SD Prep Sports

SD Prep Sports: Roller Hockey

San Diego City/Mesa wins first collegiate league title

By Phillip Brents

Posted Jan. 10, 2004

The evenness of the inaugural San Diego Collegiate Roller Hockey League displayed itself in fine fashion in the five-team circuit’s round-robin playoff championship as San Diego City/Mesa College captured the title on the second tiebreaker criteria.

San Diego City/Mesa, playoff runner-up Grossmont College and third-place Southwestern College all tied with 3-1-0 round-robin records as the teams took turns defeating the other in the round-robin playoff format, held over two weekends, Dec. 7 and 14, at Skate San Diego in National City.

The first tie-breaker is head-to-head record but with the three-way tie, the second tie-breaker – least goals allowed – came into play. San Diego City/Mesa – braced by regular season and playoff MVP goaltender Adam Meehan – allowed seven goals in its four playoff games while Grossmont, keyed by former NARCh Varsity Cup goaltender Tommy Prewitt, gave up eight goals. Southwestern College, led by 2003 AAU Nationals skills competition winner Louie Valentine between the pipes, allowed 10 goals.

San Diego City/Mesa won the regular season title also on a tie-breaker after finishing in a deadlock with Southwestern atop the standings. Both teams finished with identical 5-2-1 records but San Diego/City Mesa had the better goal-against, allowing 22 goals to SWC’s 30 goals.

Ironically, Southwestern failed to lose a game against San Diego City/Mesa in regular season play – finishing with a 4-4 overtime draw and 3-2 overtime win. In the playoff tournament, it was Grossmont’s turn to wear a sour grimace after defeating San Diego/City Mesa 4-2 in an exciting end-to-end game. However, Grossmont’s 6-2 loss to Southwestern the previous weekend, coupled with San Diego City/Mesa’s 4-1 victory against Southwestern, set up the championship tiebreaker.

San Diego/City Mesa was picked to finish third in an informal preseason poll behind No. 1 pick Grossmont and No. 2 pick Southwestern.

Understandably, none more pleased with the outcome of the season was San Diego City/Mesa coach Tom Najimy.

"Our goalie came up unbelievably. I would say 80 to 90 percent of the time, he turned players away on breakaways," the San Diego City/Mesa coach said. "The key to our season was that we learned how to play transition. At the beginning, we were playing end to end and see what happens. We learned how to set up the pass and not just play the puck end to end. When we started shooting on the pass, we were scoring goals at a higher rate."

Najimy credited Meehan, a graduate of Hilltop High School, as the team’s defensive MVP and Luis "Speedy" Gonzalez (Chula Vista High) as the team’s offensive MVP. Rounding out the team’s championship roster were Brian Hamlin, Ryan Najimy, Ryan Delgado, Sean Sackrider, Kirk Christiansen, Bill Bond, Omid Arjomand and Joe Casillas.

Southwestern finished the round-robin playoff tournament with the most goals scored (22) and best goal-differential (+12) while Grossmont ranked second in most goals scored (19) and second in best goal-differential (+8). San Diego City made its offense count by scoring 14 goals in its four games.

"That’s the trouble with tournaments that don’t have a championship game. We had a bad day (the first weekend) when we were missing guys," Grossmont’s Jon Oberg said in defense of his team.

San Diego State University finished fourth in the final playoff standings based on its 2-0 victory against Point Loma Nazarene University.