The Star's longtime columnist explains which UA teams won on signing day, why three local sports figures will be missed, why Sahuaro High School graduate Alex Verdugo nearly made Tucson history, and why the still-new local high school football appears to be teetering.
Wildcats coaches get creative, deliver on national signing day
UA women’s golf coach Laura Ianello signed a strong recruiting class in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, landing highly touted golfers from France and Italy.
November’s annual letter-of-intent signing period might’ve seemed a bit subdued last week, but at Arizona it was anything but. Instead, it became a reflection on how creative and successfully UA coaches adapted to the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic situation.
The three biggest recruiting coups probably came from women’s golf, women’s basketball and men’s tennis. Here’s how I rank the top three signing classes:
Not surprisingly, 2018 NCAA championship women’s golf coach Laura Ianello was at the top of her game. She signed two of the world’s top 100 junior amateurs: Carolina Melgrati of Italy and Lilas Pinthier of France.
“We were very lucky to get ahead in recruiting,” said Ianello. “The Class of 2022 is the group of kids who will really be affected.”
Even at that, Ianello has two commitments in the Class of ’22, neither of whom has visited Tucson yet.
Pinthier, who was part of the world Junior Solheim Cup team in 2019, has won tournaments in Morocco and France. She committed to the UA without visiting Tucson. Melgrati, who has won two major Italian women’s amateur events, visited Arizona before COVID-19 hit.
If the 2021 NCAA women’s golf season is played, Arizona is likely to open the season ranked in the top three or four in the nation.
UA men’s tennis coach Clancy Shields, the 2019 Pac-12 coach of the year, told me a few months ago that he believes Arizona will be in the conversation to win a national championship someday soon. He said that after bringing in the nation’s No. 6 recruiting class a year ago, a European-laden group of tennis players who immediately paid off.
He added to that last week when he signed Colton Smith of the Seattle metro area. “Colton is the highest-ranked recruit we have landed in program history,” said Shields.
Smith was fifth in the U.S. National Clay Courts championships last year and was 11-2 against five-star opponents according to USTA figures. Impressive.
Aaronette Vonleh was recommended to Adia Barnes by Lisa Griffith, a former UA player and assistant.
Adia Barnes’ recruiting in women’s basketball continues to soar. The Wildcats signed a vaunted center for the second straight year, which is unprecedented in school history. But what made the signing of 6-foot 3-inch Aaronette Vonleh of the Portland metro area so significant is that Barnes was able to get Vonleh away from Top 10-level programs Oregon and Oregon State. Vonleh is ranked as high as the No. 38 overall recruit in women’s college basketball.
In a Zoom conference Friday, Barnes did not back off the highest-ever projections for UA women’s basketball; Arizona is ranked No. 7 in the AP preseason poll.
“We have the players,” she said.
The UA’s backcourt of Aari McDonald and Canadian national team guard Shaina Pellington should be special.
“I wouldn’t want to have to prepare my team for those two,” she said.
Tucson loses 3 distinguished figures
UA basketball player Luke Walton,#4, is wiping away a tear as he and Donna E. Swaim, Ph.D. Humanities teacher are sharing their feelings and emotions about the death of Bobbi Olson, the wife of UA basketball head coach Lute Olson, as some of the players were shooting around in McKale Center earlier today. Photo by Benjie Sanders. Photo taken on 1-2-2001.
Three Tucsonans from different walks of life — a baseball player, a UA professor and a football coach — died here last week. All made a significant impact in Tucson sports.
Glenn Ezell, a 1960s all-city baseball and basketball player at Amphitheater High School, a 2016 inductee into the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame, died last week at 75 after an extended illness.
He was a baseball lifer. After playing in 611 minor-league games, he was the manager of 10 minor league teams, including the Toledo Mud Hens. Then the Detroit Tigers hired him to be part of their big-league coaching, scouting and development staff for 10 more years. Ezell moved back to Tucson a few years ago and it was always a pleasure to bump into him. His stories about everyone from Yogi Berra to Kirk Gibson were a treasure to hear.
Dan Wickland was part of Jim Monaco’s last few football coaching staffs at Pima College; he completed his long coaching career as a defensive assistant at Sunnyside High School. He died last week at 63 after a struggle against esophageal cancer. Wickland had coached at various levels in Tucson football for 17 years.
