Man, 54, killed in 7-vehicle 605 Freeway crash in Lakewood

• July 3, 2023

LAKEWOOD — A 54-year-old man was killed Sunday in a seven-vehicle crash on the 605 Freeway in Lakewood.

The man was later identified as Kelly Drake, according to Medical Examiner’s office.

The crash was reported at 8:14 p.m. on the southbound San Gabriel River Freeway at Carson Street, California Highway Patrol Officer Stephen Brandt told City News Service.

A news videographer at the scene said the crash was triggered by an earlier two-vehicle crash at the Carson Street off-ramp after several vehicles were unable to stop to avoid the wreckage.

He said Drake was the passenger in one of the vehicles and another person was taken to a hospital with injuries.

All southbound lanes except the far right lane were shut down for the investigation and cleanup, Brandt said.

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​ Orange County Register 

How the ringing in John Cotter’s ear led to his ‘Losing Music’

• July 3, 2023

In 2008, writer John Cotter first started hearing a ringing in his ear. It’s the kind of annoyance that everyone experiences at some point — after a loud concert, say, or time spent near a construction site. Usually, it goes away.

But Cotter’s only got worse.

The ringing became a roar, “made of several tones, high and low together, like a lawnmower near your ear and a plane not far away. It announced itself with clicks and whistles, changing the pressure in my ears, a kind of buzzy gravity, a planet made of static.” He began to lose his hearing and started having frightening vertigo spells.

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After a long series of medical appointments, Cotter was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear disorder with no known cause and no known cure.

In his new memoir, “Losing Music,” the writer details his struggle with the illness, which threatened to take away one of the things he loved the most: “What I feared losing — the catastrophe that the roaring shadowed forth — wasn’t just a series of structured sounds, but the world those sounds created, a world you could live inside,” he writes.

Cotter discussed his book via telephone from New England, where he lives. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Q: You first became ill in 2008. What made you decide to write this book after dealing with hearing loss and vertigo for several years?

I thought that writing the story would be a way to understand it. This thing was happening to me. It was entirely outside of my control, but writing about it was inside of my control. Sometimes you don’t know how you’re feeling until you write about how you’re feeling. I also felt very isolated because I’d had to quit most of the things I do for work. I’d had to cancel a lot of social obligations. I couldn’t leave the house when I was really vertiginous. So it was a way of communicating. If you can’t call someone on the phone because you can’t hear voices, and you can’t get in the car and go teach your students, you can maybe, eventually, if you put enough work into it, hand someone a book.

Q: How did you manage your emotional health when you were writing about these extremely painful parts of your life?

I managed my mental health not at all when writing the book. [Laughs.] But the act of writing it was mentally helpful because you have a certain power over things once you can describe them and organize them on the page. You know, life doesn’t make any sense. It’s this useless mass of data. It’s this thing that happens to you, picks you up and shakes you; you don’t know what the thing was that picked you up and shook you. You can’t even make sense of the fingerprints that it left behind. But to make something constructed is to find a shape for it. It’s to organize a series of pictures. It’s to curate reality into a pattern. And this becomes something you can get your head around, get your hands around. It enables you to feel more in control, and more than that, to be able to feel as though you can interact with this thing that life is, and this thing that life is doing to you.

Q: The epigraph of your book is from the French journalist Xavier Aubryet: “Illness and Paris are mutually exclusive terms; Paris only likes healthy people, because it only likes success, and illness is as much a failure as poverty.” Have there been times during your illness where you felt that you had somehow failed?

We make plans for ourselves, and we don’t realize we’re doing it most of the time. We may think that our plan for our day is just whatever we scribble down on that blotter paper or whatever’s in our Google calendar. But we’re unconsciously planning the next day, the next week. There are two versions of our future. There’s the person we’re trying to catch up with, for whom everything has worked out, and their relationships are healthier, and they’re in better shape, and things are starting to click. Things are working out. Then there’s the version of ourselves who’s trying to catch us, who we’re running in flight from. That’s the version of us whose health is failing, whose relationships are falling apart, whose dreams have been disassembled. We’re caught between those two people. And when we fall behind, we feel as though we’re failing not only the expectations that other people have of us, but also ourselves. 

