A couple of quick notes to pass along:

— The Californian's winter sports All-Area teams have arrived. The boys and girls soccer teams are unveiled in Friday's paper, the wrestling team on Saturday and the boys and girls basketball teams on Sunday. A bonus for my blog readers is the Players of the Year:

Boys soccer
Matt Clemons, Golden Valley — A tough choice here, because there wasn't one — or two, or three — obvious candidates. Instead, there were a lot of good players (the first team could have easily had 20 viable recepients instead of the 13 we hand out) but none that stuck out as spectacular. I guess that's a year where it's good to have a lock-down defender as player of the year. Nobody scored on Clemons.

Girls soccer
Erica Shelton, Stockdale — Here, there were two pretty evident candidates: Shelton and Liberty's Mariah Alvidrez. We went with Shelton because coaches around town consider her the best all-around player in Bakersfield — she played midfield, while Alvidrez was a striker — and she led Kern County in points (assists plus goals times two) despite missing five games while she was out of town.

Wrestling
Seth Hicks, Centennial — No explanation needed. Hicks dominated the year from start to finish and ended it with a 48-0 record and a 135-pound state championship.

Boys basketball
Stephon Carter, Garces — He's won it three years in a row now, so this might be considered expected, but it was closer than you might think. Cody Kessler had a great year for Centennial and Sam Marcus was the glue behind Liberty's magical run. But in the end, Carter scoring 33 points with 19 rebounds in the Division II section title game against Liberty — with a broken hand, no less — was the clincher for me.

Girls basketball
Jalei Kinder and Melissa Sweat, Stockdale — Too hard to differentiate between teammates here. Kinder was a dominant scorer and on-ball defender during the Mustangs' dominant regular season, and Sweat took over in a few of the Mustangs' playoff games as Stockdale won the Division I section title.

Pick up a copy of The Californian this weekend for the rest of the teams and full feature stories on each player of the year and coach of the year.

— Speaking of Sweat, here's a bit of news that's too bad for the quality of play in Bakersfield: She's moved to Madera, where her father took a new job and will attend Madera Ranchos-Liberty in her senior season. That means Stockdale — and Kern County — is losing the winner of the past two Player of the Year awards and a surefire Division I recruit. But here's a thought someone in the office threw out yesterday: Wouldn't it be fun if Sweat was back in Bako for the state championships next spring? It'll be tough, but Madera-Liberty is a small school, and Sweat is a really good player.

— Another piece of info, courtesy of Californian correspondent Steve Lynch. Stockdale tennis star Jeremy Quiroz, who won the Central Section singles title last spring, has verbally committed to a near-full scholarship with Niagara University. He can sign as early as next week.

Now on to our continuing series of the spring sports at midseason. Today's subjects are boys golf and boys tennis.

Boys golf
The name everyone knows is Pete Fernandez, a junior who placed second in the state last year. But remember, Fernandez wasn't really dominant throughout the season, just good. That's what he's been this year in what's proving to be a pretty wide-open SWYL. Fernandez's teammate, Bryce Keene, Centennial's Manav Shah and Frontier's Chase Goodvin are all giving Fernandez a run at individual title, and the Mustangs and Golden Hawks are thisclose to each other in the team chase.
In the SEYL, it's kind of a changing-of-the-guard year, and Highland is taking advantage. The Scots lead the team race with a deep team that doesn't really have a single standout. Matt Hammons is the name to know, probably, but Dominick Stanley is having a very nice year as well. Bakersfield's Connor Huser, Liberty's Max Schmidt and Garces' Stephen Harmer all have experience from last year's section meet (which, by the way, will be held in town this year at Seven Oaks).
In the SSL, Taft's Blake McPherson and Bakersfield Christian's Brett Halstrom and Chris Underhill are the individuals to watch, and those two teams likely will battle for the team title, with Tehachapi a possible third challenger.
Prediction: Fernandez comes through again as the courses get tougher and tougher, and he wins a section title on his home course. The regional, though, is a crapshoot, and this year Fernandez doesn't squeeze through a very narrow door to the state tournament. Highland finishes its surprise run to a league title, and BCHS takes home the SSL.

Boys tennis
Perhaps the biggest news here is that Bakersfield Christian is not dominant, the first time that's been said about an Eagles tennis team in at least a couple of years. BCHS still is an SSL contender and a Division V section favorite, and its top player, Alex Nichols, will compete for the section singles title. But the Eagles are not the best team in town regardless of size.
That'd be Stockdale, which is led again by the aforementioned Jeremy Quiroz. Quiroz beat Visalia-El Diamante's Josh Lorentzen in a thrilling three-set singles final last year only after Nichols was withdrawn from the tournament after the quarterfinals because of a disciplinary reason. This year, two of those big three likely will meet in the semifinals, with the other potentially waiting in the championship.
In the SEYL, Bakersfield has a heck of a team again, though they were drilled (no pun intended) by Stockdale in what amounted to a championship dual in the Lynch Cup earlier this year. David Mossman is the Drillers' best player, and they're having no problems handling an otherwise balanced SEYL (Liberty, Garces and East have solid teams).
Prediction: Give it to Quiroz again in an all-Bakersfield final. Nichols has a great game, but Quiroz seems to be at his steadiest when the money's on the line. As for teams? Stockdale coach Dave Hillestad, after getting two monkeys off his back in the past year (Quiroz's individual title and a girls team title last fall) gets a third as Stockdale becomes the Central Section's tennis epicenter.

Tomorrow we'll handle swimming and track and field.