He was a humble, unassuming man who had played college football in Oklahoma before moving to Tucson. When he wasn’t coaching football, he worked in the meat department at Safeway, a friendly face to all.
Donna Swaim was an ever-present face at McKale Center, a Faculty Fellow late in a distinguished career as a UA professor who became something of a mentor to everyone from future NBA player Luke Walton to nine-time NCAA championship swimmer Ryk Neethling. She died last week at 86.
Annie Chandler Greevers, a 14-time All-American swimmer and member of the UA Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2020, put Swaim’s influence into context better than I can. Here’s what Annie posted on Facebook:
“I took her class twice because I could. It was called ‘Spirituality In the Arts’ but our class started calling it Friendship 101,” Grevers wrote. “It’s a class our generation needs. I remember being shocked as she described our task during the first class. First, we moved our desks into a circle. Then we went around sharing about ourselves and vigorously took notes on one another.
“After every student had shared about themselves (this took many class sessions), Donna put together quizzes on the class, i.e. ‘Who named their cat after a Star Wars character?’ It wasn’t meant to be an ice breaker. It was very much the point of the class. Of course, we read books and talked about philosophers and poets too, but what I remember from those classes were the people. That’s what Dr. Swaim cared about the most. She saw everyone as rare and interesting.
“At a huge university like UA, it can be easy to not speak to a soul during some classes. But Dr. Swaim would see that as a great waste. She loved nothing more than learning from and about her students. In 2016, I started doing ‘Tuesdays with Donna at McKale.’ We’d share a cookie and talk about life.”
She will be missed.
Lancers make Tucson history with girls, boys state crowns
Salpointe Catholic’s Kylie Wild has the top local time and the 12th-best time in the state for the 5,000 meters this year.
It was a special week for Salpointe Catholic High School boys and girls cross country coach Mike Urbanski, whose teams swept the state championship finals in both events.
It was the first time in Tucson history that a coach has produced state titles in both cross country races in the same year. Urbanski has coached the Salpointe girls team to state titles in 2016, 2017 and now 2020. A former Salpointe distance runner himself — a former Boston Marathon runner — Urbanski had the pleasure of coaching his grandson, Michael Urbanski, as part of the Lancers’ boys state title team. Michael finished eighth overall.
“It was a pretty special day,” Mike Urbanski said. “I’m really proud of how our athletes persevered through all of the pandemic ups and downs, stayed safe, and pulled together as a team. We know how lucky we were just to have a season.”
The Urbanski family is one of the most decorated in Tucson distance-running history. Mike’s son, Joe, finished second in the state finals in 1995 and became part of Stanford’s 2001 Pac-10 championship team. He is an attorney in San Francisco. His son Mike — Michael’s father — was a former standout runner at Salpointe and is now the captain of the Rio Rico fire department.
February won’t be the same here with no rodeo in 2021
Bull rider Scottie Knapp struggles to get out of harms way after getting thrown off Record Rack's Overwatch during the bull riding event on the final day of the 95th Annual La Fiesta de los Vaqueros Tucson Rodeo at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds, 4823 S. 6th Ave., in Tucson, Ariz. on February 23, 2020. Knapp received a no score.
It wasn’t much of a surprise last week when the La Fiesta de los Vaqueros — the Tucson Rodeo — announced it would cancel the 2021 event. It made you appreciate the history of the 95-year-old event. The Tucson Rodeo was not held was 1943, when events of World War II led to the rodeo’s cancellation — though a shadow event, run by many of the rodeo’s organizers, was held that year near the old El Conquistador Hotel. In 1943, most of the top names in pro rodeo were in the military service, and the Army actually took control of the Tucson Rodeo Grounds during much of 1943.
Alex Verdugo receives MVP votes
Sahuaro HIgh School grad Alex Verdugo swings as Boston Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke looks on.
Sahuaro High School grad Alex Verdugo finished 12th in the American League MVP voting last week, getting six total votes. Verdugo, an outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, hit .308 in 53 games. He is one of baseball’s leading defensive outfielders. The only other Tucsonan to finish higher in the MVP voting was CDO second baseman Ian Kinsler, who finished 11th in 2011. Former Arizona basketball point guard Kenny Lofton is the highest-ranked ex-Wildcat in MVP voting history. Lofton, a center fielder who played in six All-Star games, finished fourth in 1994 when he hit 349, led the league with 60 stolen bases and won a Gold Glove award.
