National Championships

Allyson Marquand of University High bypassed the state cross-country championships last weekend in order to try out for the national girls' 17-and-under soccer team. But she'll make her second consecutive appearance in the national cross-country championships Dec. 12 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Marquand saw to that Saturday by finishing seventh in the seeded girls' race at the West regional championships at Mt. San Antonio College.

After the 2007 high school baseball season, Matt LaCour made a surprising job change. He gave up one of the best coaching positions in the City Section at Woodland Hills El Camino Real to become coach at Studio City Harvard-Westlake, which was known more for its success in basketball, soccer, golf, water polo and tennis. It took six years, but LaCour put the Wolverines' baseball program on the map this season. Harvard-Westlake won the Southern Section Division 1 championship and earned a national championship plaque from Baseball America.

Jimmy Feigen was in …and then he wasn't. Josh Schneider was out and kept appealing decision after decision and finally got on the blocks for the 50-meter freestyle at the U.S. national championships in Irvine on Thursday night. The bizarre back-and-forth day was triggered when Schneider forgot to scratch from the morning preliminaries in the 100 butterfly. He said later that he and his coaches didn't even know he was entered and was stunned there was even an issue. Under the rules, not scratching put him out of the 50 freestyle and led to his subsequent appeals, three in all. Under protest, he got in and Feigen was pushed to the consolation final.

The time was right for Trey Burke. The Michigan star made it official Sunday: He's leaving the Wolverines to enter the NBA draft. The move came as no surprise after Burke was voted the Associated Press national player of the year and led Michigan to the NCAA title game as a sophomore. Burke also considered going to the NBA a year ago, but he came back for another season. Now he departs with his stock seemingly peaking. "I just felt like this was the best opportunity for me," Burke said.

Continuing the trend of playing up an age group, Amanda Basica of Rolling Hills Estates advanced to the semifinals of the U.S. Tennis Assn. Girls' 16s National Championships with a 6-1, 7-5 victory over Jennifer Hall of Oklahoma City, Okla., Thursday at Morley Field. Basica, the tournament's top-seeded player, will play unseeded Corina Morariu of Boca Raton, Fla., at 10:30 this morning. Morariu was a 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 winner over fourth-seeded Leslie Cook of Boyton Beach, Fla.

Golfer Jane Park of Beaumont made seven birdies Tuesday for a six-under-par 65 and a one-stroke lead after the first round of the AJGA McDonald's Betsy Rawls Girls' National Championship at DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, Del. Sukjin Wuesthoff of Toms River, N.J., who is coming off a victory Saturday in the U.S. Junior Championship, had six birdies but bogeyed No. 18 to finish the round one stroke behind Park. Paula Creamer of Pleasanton, Calif., and Tiffany Tavee of Gilbert, Ariz.

Diving is the last thing Scott Donie should be doing. It is tearing him up inside. Yet, there he was Wednesday morning, throwing an inward 1 1/2 somersault, the first of 11 dives in the three-meter springboard semifinals of the Phillips 66 National Diving Championships at USC Swim Stadium. "It's really hard," he said. "I'm totally burnt out. I'm not enjoying it at all." Donie is competing in the season-ending event for the sake of those who share his depressive state.

Three area girls will compete in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Tacoma, Wash., Feb. 1-8 after qualifying in the Pacific Coast sectionals at Phoenix recently. Joan Colignon, 16, of La Mirada will compete in her first national championships in the senior ladies division. She was fourth overall at Phoenix. In the junior ladies division, Karen Terry, 14, of Garden Grove finished third in the sectionals. Last year, she finished second in the ladies novice division in the nationals.

Two years ago, she was an 800-meter specialist in track. Last year, she moved up to the 1,600. After finishing ninth in the Foot Locker national cross-country championships Saturday at Morley Field, Courtney Pugmire of Esperanza might focus her attention on the 3,200 in the spring. It wouldn't be a bad choice, considering how well she has performed this fall at distances of three miles and 5,000 meters. "I really had no goal coming into this meet," Pugmire said after running 17 minutes 31.

In the previous two cross-country meets, his legs had felt dead during the final stages of the race. Saturday, it was Eleazar Hernandez's arms that couldn't propel him any faster in the Foot Locker national championships at Morley Field. The Camarillo High senior was one of five runners in contention for the title with 800 meters remaining, but as he began his ascent on the final hill, his arms lacked the snap that usually drives him up hills as fast as anyone.

