Charley Hoffman, the 1995 Poway High graduate, was busy on Labor Day: he won the Deutsche Bank Championship at the TCP of Boston with a stunning performance.

Hoffman, 33, had a nine-under 62 and 262 total after starting the day Monday four shots behind the leader.

“It was unbelievable,” Hoffman said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “I was sort of in the situation where I needed to go out and make a bunch of birdies.”

“It was fun,” he added. “I didn’t even know I made a bunch of birdies until the end when someone told me.”

The $1.35-million victory put Hoffman in second place on the FedEx Cup Playoff Points standings, giving him a big jump from number 59 where he was before the performance.

It’s a new year for spring sports, one that is ushering in new league alignments for local high school sports squads.

For the girls volleyball teams of Poway and Rancho Bernardo, that means that this season they will have to once again deal with Torrey Pines as a Palomar League rival.

The Falcons, along with La Costa Canyon (which has won seven straight CIF section titles) have been powerhouses in the sport during the last decade. Torrey Pines has been the section runner-up for five out of the last six years.

Poway Coach Stephen Lamb and Jay Van Vark, who is starting his second year as the head coach at Rancho Bernardo, say they are looking forward to the new opponents.

Rancho Bernardo High School will be losing two of its head coaches come spring.

Lacrosse coach Bruce Seitz and volleyball coach Rachael Grant Dixon won’t be returning this school year.

Seitz has been a lacrosse coach at Rancho Bernardo for 12 years — 10 as head coach. He said he’s stepping down because his job duties have changed and won’t leave him time to work with the program.

Seitz said he enjoyed his time coaching the club sport at RB High when it was still new to the area.

“We’d play in old football jerseys and we lacked school support,” Seitz said. “Through the years I built the program and it got more respect and support.”

It’s gearing up to be another year of firsts for Del Norte High School. As the 4S Ranch school begins its second year, the athletic department is set for the first year of playing varsity sports.

Though the school still lacks a senior class, the Nighthawks are ready to enter the varsity level, said Athletic Director Mike Giaime.

“We’re excited to go out there and have an opportunity to compete,” said Giaime. “Our coaches have worked hard in the off season.”

Every sport — the school has 23 teams last year — will have a varsity squad, said Giaime. If there’s enough interest, the teams will also have junior varsity and freshman squad.

Del Norte will be competing in the Valley League.

WEB UPDATE:
Bradley Klahn was eliminated from the 2010 US Open on Wednesday after falling to Sam Querrey, the tournament’s 20th seed, during a first round game.

Querrey defeated Klahn 6-3, 4-6, 7-5, 6-4.

Klahn, the NCAA Division I singles champion, is returning for his junior year at Stanford University. He was a wild card entry into the U.S. Open.

***
Poway’s Bradley Klahn is among seven players who were awarded main-draw wild card entries to the men’s singles tournament of the 2010 US Open Tennis Championships.

The event will be held Aug. 30 through Sept. 12 at the US Tennis Association’s Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y.

The draw for the tournament will be held on Aug. 26. It will be broadcast on ESPN2 and followed at www.usopen.org.

A new equestrian club in Poway is introducing people to horse vaulting, a little-known sport that is often described as gymnastics on horseback.

The Poway Valley Vaulters, which operates out of the Rolling Hills Stables at 15529 Sycamore Canyon Road, formed about six months ago.

It has four regular vaulters, said head coach and club founder Bonnie Bruce, who said the sport is growing in popularity in the United States.

“It’s not that well-known in the United States, but it’s popular in Europe,” Bruce said. “It has been around since ancient times.”

Part gymnastics and part dance, the sport requires participants to perform a series of moves — from headstands to scissors — on a horse that is being led in circles by a rope, called a longe.

It’s not often that a brother and a sister with a six-year age difference can train and compete in the same sport.

In that respect, Alec and Elizabeth Dubow differ from most siblings.

Alec, 16, and 10-year-old Elizabeth are second-degree black belts in taekwondo. The Rancho Bernardo residents train at the San Diego Black Belt Academy at the RB Swim & Tennis Club.

Recently, both of the Dubows — who have been practicing the martial art for three years — reached milestones.

Aaron Wallace Jr. a linebacker who is about to start his senior year at Rancho Bernardo High School, has made a verbal commitment to play at UCLA after he graduates.

The decision, which he made last week, settled months of speculation about his future.

Wallace, who turned heads in April when he earned MVP defensive honors at the Nike Football Training Camp at Texas Christian University, was also being courted by the University of Washington and Texas A&M.

On the Internet, Texas A&M fans particularly waited for a decision from the 6-4, 213-pound linebacker, the son of Aaron Wallace, who set the Aggie’s record for most career quarterback sacks, 42, from 1986 to 1989.

The elder Wallace went on to play eight years with the Oakland Raiders, retiring in 1999.

“At first it was a bit of pressure to go to A&M,” the younger Wallace said. “After a while, I realized it was my decision, that I was the one that had to go and live there, and I decided to pick the school that was the best choice for me.”

WEB UPDATE: The season for the Poway American 10- and 11-year-old all-stars came to an end on Wednesday, after it fell 11-0 to Rancho San Diego in five innings.

Poway American ended as the runner-up of the Southern California Division III South Subdivisional tournament. Rancho San Diego now moves on to play the winner of the other Southern California subdivision for a two-out-of-three showdown to determine the state champion.

