Camino

Kevin Williams had been an assistant football coach at Granada Hills Kennedy happily toiling around behind the scenes for 11 years when he was plucked from obscurity in 2007 to become coach at Woodland Hills El Camino Real, known for its powerful baseball program and underachieving football teams. "The program was in disarray," Williams said. "The principal is a man that I've known for many years. . . . He really had to do a selling job on me because I was happy at Kennedy, and I didn't want to be a head coach at the time.

 The trick play pulled off by the Woodland Hills El Camino Real junior varsity football team last week against Reseda Cleveland has hooked its audience on the web and on television. The YouTube video has surpassed 2.2 million views. The video has been shown on ESPN's SportsCenter, the Jimmy Kimmel Show and Fred Roggin's The Challenge, among others. Eric.sondheimer@latimes.com  

The experimenting is over for Los Angeles City Section baseball teams. On Tuesday, league play finally began, and it was an immediate chance to see which West Valley League teams got the message that there would be no more fooling around if the ambition to topple nine-time City champion Chatsworth is going to reach fruition. Woodland Hills El Camino Real (6-8), after strugging in the opening month of the season, had its serious game face on and turned the ball over to All-City right-hander Jose Cardona, who delivered a masterpiece in a 9-0 victory over Woodland Hills Taft.

 Granada Hills remains the team to beat in West Valley League girls' volleyball. The Highlanders cruised to a 25-19, 25-14, 25-19 victory over El Camino Real on Tuesday to improve to 3-0 in league. Sarah Hagge contributed 10 kills. Sophomore Kayla Jacks had 12 kills for El Camino Real in her debut. Eric.sondheimer@latimes.com  

You'd think that with a 4.2 grade-point average, junior Steven Karkenny of Chatsworth might offer a quote from Edgar Allan Poe or Henry David Thoreau in explaining the lesson learned from not having a particularly productive game two days ago against rival Woodland Hills El Camino Real. Nope — he offered these words of wisdom from Rocky Balboa: "It's not how hard you can hit. It's how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." Chatsworth Coach Tom Meusborn called in his closer, Karkenny, with two outs in the fifth inning Thursday, and he shut down El Camino Real the rest of the way, throwing 2 1/3 innings of shutout relief in the Chancellors' 2-1 victory.

It happened so fast on a cloudless, picturesque Saturday afternoon at Dodger Stadium that Justin Scovel thought he was dreaming. With two out and a 3-and-2 count in the bottom of the seventh inning of the City Section Division I championship game, the Woodland Hills El Camino Real senior hit a score-tying triple. Then he raced home to score the winning run after a passed ball and was mobbed in a dog pile behind home plate to conclude a wild 9-8 victory over San Pedro. His coach, Josh Lienhard, was breathless.

HIGHLIGHTS: El Camino Real streaked to an 18-6 lead in the opening quarter on its way to a season-opening victory. . . . Voviette Morgan (ECR) scored six points and grabbed seven rebounds in the first eight minutes. . . . All-City senior forward Michelle Kirby (ECR) also scored six in the first quarter on the way to a game-high 21 points. SCORING LEADERS: Michelle Kirby (ECR) 21; Voviette Morgan (ECR) 14; Shagarro Lattin (B) 12.

Going into the semifinal round of the L.A. City 4-A softball playoffs, Banning High had lost only two games in a 23-game season. The Pilots had lost to San Pedro and El Camino Real, two of the section's top-rated teams. They got a second chance Wednesday against El Camino Real at South Gate Park in a game that would send the winner into the city final. But again the result was the same as El Camino Real ended Banning's season with a 2-1 victory in 11 innings. El Camino Real will face San Pedro--a winner over San Fernando in the other semifinal--for the title Wednesday.

Over the last 37 seasons, San Fernando Valley teams have won every City Section Division I baseball championship except one. In 1992, San Pedro won the championship, and the Pirates (24-5) will try again to break up the Valley domination when facing Woodland Hills El Camino Real (18-11) in Saturday's 1 p.m. final at Dodger Stadium. The home-run ball has been critical in San Pedro's playoff success. It was Ronnie Galosic's three-run home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth that enabled the Pirates to beat San Fernando, 10-9, in their playoff opener.

I recently returned from Spain after having walked about the last 100 miles of the Camino de Santiago with Fresco Tours. I have traveled with many fine tour groups, so I can say that Fresco Tours is one of the best. Led by owner/tour guide Alex Chang, we were guided on the beautiful walk while being wined, dined and lodged in restored private medieval homes and rectories. If you want to walk the Camino knowing where you will eat and sleep every night, with the benefits that an organized small-group tour has to offer, Fresco will not disappoint.

