WEB UPDATE: The season for the Poway American 10- and 11-year-old all-stars came to an end on Wednesday, after it fell 11-0 to Rancho San Diego in five innings.

Poway American ended as the runner-up of the Southern California Division III South Subdivisional tournament. Rancho San Diego now moves on to play the winner of the other Southern California subdivision for a two-out-of-three showdown to determine the state champion.

Rancho San Diego was the defending state champion. According to Poway American Manager Dean Weese, they returned all but one of their players from last year’s team.

“They’re a good hitting team and came at us from the get-go,” Weese said. “We battled the best we could, but came out on the short end.”

As Bradley Klahn prepares for his junior year at Stanford University this fall, he knows that he’ll have a really big target on his back.

After all, he’ll be the defending NCAA Division I singles champion, after finishing a 39-8 season with the Cardinal. He became the first to win an individual championship for the Palo Alto school since 2000.

According to the school, the 2008 Poway High grad is only one of 14 Stanford students to win the singles championship, and the ninth to do so after the NCAA adopted its current program. (Tennis legend John McEnroe accomplished the feat for the school in 1978).

Now on break, Klahn is playing in lots of professional tournaments this summer. He said he plans on not taking any money to maintain his amateur status so that he can continue playing collegiate tennis.

Poway High grad Alex Dickerson is one of 22 college baseball players who have been chosen to represent Team USA in the Collegiate National Team.

The honor marks another accolade for Dickerson, a soon-to-be junior at Indiana University who was the Big Ten Conference’s hitting leader in batting average, home runs and RBIs his sophomore year.

The team is composed of the top non-draft-eligible players in the country. Dickerson will be a designated hitter and backup first baseman and outfielder.

Brendon Villanueva has a date in Salt Lake City in September, one that could give him his big break in the world of professional skateboarding.

The 16-year-old Powegian will be competing in the Gatorade Free Flow Tour Finals, scheduled for Sept. 16-19 in Utah during the Dew Tour’s Toyota Challenge. The winner will earn a chance to compete against professional skaters in the Dew Tour in Las Vegas in October.

Villanueva earned his way to the final last month, when he won a regional skate park competition at the Magdalena Ecke Family YMCA in Encinitas.

According to the event’s website, the competition aims to give skaters and bike riders — the tour added a BMX dirt bike competition this year — of all skill levels the opportunity to have fun and compete, while finding top talent. The competition is open to those 21 and under.

As he considered where he wanted to go to college, Donnie McKillop, a 2007 Poway High grad, said he wanted to find a school where he could continue to play baseball and football.

He picked Middlebury College in Vermont, which plays NCAA Division III in the New England Small College Athletic Conference.

Now, as he prepares for his final year in college, McKillop says he knows he made the right choice by going to the smaller school.

This past year, he earned honors both on the gridiron and on the baseball field.

BY SEAN PEAT

Five local Little League All-Star teams are ready to take the field this weekend in the District 31 Tournament, which will put the winner one step closer to Williamsport and the Little League World Series.

The district’s majors tournament (for players 11 and 12 years old) starts Saturday, July 3 at Jesmond Dene Park in Escondido. The champion will be crowned at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 13 and will advance to section play.

The district’s local Little League teams are: Poway American, Poway National, Rancho Bernardo, 4S Ranch, and Carmel Mountain Ranch. District 31 also includes teams from Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe, Escondido, Encinitas, Solana Beach, Valley Center, and Encinitas.

Coaches say Encinitas National is considered the early favorite, after winning the majors division three years running.

The Poway Vaqueros Super-20 team has kicked off its third season, giving players ages 17-20 the opportunity to play against club teams affiliated with Major League Soccer squads.

As of press time, the Vaqueros were off to a 2-1 start, defeating the Southern California Seahorses and the Lancaster Rattlers and falling to the Chivas USA last Friday.

Today (Thursday, June 24), the team is scheduled to travel to the Home Depot Center to take on the LA Galaxy, another team sponsored by a major league outfit.

According to Assistant Coach Collin Garon, the Vaqueros are one of the few teams in their six-team league not to be affiliated with a professional or semiprofessional team.

“Most of the clubs are feeder clubs that go into teams like the Chivas USA and the LA Galaxy,” Garon said. “The teams are made up of a lot of youth national team players that are going to play pro next year.”

But that doesn’t mean that the Vaqueros have shirked away from the competition. In fact, last year they ended up winning their league and qualified for the finals, held in Chicago.

The following is a partial list of the all-league teams (featuring local players from the Palomar and Frontier leagues) for the recently concluded spring season.