Q: This had to be a hard book to write. Was the feeling of having finished it, having it out in the world, worth what you went through while writing it?

It’s changed the terms of my life. That’s the dream, right? The dream is that you can shape your story and articulate your story, and then by doing so, you’re changing the terms of your own life. I feel like I’ve done that. But the process was taxing. I would say to myself, “Why have I been in a bad mood for three days?” And then I would think, “Oh, it’s because I’m rewriting the chapter of my book that was about the darkest moment in my life.” And when you keep returning to that moment, it’s like Nietzsche’s eternal return. It’s like “Groundhog Day.” You keep finding yourself in that same worst moment in your life. But it gave me a purpose in my life. It gave me a ladder to climb back to life.

Q: What’s your relationship to music like now?

It’s kind of like some old tomcat that you’ve been feeding on the back porch, and sometimes he won’t show up for weeks, and you’ll worry he’s gone for good. You’ll worry about what happened to him, and then one day he’s there again. There are many days when it would be pretty useless for me to try to listen to music, and sometimes I try anyway. I’ve just decided to accept that I don’t hear it the way I used to hear it, that it can’t be perfect for me any longer. And that’s OK. It can still purr and scratch at the door.

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​ Orange County Register 

Southern California’s boring car colors resell poorly

• July 3, 2023

Buy yellow, sell black.

That’s the suggestion of a study looking at used-car prices based on a vehicle’s color by iSeeCars. The used-car tracker compared this year’s pricing on 2020 vehicles vs. the original manufacturer’s suggested retail price to determine a depreciation rate.

Personally, it irks me to see Southern California streets and parking lots filled with vehicles painted within the boring grayscale – black, white, gray and silver. The last four cars I bought were maroon, green, orange and, yes, white.

So, it’s encouraging to see the car market sort of agrees with my colorful thinking. Predictable shades don’t resell as well as flashier hues, either locally or across the nation.

Just look at the top of the iSeeCar’s color scorecard.

Yellow vehicles were No.1 in Southern California for holding their value with an average depreciation rate of 15.4% over three years. Nationally it was 13.5%. Those dips in value are far smaller than depreciation rates for all cars – 20.5% locally and 22.5% in the U.S.

“A color like yellow is particularly popular with coupe and convertible buyers, and you see plenty of those on the streets and highways of Southern California,” said Karl Brauer, iSeeCars executive analyst.

Conversely, black was the worst performer of 13 colors tracked across Southern California with 22.4% depreciation. Black was third-worst in the U.S. at 23.9%.

“Black is certainly common in Southern California, as any casual glance of the roads will confirm – but its high availability hurts it in the supply-versus-demand curve,” Brauer said. “I also think Southern California’s culture is even more friendly toward expressive colors vs. muted colors than the national average, further helping yellow, orange, and other bright tones.”

Ponder that other grayscale colors fared only slightly better …

No. 7 White: 20.1% depreciation locally vs. No. 6 nationally, at 21.9%.

No. 8 Gray: 20.1% depreciation locally vs. the same ranking nationally, at 22.5%.

No. 9 Silver: 20.5% depreciation locally vs. No. 10 nationally, at 23.2%.

But not every offbeat color does well. Look at what resells as poorly as grayscale …

No. 12 Purple: 22% depreciation locally vs. No. 9 nationally, at 22.7%.

No. 11 Gold: 21.4% locally vs. No. 13 nationally, at 25.9%.

No. 10 Brown: 21.3% locally vs. No. 12 nationally, at 24%.

The top of the ranking, though, includes some bold colors …

No. 2 Green: 18.2% depreciation locally vs. No. 4 nationally, at 19.2%.

No. 3 Beige: 18.3% locally vs. No. 2 nationally, at 17.8%.

No. 4 Red: 18.6% locally vs. No. 5 nationally, at 20.6%.

No. 5 Orange: 19% locally vs. No. 3 nationally, at 18.4%.

No. 6 Blue: 20.1% locally vs. No. 7 nationally, at 22%.

Sadly, California’s reputation for exotic tastes in the car models doesn’t extend to the paint. Last year I noted that Golden State buyers are fairly boring when it comes to their car-color choices. OK, some might say they’re simply practical.