They were two halves of a dysfunctional whole, a prosecutor said. Jason Alejandro Schumann and the mother of one of his children, Elizabeth Ibarra, both used meth and had spent time in jail for forgery. It was during Schumann's jail stint that Ibarra met a popular 17-year-old named Francisco Rodriguez Jr. And it was a just a week after Ibarra was released from jail that Rodriguez, just home from a soccer game, was gunned down in his San Fernando Valley frontyard. Ultimately, though, a jury decided that only Schumann, enraged by what he believed was a relationship between Ibarra and Rodriguez, was responsible for the teen's death.

 David Arriaga ran for two touchdowns and caught a touchdown pass on a trick play to help L.A. Roosevelt improve to 3-0 with a 37-13 win over El Camino Real. Taft held off Sierra Canyon, 60-52. Sierra Canyon QB Andre Nunez passed for more than 350 yards and ran for 217 yards. Taft running back Abraham Thomas had four touchdowns, including a 95-yard kickoff return. Newbury Park running back Matthew Matlock set a school record with 335 yards rushing in a 24-20 victory over Agoura.

 David Chae, a highly successful volleyball coach at Van Nuys for 10 years, has been hired to take over the boys' program at Woodland Hills El Camino Real. In another coaching addition at El Camino Real, Jun Reichl, who graduated from Royal and UCLA, has been hired to be an assistant with the cross country and track programs. Eric.sondheimer@latimes.com  

 City Section power Woodland Hills El Camino Real has gone back to the basics _ fielding, pitching and timely hitting. After a 14-17 record last season and a first-round playoff loss, the Conquistadores are going to make a quick turnaround in 2014. They've already advanced to the semifinals of the VIBL playoffs after a 4-1 victory over Granada Hills Kennedy on Thursday. Using a combination of talented sophomores up from junior varsity and a couple of hungry varsity returnees, El Camino Real should be back near the top of the West Valley League.

 With San Fernando having won the City Section baseball championship twice in the last three years, people seem to be thinking that powers Chatsworth and Woodland Hills El Camino Real are on the decline. Hold off on the supposed demise of those two programs. This summer in the Valley Invitational Baseball League, Chatsworth is 10-1 under new Coach Curtis Scott. The Chancellors have been showing off three young pitchers in sophomore Josh Garcia and juniors Anthony Mayorga and John Cashman.

They were tired and worn from months of preparation and two days of intense competition, but when they returned home to Los Angeles on Saturday they were also thrilled. For the third year in a row, Granada Hills Charter High School's Academic Decathlon team came home with a national victory. "To see it pay off in this way," senior Faria Ghouri said, "it's amazing. " The team was the first in more than two decades to pull off three consecutive wins - a Texas high school in the 1980s was the last to do so. The team of nine students scored 54,652 points out of a possible 66,000 in the rigorous 10-subject battle of wits, according to district officials.

Tickets are on sale for the Camino Real Playhouse's "The Magic of Christmas," which opens Friday. The show includes three one-act plays with Christmas themes and holiday music. Performances will run for three weekends at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, at 31776 El Camino Real. Tickets are $10 per person and $25 per family. Information: (949) 489-8082.

I want to inform your readers about what actually took place regarding a request to use Clinicas del Camino Real Inc. property for a temporary tent for the homeless. My initial conversation with Carol Roberg, executive director of the Ventura County Rescue Mission, was one of concern and compassion for her agency and the people it serves. I expressed to her my will to be of help but that I was under a time deadline and legal responsibility to begin construction on land that is designated to serve as a parking lot. This is not a self-imposed obligation but rather a condition of the construction and use permit that we obtained by the city of Oxnard.

Over the years, it wasn't unusual to see a Southern California school dominate the Academic Decathlon national competition. After California teams took 19 national titles since 1982 - including the last 10 in a row - it was almost expected. But this year comes with a twist: The closest competition for Granada Hills Charter High School - California's first-place team - is another school from Los Angeles Unified. A change in the rules in the rigorous 10-subject event has allowed more than one team from each state to compete at the nationals, creating a freeway series between two of the strongest teams vying to bring the title back to Los Angeles once again.

Expectations are always high when Chatsworth and Woodland Hills El Camino Real players put on a baseball uniform. The two schools have combined to win 16 City Section championships and produce a glittering group of major league players. So it's going to be hard to explain what transpired Tuesday in a West Valley League opener in which the teams combined for seven errors, 11 walks, four hit batters and a sometimes chaotic play. The game ended when Nick Milone delivered a run-scoring single in the bottom of the eighth inning for a 10-9 Chatsworth victory.