Rancho San Diego was the defending state champion. According to Poway American Manager Dean Weese, they returned all but one of their players from last year’s team.

“They’re a good hitting team and came at us from the get-go,” Weese said. “We battled the best we could, but came out on the short end.”

The San Diego Hall of Champions will be honoring Lisa Reis, the former Poway High School volleyball coach who spent 26 years with the school before she was controversially dismissed from coaching in 2007.

Reis, who kept teaching physical education at Poway High until this past year, is one of eight retired coaches who will be recognized during the 12th annual San Diego County High School Coaching Legends Induction Banquet, which will be held Nov. 10 at the Scottish Rite Center.

The awards are meant as a way to honor coaches who leave a lasting legacy upon their retirement.

During her time at Poway High, Reis and her teams won 11 CIF section championships — they were runners up six times — and she had an overall win/loss record of 571-155.

The National High School Athletic Association named Reis the Far West Regional Coach of the Year twice and she was California Coach of the Year four times.

Mary Jeghers, a 2007 Poway High graduate about to start her senior year at the University of California, Berkeley helped Team USA win the Women’s Under-23 World Rowing Championships this summer.

Jeghers traveled to Brest, Belarus, to be part of the Women’s 8 team, which won its third gold medal in five years.

The team was up against five other boats and the championship was decided by two races. The first decided lane assignment and the second was for the championship.

In the second race, the American team was in second place at the 500-meter mark, part of four crews that were racing within less than a second from each other, according to a release by the U.S. Rowing Association.

In the end, Team USA finished the race in 6:31.97, a 4.51-second victory over New Zealand. Canada finished in third place at 6:38.16.

On Sunday mornings, the 4S Ranch Community Park looks like most other busy recreational centers: runners out for a jog, families enjoying a day out and sports leagues (this time of year, it’s soccer) engaged in competition.

But at the park’s skate rink, Sunday mornings feature something that, according to organizers, you won’t see anywhere else — at least not yet.

That is wheelchair lacrosse.

For about a year and a half, players have been convening at the 4S Ranch park — at 16118 4S Ranch Parkway — to learn the new sport, which was created by San Diegans Ryan Baker and Bill Lundstrom, who use wheelchairs.

Baker, who was injured in a car crash soon after he graduated high school in 1991, said he was looking for a team-oriented sport — other than basketball, which he does not enjoy — that could be adapted for people in wheelchairs.

Going into the final round of the PGA’s Turning Stone Resort Championship this past Sunday and trailing the leader by four strokes, Poway native Bill Lunde had only one thing in mind: to go home on a high note after spending seven weeks on the road.

In a phone interview after his victory, Lunde said he felt he needed to finish strong in the championship, held in Verona, N.Y., to keep his PGA Tour playing privileges for next year after what was turning into a less-than-stellar season.

“I thought that even if I wasn’t going to win the tournament, it was very important to me to have a good round and get a solid finish,” Lunde said.

After a day of golf, Lunde came out on top. He won the championship, his first victory on the PGA tour since turning pro in 1998, by shooting a final round of 6-under par 66 for a total of 17-under par 271.

Along with the victory, Lunde secured a PGA tour exemption through the 2012 season and earned a $720,000 payday, as well as 250 FedEx Cup points. He also earned the right to compete in the 92nd PGA Championship, which will take place through Aug. 15 at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wis.

Lunde said that even after his victory, it didn’t cross his mind that he would be playing at the PGA Championship until a television crew reminded him.

“I sort of had mixed feelings about it,” Lunde said with a laugh. “I was so looking forward to going home... and celebrate (the victory) with my family and friends. It’s so crazy with everything that just happened and I have this other great opportunity, so I’m like, ‘you know, I’m done, you guys have fun.’?”

Lunde, who is now a Las Vegas resident, is paired with England’s Ross McGowan and Mitch Lowe of San Francisco. Their first round is scheduled for 12:05 p.m. on Thursday (Pacific Time) while their second round is scheduled for 6:50 a.m. PT on Friday.

Maranatha Christian has a new athletic director and registration opens for running program

Darien Zhao, a 7-year-old from Rancho Bernardo, is packing his bags to travel to Pinehurst, N.C., this week to take part in the 11th annual U.S. Kids Golf World Championship.

The three-day World Championship, which starts today (Aug. 5) will feature boys and girls from ages 6 through 12, with competition among them separated into age groups.

There are 91 participants from California, including five from San Diego. Zhao, who is about to start the third grade at Westwood Elementary School, is the only Inland Corridor resident participating in the event.

He said he started playing golf about a year ago, after years of watching his father, Byrom, golf.

As Bradley Klahn prepares for his junior year at Stanford University this fall, he knows that he’ll have a really big target on his back.

After all, he’ll be the defending NCAA Division I singles champion, after finishing a 39-8 season with the Cardinal. He became the first to win an individual championship for the Palo Alto school since 2000.

According to the school, the 2008 Poway High grad is only one of 14 Stanford students to win the singles championship, and the ninth to do so after the NCAA adopted its current program. (Tennis legend John McEnroe accomplished the feat for the school in 1978).

Now on break, Klahn is playing in lots of professional tournaments this summer. He said he plans on not taking any money to maintain his amateur status so that he can continue playing collegiate tennis.