayed in a YouTube video that circulated the summer before most recent Olympic Trials. Nobody knows for sure the true Henry, but when I was a teenage Sabot sailor in Ventura, Sprague was a regular fixture in the sailing rags of the day. He’d been put on a trip to Europe to sail Finns and came back to make the monthly-regatta meeting circuit to talk about the trip and fundraise. That’s how it was done in those days.

Now that we’re looking as a Finn class to how to fundraise, ideas that blast from the past that make sense today are like Carroll’s sailing schools and Sprague’s yacht clubs talks. And picking up Finns sailors that are hitchhiking to the next regatta.

At the beer bash/AGM, a conversation about Mexico led Peter and me to remember the columns that Jack Smith had written about building a house there. So this is the column about one Finn character—there’s others whose exploits are printed about in the archives of Finn Solos and Finnfare that go back to the Sixties. Reading them and hearing the stories about them around the regatta circuit, when put together, help define the unique character of Finn sailors. Lots of you out here have collections of these periodicals—what stories do they bring back to mind?

--CH

USA 32

3 Olympians at 2008 USA Finn Nationals

3 Olympians on 2008 Nationals Podium

Dan Slater, Richard Clarke, and Zach Railey, who earned a silver medal in Quindao last summer, mastered the 33-boat fleet and SF Cityfront fall conditions to finish 1-2-3 in October’s national championship.

The wind increased each day of the regatta, most of the racing sailed in an oncoming flood tide, and the wind with enough south in it to send shifts off the Marina District on to the race course. Slater built his finishing score by mastering the countercurrent up the wall from Ft. Mason to Anita Rock as well as the shifts early on in the event. Slater and Clarke matched with 3 wins apiece as Slater was better until the last day when the stiffer breeze favored Clarke.

Clarke, a three-time Olympian for Canada and now Pegasus sailing director, used his frequent experience on SF Bay to only trail New Zealand’s Slater by one point for the series.

Zach Railey, who switched from Lasers to Finn after the 2003 CORK regatta, finished college at Miami, and then spent 2.5 years in a full out Olympic campaign to a silver medal, USAFA’s first since 1992, returned to California for sort of a homecoming after his successful trip to China.

Railey told norcalsailing.org: “This is the first U.S. event I’ve been able to do since the trials last October. We spent so much time internationally, training over there. It’s nice to come home and especially here at the St. Francis. It’s one of the best places to sail in the world.”

The first race was postponed for two hours awaiting the arrival of the westerly. On schedule, the seabreeze built and the course was laid. Sunny skies, light ebb at the start, and the regatta was on! Railey rang the first bell with a first place finish, so as to say “I’m in the house” to his sponsors looking on the races from the plate-glass window of the club’s grill room.

Veteran Finn sailor Darrell Pack, whose light-air prowess enabled his wins at the North Americans and Eastern Championships this past summer, finished in fourth just ahead of 2007 national champion Andy Casey. John Romanko led the current Canadian national team with an eighth, just behind master legend Henry Sprague and incoming USAFA So-Cal vice-president Andy Kern.

Aussie David Giles led SFYC Youth Director Forrest Gay to round-out the top ten.

On the second and third days of the regatta, the wind arrived on time and with increased velocity. PRO John Craig moved the course further east than usual, which made the weather legs heavily-favored along the Ft. Mason-Crissy seawall, the harbor jetty, and the rocks in front of the club. “Q” flag conditions prevailed for lots of those races which made for great gains made jibing downwind in search of streaks and waves and many downwind photo-finishes.

Charles Heimler