A 2022 study by iSeeCars found only 17% of California autos were outside of grayscale colors, the lowest among the states and below the 22% U.S. share.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]

Leaving California?

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A 2022 guide to what state is best to move to
A 2021 guide to what state is best to move to

​ Orange County Register 

How married actors Jazmyn Simon and Dulé Hill were inspired to write a children’s book

• July 3, 2023

When her daughter Kennedy was young, Jazmyn Simon would say affirmations with the child each day in hopes it would help develop her confidence and self-esteem.

“I thought, ‘Well, this seems like it would be great for a young woman to know all the wonderful things about herself,” Simon says. “So let’s start now. And so every single day, before she got out of my car at school, we would do this set of affirmations.”

A decade later in the tumultuous summer of 2020, the pandemic and protests for racial justice were inescapable. Simon was now married to fellow actor Dulé Hill, who had adopted Kennedy, 15 at that time, and together they had 1-year-old son Levi.

“We were in a really dark place in our world and in our country,” says Simon, who is best known for her work on TV series such as “Ballers,” “Psych,” and “Raising Dion.” “It came to watching George Floyd get murdered over and over on TV. Our son was in my lap and I thought, ‘He can’t really articulate his thoughts yet, I wonder what he’s thinking by seeing this.

“So one, let’s cut off the TV off; and two, let’s ask Kennedy how she’s feeling about everything,” she continues. “She said, ‘I’m fine,’ and her dad said, ‘Well, fine’s not a feeling, so how are you feeling?’ She burst into tears and we have this really emotional conversation.”

Simon realized that even when kids seem outwardly fine they might not be. Especially in times like these.

“I turned to Dulé and said, “I don’t want people to see the worst of themselves when they see TV and believe that’s who they are,’” Simon says. “For young Black people, you saw George Floyd getting murdered. For young White people, you saw a White man killing a Black person on TV. It’s a two-sided coin and I didn’t want them to think that that was them.

“So I said, ‘We need to write a book to remind kids that they are the best of themselves and not the worst that they see on TV,” Simon says. “I ran to our junk drawer and I took out – and I’m not joking – I took out a yellow sticky notepad and a pen and I said ‘Let’s write a book.’

“And that’s how it all began.”

The book, “Repeat After Me: Big Things to Say Every Day,” is out now with words by Simon and Hill and illustrations by Shamar Knight-Justice. Simon and Hill will appear at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena for a special storytime book event at 11 a.m. Sunday, July 9.

Positively powerful

Hill, who currently stars on “The Wonder Years” and previously enjoyed long runs on “The West Wing” and “Psyche,” says he’s used to his wife coming up with an idea and jumping into action.

“I probably was in shock at the audacity of the statement,” he says. “But knowing Jazmyn, it wasn’t surprising to me, because when she sets her mind to do something she gets it done. For myself, I said, ‘OK,’ and went along for the ride. ‘This what we’re doing, so here we go.’”

Both Hill and Simon laugh – “That’s exactly what he said,” she adds – before he continues.

“I say this often – it’s very easy for me to become a partner to Jazmyn Simon because she’s a wonderful writer,” Hill says. “All I have to do is say, ‘You know what, baby, I think you’re missing a period there. I think we need a comma. I don’t know if that rhymes as well as it could. Why don’t ‘we’ go back and revisit that.’”

Simon remembered many of the affirmations she’d used with Kennedy when she was a child. Now those were workshopped on Levi, and still are used with him today, to see which would best be used in the children’s book.

“If he’s feeling nervous about something, we’ll start with ‘I am brave’ or ‘I am courageous,’” she says of their son, who turned 4 this spring. “In the same way with Kennedy, ones we always used were, ‘We’re loved, worthy, ready.’”

The book, as with their at-home affirmations, avoids physical attributes and other subjective terms.

“We don’t want anybody to feel like their self-worth was determined, like ‘I am pretty’ or ‘I am beautiful’ or things like that,” Simon says. “Anything subjective, we tried to take it off the page, because everybody is beautiful and everybody is smart.

“We took all of those out and just tried to make it as pure as we could,” she says.

