Beisel

Nobody is going to outshine North Kingstown’s Elizabeth Beisel at a high school swim meet, but at least Bay View’s Bethany Douglas shared some of the spotlight with Beisel at last week’s 23rd annual Bay View Girls Invitational.

Beisel, the North Kingstown High junior and Olympic swimmer, gave the fans at URI what they hoped to see as she delivered meet and pool record performances en route to individual titles in the 100-yard butterfly and 500-yard freestyle.

Douglas, a sophomore, also won two individual titles as she captured the 200-yard individual medley and the 100-yard breaststroke titles.

Douglas

Beisel and Douglas were the only Rhode Island individual champions in a meet that was dominated by teams from Wayland and Weston, Mass., in the race for the team championship. Wayland won the team title with 429 points and Weston was second with 287. La Salle was the top Rhode Island team, finishing in third place followed by Bay View (fourth) and East Greenwich (fifth).

Still in the game

I don’t know if anybody keeps track of these things on a national level, but George Patrick Duffy, who is coaching the St. Raphael boys freshman basketball team at the age of 88, has to be one of the oldest high school coaches in the country.

A one-time highlight

It’s unfortunate that the South Kingstown and La Salle girls basketball teams only have one regular-season meeting this year.

Rhode Island high school girls basketball needs more games like last Thursday’s meeting between the Rebels and Rams at South Kingstown, where a packed house watched a 3-point shot at the buzzer force two undefeated teams into overtime before the game eventually was decided by a point.

In case you missed the score, South Kingstown posted a 62-61 victory over the two-time defending state champion Rams.

The Rebels and Rams meet only once during the regular season because they play in separate Division I sub-divisions. Division I teams play two regular-season games against the teams in their sub-division, but only play one game against the teams in the league’s other two Division I sub-divisions.

Bigtime showdown

Mount Pleasant’s victory over Hendricken in last week’s showdown of undefeated Division I boys basketball teams makes the Jan. 30 game between Woonsocket at Mount Pleasant the next big attraction on the state boys basketball scene.

The Kilties and Villa Novans come into this week’s action as the only undefeated Division I teams.

A hot ticket

Speaking of the Mount Pleasant-Hendricken game, I know the Mount Pleasant gym is small, but it still has been a long time since I have seen school officials and police working the game forced to close the school doors because the crowd was overflowing the gym.

Fortunately, everybody eventually made it into the gym for game, and the Hawks and Kilties certainly gave the standing-room-only crowd their money’s worth, and probably more, when you consider the admission price was only a few dollars.

Robinson’s on the mark

Frank Robinson’s 24-point performance, highlighted by some outstanding second-half, long-distance shooting, led Mount Pleasant to the 78-66 victory and earned Robinson the projo.com, HSGameTime Athlete of the Week honor.

Action heats up on ice

Hendricken’s 4-4 hockey tie against Catholic Memorial in a nonleague game Saturday in Massachusetts adds more intrigue to Friday night’s first meeting of the season between the Hawks and Mount St. Charles.

The tie with Hendricken came three days after Catholic Memorial, the second-ranked team in last week’s Boston Globe high school hockey poll, had battled to a 3-3 deadlock with top-ranked Malden Catholic. CM also posted a 6-1 victory over La Salle Sunday night at Thayer Arena.

So now Hendricken, which earlier this season lost to Delbarton High of New Jersey, has played on even terms with one of the top two teams from Massachusetts, and Mount St. Charles has beaten the reigning state champions from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania this season.

Mount suffered its first losses of the season over the weekend, however, as the Mounties dropped a 4-2 decision to Holy Angels Academy and were handed a 5-1 setback by Shattuck-St. Mary’s on a two-game trip to Minnesota.

The Mounties and Hawks, the teams that met in the last two state title series, both will bring undefeated Interscholastic League records into their 9 o’clock meeting Friday night at Adelard Arena. Hendricken leads Division I with an 8-0 record and Mount St. Charles is 6-0 in League play.

B. O’Dell

Sharpshooting sisters

The O’Dell sisters of Lincoln, Bethany and Ashley, are pacesetters on both the college and high school basketball scenes.

Bethany, the former Lincoln High three-time All-State basketball player who now is a junior at Holy Cross, recently became the Crusaders’ top all-time 3-point scorer. O’Dell was named the Patriots League Player of the Week last week after she set the Holy Cross 3-point career scoring record with her 180th basket from outside the arc in a game against Bryant two weeks ago.

A. O’Dell

Ashley, a Lincoln High senior, currently is the top scorer in the Interscholastic League, according to HSGameTime statistics. The HSGameTime stats, which are compiled from games reported to The Journal sports department, has O’Dell with a 23.6 average in nine games this season. She is the only girls player in the state who is averaging more than 20 points per game.

Golden Dozen deadline

Football coaches are reminded that Friday is the deadline for submitting your team’s nomination for the 2009 National Football Foundation’s Rhode Island Golden Dozen.

The Golden Dozen are the top 12 senior football student/athletes. Each high school football team in Rhode Island can nominate one senior player for the awards. Each Golden Dozen selection is awarded a scholarship by the Rhode Island Chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame.

Nominations should be mailed to Emo DiNitto, 70 Carrs Pond Rd., West Greenwich, R.I. 02817.

Fixture on the sidelines

Nice piece in last month’s National Athletic Administration magazine about former Hope High head basketball coach and assistant football coach Mike Sarkersian.

Sarkersian coached at Hope in the late 1950s and early ‘60s before becoming the athletic director at Washburn College in Kansas in the mid-‘60s.

Sarkersian has been retired for several years, but that hasn’t stopped him from attending Washburn home football games.

In fact he hasn’t missed a Washburn home game in 42 years.

At the end of last season, his streak had reached 220 consecutive home games.

jgillool@projo.com