Sports
Something must’ve been in the air yesterday as the Kennedy High Lady Eagles’ basketball team traveled south toward San Jose to take on the Branham High Lady Bruins in the first round of the NorCal Division III playoffs. After a quick stop at Panda Express to eat some pre-game rice bowls, everyone jumped back on the bus with full bellies, and sang Sponge Bob Square Pants and Dora The Explorer theme songs for the next five minutes. Lady Eagle’s head…
Wednesday night’s California Interscholastic Federation basketball game against eight-seed Branham High of San Jose, as the regional championships kick off, will be no joke. One more Kennedy loss and it’s sayonara, Lady Eagles. But don’t shrug off the nine-seed Lady Eagles just yet—head coach Rae Jackson wants to keep the charter bus running. “We just want to get on that bus and get down there,” Jackson said before Monday’s practice, explaining how Kennedy will approach the school’s first-ever NorCal game….
They say you can’t teach blistering speed. Don’t tell that to 68-year-old Donald Jackson. He and his Richmond Steelers youth football coaching staff had 10 boys out in Kennedy High’s grassy baseball field Sunday morning, pumping their knees and arms like runaway freight trains. Jackson said they’d be in right field every Saturday and Sunday until the last week of July, when football practice starts, from 10 a.m. until noon, working on speed training. “The purpose of the training is…
Sometimes life has its ups and downs. And on Wednesday night the Kennedy Lady Eagles’ basketball team got a big dose of down in an 85-21 loss to nationally ranked powerhouse Bishop O’Dowd of Oakland. But all was not lost for the Lady Eagles—the upside of the lopsided loss was that they still qualified for next week’s loser-goes-home NorCal state basketball tournament. “It’s time to get back in the lab and practice hard,” Lady Eagles’ assistant coach Dajuan Alexander told…
The Kennedy Eagles track and field team traveled to Pleasant Hill Saturday to compete in the Joe Stocking Super Seven Invitational at Diablo Valley College. Out of 18 schools, the boy’s team finished just north of the middle-of-the-pack, while the the girl’s squad finished right in the middle of 14 schools. Eagles head coach Carl Sumler said everyone that competed in an event, except for the shot put and discuss, came home with a medal. That didn’t seem to bother…
The energy prior to the Lady Eagles’ tip off against Hercules High Friday night didn’t seem like a winner-take-all atmosphere.
Hands slapping against plastic, followed by the beep of a digital clock, were the only sounds heard over the constant hum in the Richmond Recreational Complex during the weekly community chess night. Two boys, Ayanius Saucer, 10, and Akai Strong, 8, were looking intently at the board in front of them, pondering every move. As decisions became less obvious, and strategy more important, the boys took longer and longer to decide. When they did, their eyes would get wide and…
On Friday, Lady Eagles head softball coach Amanda Stevens stood outside the dugout during the fourth inning and watched the first game of the year with a handful of fans near home plate. Red tape—Steven’s background check hasn’t been reviewed by the school district—kept the first-year coach from getting closer to the diamond. Tim Logan, Kennedy’s head baseball coach, pinch-hit for Stevens and filled out the starting line-up and acted as the third-base coach throughout the game. “You in the…
The legend of Takkarist “Takk” McKinley began his sophomore year. That’s when Kennedy High’s track coach, Carl Sumler, saw the young Eagles defensive end rush a Piedmont High quarterback, turn around, race 15 yards up field and catch a wide receiver trying to break loose with the ball. But that’s not what impressed Sumler the most about McKinley’s great hustle play. What impressed Sumler the most was McKinley outran Kenneth Walker, Kennedy High’s former number one state track hurdler and…