By Jim Richards
Three SMCC fall teams are poised for a run at the playoffs and while the summer heats continues to drag on in the Valley, the heat is also rising on the schedule for the volleyball team and the men’s and women’s soccer teams.
The SMCC campus will host some of the mentioned sports’ biggest games of the season in the upcoming week and junior college sports fans won’t want to miss any of the following games:
WED, OCT 1: MEN’S SOCCER--No.9 Pima CC @ SMCC; 1 p.m.
SMCC coach Mark Wilson is no stranger to overcoming long odds. This past winter, he guided the Phoenix Mountain Pointe girls’ soccer team to the 2008 Class 5A Division I Girls’ Soccer State Championship in one of the sport’s wildest upsets in recent memory.
He’s on a similar mission this season with the Cougars’ men’s team. Pima (9-1) sits second to No.1-ranked Yavapai in the ACCAC while the Cougars (5-4) are in fourth and bunched up among six teams separated by one victory.
Dom Papa leads the Cougars in scoring and is seventh in the ACCAC with 15 points.
WED, OCT 1: WOMEN’S SOCCER--Pima @ SMCC; 3:30 p.m.
Marcelo Piana showed that he could build a competitive team in a hurry when he guided the Cougars to a season-opening win over Scottsdale and followed that with a narrow 1-0 loss at defending Region I Div. II champion Pima, which was ranked No.3 in the nation at the time.
Outstanding, considering SMCC didn’t have a women’s soccer program last season.
Piana has the Cougars (2-5-1) in seventh place, one spot out of a playoff position and they could use a victory over Pima (5-2-1) which has fallen behind Chandler-Gilbert and Paradise Valley in the ACCAC standings.
“We have a very young team,” Piana said. “But, it’s been so far so good. We have to work on our overall composure.”
The Cougars received a blow when top defender and team captain Angie Hernandez was lost for the season with a knee injury.
Forward Sheila Luna is fourth in the ACCAC in scoring with 11 goals and 26 points. Sara Garcia has 10 points.
FRI, OCT 3: VOLLEYBALL--No.10 Scottsdale CC @ SMCC; 7 p.m.
Scottsdale has been one of the ACCAC’s strongest teams this decade and hopes to move back to the top of the Division II portion of the conference again but the Cougars (3-6) are only one game behind SCC (5-5) in the loss column and Pat Mooney’s teams have become a a playoff-caliber team the past two years in one of the top volleyball conferences in the nation.
With Mooney and SCC’s Regina Mannix, the match will feature two of the sports’ most respected coaches.
“This would be great if we could pull this one out,” said Mooney, who was not happy with the outcome in the first outing between the two teams, a three-game SCC sweep at Scottsdale on Aug. 28. “That was one of our weaker games. We weren’t ready to play. We were right in the middle of a week where we had played five games in a row and Scottsdale was right in the middle of that.”
SMCC’s Michele Anderson is the ACCAC’s per-game leader in digs (6.13) and in aces (0.55).
Samantha King is eighth in blocks (0.65) and Olivia Romero is fourth in assists (8.21) and has the top hitting percentage among setter, .641.
Keep an eye on SCC’s returning All-American, Haylee Thompson, the two-time reigning ACCAC Player of the Week.
Come one out and support the Cougars!