The other big game
You'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard of Friday night's showdown between Oaks Christian and St. Bonaventure, the two teams with the longest winning streak in the state.
As important as that game is to Oaks Christian and its players, there's a game Thrusday night that might be more so. Calabasas hosts Channel Islands at 7 p.m. in what represents the Coyotes best chance of the season to end their 35-game losing streak, the longest active streak in the state. Channel Islands is 2-11 over the last two seasons.
Calabasas nearly got the monkey off its back in Zero Week, with a 14-13 loss to El Camino Real. This week, they've got another shot. But if it doesn't happen Thursday, it could be another winless season for the Coyotes with Marmonte League play starting next week.
I did a column on Calabasas last year and went in with the idea of trying to explain how this once respectable program had fallen so far so fast. The answer to that was pretty obvious. Correlation doesn't always imply causation, but in this case it did. Calabasas was fine in the Tri-Valley League, playing schools like Oak Park or Fillmore. But when it moved up the Marmonte League a few years ago, there just wasn't enough man-power to match big schools from the Marmonte League.
The thing that really struck me at Calabasas though, was how much the players wanted it. It can't be easy coming out to practice everyday in the middle of a three-year losing streak. But the players I met played just as hard, if not harder than players at other schools with winning records.
Someday, the Coyotes will snap their losing streak. Last year, Hollywood finally snapped its 42-game losing streak. The question is ... is Thursday that day?
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