Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Prep wrestler at top of recruiters' lists

In a lot of ways, Tucson’s most highly sought prep prospects are just getting started with the recruiting process.

Tucson High diver Delaney Schnell, Sabino High gymnast Madison Mariani, Tucson High shortstop Alex Kelch, Salpointe Catholic golfer Haylin Harris and St. Augustine High gymnast Angel Leon are not yet seniors.

But the Class of 2015-16 is a good one. Here’s our list of the best locals on the recruiting radar in five sports:

1 Danny Vega Jr., Ironwood Ridge, wrestling.

With a 77-match winning streak, two undefeated state championships and at least four championships in national events, Vega is probably the most heavily pursued Tucson senior. National wrestling powers Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Missouri and Illinois have contacted Vega, whose father/coach, Danny Vega Sr., was a two-time state champ at Sunnyside. Vega will begin taking campus visits in September.

2Mia Sokolowski, Tucson, volleyball. The top volleyball prospect in Tucson in at least 10 years ended the suspense last winter when she chose Florida over Arizona and Texas. At 6 feet 4 inches, Sokolowski is coming off a junior season in which she had 541 of the Badgers’ 1,074 kills. She has been part of USA Volleyball’s junior national training team.

3 Justin Holt, Salpointe, football. The son of Arizona 1981-82 starting defensive lineman Julius Holt heard from Michigan State, Oregon, Colorado, Nebraska and Wisconsin, among others, before making a pledge to play at Arizona last spring. In three varsity seasons at Salpointe, the 6-2, 300-pound Holt has made 127 tackles, 13 for losses.

4 Carli Campbell, softball, CDO and Brianna Aguilar-Beaucage, softball, Salpointe. Campbell, who hit .582 as a slap-hitting leadoff outfielder for the Dorados last year, has been invited to play at Arizona. Aguilar-Beaucage, who hit .412 at Salpointe and also had an 11-1 pitching record, has agreed to accept a scholarship at Grand Canyon.

5 Najee Gaskins, baseball, Cienega and Tristan Peterson, baseball, CDO. Gaskins is on a recruiting visit to Nebraska this weekend after impressing college scouts with an MVP performance in a Chicago All-Star game last month. He’s an outfielder with exceptional speed who hit .388 last season. Peterson, the starting catcher on CDO’s state title baseball team, is a 6-1, 220-pound athlete who burst onto the scene by hitting .526 as a sophomore. He is likely Tucson’s top two-sport athlete. He made 97 tackles for the Dorados last year and rushed for 712 yards. If he doesn’t get a football scholarship, he’s likely to play baseball at Kansas State.

Tucsonan John Fina, the first-round draft pick of the Buffalo Bills in 1992, was elected to the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame last week.

It was a long-deserved honor for Fina, a Salpointe Catholic grad who became a three-year starter (offensive tackle) at Arizona (1989-91), building himself from a 235-pound high school player to a 300-pound NFL starter. Fina started 131 NFL games from 1993 to 2001.

A few days before the 1992 draft, Fina’s agent phoned and said then-Cleveland Browns head coach Bill Belichick wanted to work him out the next day at Scottsdale Community College.

“Be there at 5 a.m.,” Fina was told. Fina, his agent and Belichick arrived at 4:45.

“Belichick worked me out at every position on the offensive line, and then every position on the defensive line,” Fina said last week. “It was very intense. Finally, at the end, he uttered an expletive and said, ‘You’re a first-round pick.’ That was it. All business.

“Before that, no one had told me I was anything higher than a fourth-round pick.”

Belichick wasn’t able to draft Fina. The Browns had the No. 9 overall pick, which they used on Stanford fullback Tommy Vardell, and the No. 52 pick. By then, Fina was off the board.

Fina wasn’t the only football prospect the young Belichick discovered in Arizona. While attending the UA’s “pro day” in the spring of 1991 and watching Fina, Belichick became impressed with the fundamentals of Arizona’s offensive linemen. He offered UA line coach/offensive coordinator Pat Hill a job with the Browns a day later.

Hill accepted. He coached four years with the Browns, and later became Fresno State’s head coach from 1997 to 2011.

Arizona’s entertaining “Licence To Thrill” football video was another in a series of exceptional productions by the UA’s sports video department. What makes it work is Rich Rodriguez’s willingness to play along. He will ditch his game-face periodically for the good of the order, in the name of fun. Plus, he filmed the video last Sunday, a day off from training camp. Can you imagine John Mackovic or Mike Stoops dressing up as James Bond? Not for a mini-second. I also liked the cameo role played by UA donor Cole Davis, in tuxedo, asking Scooby Wright if he had a reservation (at the Westin La Paloma). Davis has contributed more than $15 million to UA athletic projects in recent years. Most of the sports cars (Ferraris, for example) used in the video belong to Davis. Champagne all around, right?

UA men’s golf coach Jim Anderson made a good move this summer, adding long-time PGA Tour and Champions Tour golfer Don Pooley as a volunteer assistant coach. Pooley, an Arizona alumnus who won the 2002 U.S. Senior Open and also won two PGA Tour events, retired from competitive golf two years ago. The Wildcats will benefit from his short-game expertise and mental approach, which defined Pooley’s four decades as a pro. 