Chip Hale joins Tigers' coaching staff
Bench coach Chip Hale restrains Nationals manager Dave Martinez after being ejected for arguing an interference call during the seventh inning of Game 6 of the baseball World Series against the Houston Astros.
Arizona’s 1987 All-Pac-10 infielder Chip Hale, a key part of the UA’s 1986 national championship team, has been hired to be the Detroit Tigers’ third base coach. After parting ways with the Washington Nationals late last month — Hale had been the bench coach on Washington’s 2019 World Series title team — he was a sought-after coach in the MLB offseason. Since managing the Tucson Sidewinders to the 2006 Pacific Coast League championship, Hale has been manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks as well as a base coach for New York Mets and Oakland A’s.
I-Ridge grad Tony Torres wins D-II national title
Tony Torres, a distance runner from Ironwood Ridge High School, had the most significant race of his young life Saturday, winning the NCAA Division II cross country championship in Lubbock, Texas. Torres, a junior at Colorado Mesa University, had finished 18th in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference finals on Oct. 24. But on Saturday, he broke away to win the national title by 15 seconds. While at Ironwood Ridge, Torres finished eighth in the 2017 state championships. He is majoring in mechanical engineering at Colorado Mesa.
Listen up: Jeff Scurran's show, podcast give sports fans inside info
Former Salpointe High School head coach Dennis Bene, left, and former head coach at various schools in the area, Jeff Scurran, chat on the sidelines in as Wyoming takes on Georgia State during the third quarter of the Arizona Bowl, Arizona Stadium, December 31, 2019.
Recommended listening: Three-time state championship football coach Jeff Scurran, who was Pima College’s first football coach, is now part of the “Behind the Locker Room Door” radio sports program broadcast Saturdays at 4 p.m. on KVOI 1030-AM. The program, which includes former UA football tight end Glenn Howell and Brad Allis, also produces a podcast. Thus far, Scurran and his co-hosts have interviewed, among others, Georgia Tech basketball coach Josh Pastner and Tucsonan Jim Fogltance, who has been part of the Pac-12 football officiating and TV replay operations for 35 years. The scheduled guest this week is Rich Rodriguez.
Tucson hoops coaches land on their feet
Dylan Hidalgo
Dan Majerle’s basketball program fell apart at Grand Canyon and Majerle and his staff were fired last spring. It affected two of the rising names in Tucson basketball coaching: assistant coaches Chris Crevelone of Canyon del Oro High School and Dylan Hidalgo of Rincon/University High School lost their jobs. Fortunately, both have landed well and are back in coaching. Crevelone last week was hired as an assistant coach at Cal State Bakersfield; he coached at GCU for seven years and at Texas for four seasons. Hidalgo, who coached at GCU for two seasons after helping Pima College go 53-18 in two years, has been hired as an assistant at the University of Texas-Tyler.
My two cents: As Phoenix teams chug along, local seasons teetering
Canyon del Oro's Stevie Rocker (6) runs the ball past the line of scrimmage during the first half of CDO vs Ironwood Ridge's high school football game at CDO, 25 W. Calle Concordia, in Oro Valley, Ariz. on Nov. 13, 2020.
The high school football season in Tucson is teetering. Or maybe it has already teetered.
Sabino is 1-0. It’s mid-November. At one point a few months ago, Sabino was considered a favorite to win the Class 3A state championship. Now it is ineligible for any sort of state playoffs.
Palo Verde and Empire have not played a game. Sahuaro is 0-2. Tucson High is 1-0. Sunnyside has played one game. Mountain View did not play its first game until Saturday afternoon.
Yet the Phoenix super-powers are moving on toward the state playoffs as if nothing is wrong. Chandler and Chandler Hamilton are both 6-0. Tempe Corona del Sol and Goodyear Desert Edge are 7-0. Even the Flagstaff schools have played seven games.
But the only two Tucson teams to play more than three games are Pusch Ridge Christian and Salpointe Catholic. Both are private schools and do not have to follow more complicated protocols like the Tucson, Sunnyside, Amphitheater and Marana school district teams do.
For most of Tucson’s high school football programs, this is a lost season, almost irretrievable, just trying to play as many games as is safely possible before moving on and hoping 2021 will be a return to normal.
On Friday, Canyon del Oro held its Senior Day even though it was only the Dorados’ third game of the season. Who knows what could happen before CDO’s final scheduled home game, Dec. 10 against Walden Grove?