Andrew Miller scored 6 minutes 59 seconds into overtime to lift Yale to a 3-2 victory over Massachusetts Lowell in the NCAA men's hockey semifinals at Pittsburgh. The senior captain raced around a pair of River Hawks defenders, then slipped a backhand shot between the legs of goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. The Bulldogs (21-12-3) will play rival Quinnipiac in the final Saturday. Yale's Jeff Malcolm made 16 saves but didn't even see a shot in overtime as the Bulldogs buzzed Hellebuyck before Miller broke through.

NEW ORLEANS - After all the years and countless milestones, it's hardly possible for Connecticut to bounce a pass anymore without making history. Geno Auriemma, the master craftsman, and his series of master classes, have become as synonymous to women's basketball as Howard Johnson was to the ice-cream cone. Things just seemed vastly different in the world once they came along. On Tuesday, after being re-routed at times by injuries and, well, you know, Notre Dame, the Huskies arrived at the place they've come to know so well.

Wayne Gretzky is long gone from the Kings and long retired from the NHL, but the impact of his presence in Los Angeles is being felt more strongly than ever in the increasing success of youth hockey players who were born and trained in Southern California. The L.A. Junior Kings AAA team, composed of kids born in 1996 and 1997 - Gretzky was dealt by the Kings to the St. Louis Blues on Feb. 27, 1996 - will play for the USA Hockey national championship this week in Pittsburgh. The tournament will start Wednesday and runs through Sunday.

OMAHA - Who's No. 2? That is the big question in the singles competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which begin Thursday with the women's and pairs short programs. The bigger question is whether whoever winds up as the No. 2 skater in women's and men's singles will be good enough at the World Championships in March to help the United States earn a third spot in the 2014 Olympic field. Given the world meet performances the past few years, that doesn't seem likely.

A couple of years ago, the Tijuana Xolos were just another anonymous team languishing in the second tier of Mexican soccer. But Sunday afternoon, 18 months after being promoted to the elite first division, the young upstarts have a chance to win the prestigious 18-team Torneo Apertura and stake a claim to being the best team in the country. How unusual is that? Well, imagine the minor league Toledo Mud Hens joining the National League and winning the World Series a year later.

Notre Dame 22, USC 13 (final) This time there was no historic upset, no sweet present for the SEC, no coming out party for a USC Heisman Trophy hopeful. Just another painful loss in a season that has seen surprisingly too many of them for the Trojans. The loss left USC, a team that started the season ranked No. 1, an almost stunning 7-5, while the top-ranked Irish will advance to the BCS championship game for the first time. The Irish last won a national title in 1988.

The U.S. Figure Skating Assn. wised up and awarded its National Championships to the Sun Belt after all those winters in refrigerated cities such as Denver, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis, where the snow, ice and subzero windchill-factored temperatures were largely for effect considering this is an indoor sport.

The future of American swimming will be unveiled this week in the U.S. national championships at Mission Viejo. Westlake Village's Jason Stelle hopes to become part of that high-class group. "I want to help bring in the new wave of the future," he said. "At this meet, we'll see who it's going to be." Stelle, a sophomore-to-be at USC, expects to drop a second off his 100-meter backstroke time (57 seconds) and two seconds off his 200 backstroke mark (2:03.00).

Former Texas football coach Darrell Royal, who won two national championships with the Longhorns, has died. He was 88. Royal had suffered from Alzheimer's disease and recently fell at an assisted living center where he was receiving care. In 23 years as a head coach, he never had a losing season, with his teams boasting a 167-47-5 record in his 20 years at Texas, the best record in the nation over that period (1957-1976). Royal won 11 Southwest Conference titles and national championships in 1963 and 1969, going 11-0 each time.

The University of Illegal Formations impaired its national title chances with an eight-penalty loss at Stanford and then abandoned the Bowl Championship Series ship with last weekend's 13-penalty defeat at Arizona. The team ranked No. 1 in the preseason Associated Press poll currently ranks No. 120 in NCAA categories for penalties and penalty yards. You don't need a slide rule to draw that straight-line correlation. Although USC has not been able to control itself on the field, incredibly, it still controls a lot of things.