Clark Crist, a Palo Verde grad who was Arizona’s starting shortstop on the 1980 College World Series championship team, attended the Area Code Games last week in Long Beach, California, the top high school prospect camp in the West. For the last five years, Crist coached the Cincinnati Reds’ entry in the showcase, winning the 2014 championship with the help of four Tucson players. This year, after Crist was hired as an Arizona Diamondbacks national cross-checker (a top scout), the Area Codes team did not have a Tucson player for the first time since 2010. UA baseball coach Jay Johnson was not only on vigil during the entire Long Beach camp, he did not return to campus from summer-long recruiting trips until Friday.

Cal, which some suggest will unseat Arizona as the Pac-12 basketball champion in 2015-16, got a jump start on the season last week. The Bears flew to Australia for a 12-day, four-game exhibition series that began Saturday night. Coach Cuonzo Martin, however, won’t step boldly into the season as a newly minted Top 25-type team. The Golden Bears’ home schedule is awful: Seattle, Rice, UC-Santa Barbara, East Carolina, Incarnate Word, Sam Houston State, Coppin State and Davidson. Dreadful.

 Nevada will pay Arizona a token $200,000 to play the final portion of a home-and-home football series in Reno, Sept. 12. The Wildcats might not get Nevada’s full attention. A week later, Nevada will earn $1.5 million for playing at Texas A&M, which is 7 percent of the Wolf Pack’s $21 million athletic budget. Nevada has also agreed to play at Oregon for $650,000 in 2019 and at Washington for $500,000 a year earlier. That’s life in a small conference. 

Perhaps you noticed that Amy Cislak is the new principal at University High School. Ring a bell? As Amy Swiderski, she was a softball standout at CDO before playing at Boston College. From 2007-09, she coached CDO to three consecutive state softball championships, 99-9 overall. She is married to ex-Sabino and UCLA pitcher Chad Cislak, who led the Sabercats to the 1997 state championship with a 14-0 pitching record, and a .495 batting average. He is the owner/designer of Tucson’s Kitchen Concepts.

Brad Arnett, who was Arizona’s lead strength and conditioning trainer from 2000-05, now owns his own training company in Milwaukee. In the debut episode of HBO’s “Hard Knocks: Training Camp,” last week, Arnett was featured while working with Houston Texans All-Pro defensive end J.J. Watt.

Kevin Newman and Scott Kingery, who formed an All-Pac-12 double-play combo at Arizona last spring, will play against one another Thursday through Sunday in Charleston, West Virginia. Newman, a first-round draft pick of the Pirates, plays for the West Virginia Power after being promoted to the Class A full-season South Atlantic League last week. Kingery, a second-round pick of the Phillies, plays for the Lakewood (N.J.) BlueClaws. Both have found minor-league pitching a difficult transition from the Pac-12. Newman is hitting .215 overall (through Friday). Kingery is hitting .259.

 Two of Mike Candrea’s All-America softball players have made career moves this summer. Two-time Women’s College World Series championship pitcher Taryne Mowatt, who coached for a national training organization in North Carolina, became the pitching coach at Ole Miss. Brittany Lastrapes, a first team All-West Region outfielder in 2010 and 2011, left the coaching staff at Miami (Ohio) to become one of the school’s athletics facilities managers.

I was at a stoplight on River and Oracle last week, immediately behind a black BMW Z4 convertible. Its license plate was GO2ROSE. Oh, how that driver, and thousands of other Tucson football fans, would like to make that license plate read ROSEBOWL ’16. 

 The UA traditionally held its Sports Hall of Fame weekend in conjunction with homecoming, but this year, in an attempt to get more of a singular focus, it will be held Sept. 4 at the Westin La Paloma at 6 p.m. In recent years, the Hall of Fame ceremony was held in the north end of McKale Center. It was OK, but it didn’t have an “it” factor. It seemed a bit informal, and sometimes got lost in a football weekend.

This year it will be held the night after Arizona opens against UTSA, putting a solo light on a terrific class that includes former major-leaguers Dave Baldwin and Trevor Crowe; the late Erica Blasberg, an LPGA regular; NCAA golf champion Susan Slaughter; and retired baseball coach Andy Lopez.

The public is invited to attend. Contact information: naharris@arizona.edu

Five of Tucson’s traditional football powers — Sabino, Sahuaro, Catalina Foothills, Salpointe and Ironwood Ridge — begin the season this week. Really.

The AIA refers to the Aug. 20-21 games as “Zero Week” games. All schools will complete the regular season before Halloween. Doesn’t that seem backward in Southern Arizona?

The high school players practice in the hottest part of the summer and begin games when all others involved — fans, friends, cheerleaders, family, the student body — are inconvenienced by excess heat.

The one thing that does fly in early opening games is that the Coaches for Charity organization, which promotes four Tucson-area games, has given the start of the season an identity and some oomph.

Nobody bit off a bigger chew on opening week than Ironwood Ridge coach Matt Johnson, whose Nighthawks open at home Friday against Chandler Hamilton, winner of seven state championships from 2003 to 2012.

But that’s how Johnson rolls. His team won the 2012 state championship against a list of the state’s top powers. Ironwood Ridge’s schedule this year is ridiculously strong; it does not have a single light touch, ending on Oct. 30 with Mountain View, which could be this year’s top team in Tucson.

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