WEB UPDATE: RB High grad Tanya Gandy and San Diegan Kelly Rulon will take part in the FINA World League Super Final. Both San Diego-bred players were named to the 15-person roster, which was unveiled Friday (June 25)

By Kathy Day

International water polo competition is coming to La Jolla’s Coggan Family Aquatic Complex June 28 to July 3, and a Rancho Bernardo High grad may be part of Team USA.

The event, the Women’s FINA World League Super Final, will feature eight teams, all of which had to qualify for the tournament.

As of press time, the U.S. team will be joined by Canada and China and possibly Australia, Greece and Hungary. Teams were still competing for the final spots.

“For anyone who likes water polo, this is the highest level international event that will be held in the U.S. in 2010,” USA Water Polo spokesman Greg Mescall wrote in an e-mail. “It’s also great for younger boys and girls that play club and high school water polo to see how it’s done at the Olympic level.”

Two local Little League All-Star teams, one from Poway and one from 4S Ranch, have earned the right to move on to section tournaments after winning the District 31 Championship in their division.

The Poway American All-Stars won the district crown in the division for 10- and 11-year-old players, while the 4S Ranch All-Stars won the Juniors division (for players ages 13-14) this past weekend.

Both teams move on to the Section 6 Tournament, which features champions from four districts. Their first games are scheduled for Saturday.

The teams are the only local All-Star squads that advanced to higher competition.

A Poway man is just a little over a week away from taking part in a water skiing competition whose course stretches for 62 miles along the Pacific Ocean — from Long Beach Harbor to the southern tip of Catalina Island.

The Catalina Water Ski Race, which takes place Saturday, July 17, may not be well-known, but it has a long history and a strong following among water skiers, some who come from as far away as Australia to compete in the event.

The top racers, who can finish the course in less than an hour, reach top speeds of up to 70 mph.

Todd Lackner said that while he has known about the event for a long time — a friend of his family was a competitor for 20-something years — it wasn’t until last year that he decided to compete.

The water polo résumé of Tanya Gandy, a 2005 Rancho Bernardo High graduate, is filled with success.

When she played for RB, she was a two-time CIF San Diego Section Player of the Year (2003 and 2005) and led the Broncos to their first-ever CIF section crown in 2003.

At UCLA, she and her teammates won four consecutive NCAA championships. By the time she graduated in 2009, she was named to the NCAA All-Tournament team twice and held a single-season scoring record for the Bruins.

Upon graduation, Gandy joined the national team, helping them win the World Championships in Rome and the World League in Kirishi, Russia, last summer.

Now, Gandy is back in San Diego for the FINA Women’s World League Super Final, which is being played through July 3 at the Coggan Family Aquatic Complex in La Jolla.

In Team USA’s first match, held Monday against Greece, Gandy scored once, contributing to the final 11-9 score.

Brendan Santana, who competes for Pacific Swim, took first place in the 50 and 100 flystroke for boys 10 and under at the Southern California Swimming June Age Invitational, held June 24-27 at the William Woollett Jr. Aquatics Center in Irvine.

His time in the 50 fly of 31.52 broke the San Diego Imperial record of 32.28 which was set in 1976 by Steve Creamer, while his 1:10.25 broke a record set in 1983.

Along with the All-Palomar League teams listed here, student athletes and coaches were recognized as part of the 2010 Spring All-CIF teams, selected by media representatives under the auspices of the San Diego Hall of Champions.

Rancho Bernardo Coach Sam Blalock, who led his team to its first CIF San Diego Section title since 2005.

A Poway martial arts school is holding open tryouts this Saturday in a bid to add to its roster of amateur fighters.

Poway Martial Arts, at 13240 Poway Road, will be evaluating potential recruits for its Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), Muay Thai, boxing and Jiu Jitsu squads starting at 1 p.m.
Barry Barker, owner of the gym, said the goal is to find undiscovered talent within the Inland Corridor.

“Poway has a great wrestling program and a lot of wrestlers train in martial arts and do competitive fighting,” Barker said. “We thought we’d open up the competition and see if there’s anyone out there who could represent our teams.”

Evan Thomas said he believes a faulty light on Poway High School’s baseball field led him to be part of Major League Baseball’s 2010 First-Year Player Draft.

The right-handed pitcher, who graduated from Poway High last week, was drafted by the Colorado Rockies in the 49th round — the draft’s penultimate round — making him the 1,490th pick overall out of 1,525 players chosen.

In a phone interview afterward, Thomas said he was honored to be a part of the draft, though he added that he’ll be turning down the offer and will be attending San Diego State University this fall.

“Playing for Major League Baseball has always been a dream of mine,” he said. “But as much as I’ve looked forward to playing there, I realize that I still have so much to learn about this game.”