“We worked to make sure the message could reach everybody,” Hill says. “So that everyone who reads it, or everyone who has it read to them, can hear the words and find the value in themselves through the words that are being shared.”

Seeds for the self

The messages in the book can benefit not only the child to whom it is read but the adult reading it, Simon and Hill believe.

“It’s more than just saying these are the words that you can express yourself,” Simon says. “It’s that I am taking time with you to tell you how valuable you are, how important you are, how deserving you are. ‘I am deserving.’ What does that mean? You’re deserving of someone that’s going to listen to you. And that’s where conversations happen.”

To Hill, the purpose of the affirmations and the book is to “plant seeds of positivity,” he says.

“And hopefully, as life goes on, they will blossom up and have roots, take roots in young lives of the children who are hearing the words, and also in the lives of the adults who are reading the words,” Hill says.

“Because life is going to send you a whole bunch of negative messages,” he says. “The older you get the more you’re going to start hearing and seeing how you’re not enough, how you’re less than, how you need to be this or that.

“The whole goal of this is that hopefully it can plant some seeds as these children are growing up,” Hill says. “They will know that they are like every good thing. They are gifted, they are enough’ they are ready, they are light.

“And they can take that forward as they go forth into their life.”

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Sacramento Snapshot: Anthony Rendon passes the speaker’s gavel, marking the end of an era in California politics

• July 3, 2023

Editor’s note: Sacramento Snapshot is a weekly series during the legislative session detailing what Orange County’s representatives in the Assembly and Senate are working on — from committee work to bill passages and more.

Anthony Rendon is not done speaking.

The Lakewood Democrat (not the Angels third baseman) passed on the powerful speaker’s gavel Friday, June 30, marking the end of an era in California politics. In the leadership position since 2016, Rendon is California’s second-longest-serving speaker in state history.

But Rendon is still a legislator — he doesn’t term out until 2024 — and that means he’s not done with his work. He’ll reportedly attend committee hearings, maybe author some legislation, but not frequent caucus meetings to give new Speaker Robert Rivas the opportunity to guide on his own.

At this point, there’s not much to say about Rendon’s long tenure as speaker — a time that saw 157 people come through the Assembly, noted Alex Vassar, a legislative historian with the California State Library — that hasn’t already been written. He led legislators through the COVID-19 pandemic, the #MeToo movement, Capitol renovations and office relocations, the Trump administration and more.

He empowered committee chairs to take ownership of legislation, rarely authoring any himself. (For comparison, former Speaker John Pérez authored 45 bills, 24 of which were signed into law during the 2013-14 session; Rendon authored two procedural resolutions in 2021-22, according to Vassar.)

“All decisions were moral decisions,” Rendon said in an interview Friday as he was getting ready to head to the airport to travel back home. “I think the best legislators are the ones who boil things down and make it as simple as possible and ask: ‘Is this the right thing to do?’”

Sacramento Snapshot: Speaker Rendon looks to more oversight work this year

Of course, none of it was without controversy. Even the handing of the baton to Rivas, the Salinas Democrat whose name now adorns the Speaker’s Office in the statehouse, was the culmination of a bruising power struggle.

If you ask Rendon, he likens his time as speaker to James Joyce’s “Ulysses” novel, a story not marked by cohesive sections but rather an almost helter-skelter storyline. “It doesn’t seem like the same experience,” he says.

In retrospect — something Rendon has been considering of late — it’s the pandemic chapter that changed the legislature the most. Even now, with vaccines readily available and socialization less and less taboo again, legislators aren’t getting together as much, he said.

“Once the quarantine happened, people just got out of the habit of going out and hanging out as members. It changed the dynamic between the executive branch and the legislative branch,” Rendon said. “It very, very much changed the job.”

Rendon is acutely aware of how far Sacramento is from Southern California — his 400-mile flight between his Los Angeles County district and Sacramento often felt more akin to 1,000 miles, he joked. But for residents like those in his district, like those in Orange County even, that distance can amplify constituents’ voices, he said.

“The best way to cut down on the abstraction — and state government can be incredibly abstract — is to talk to your legislator, and your legislator will notice because of the isolation that is Sacramento,” Rendon advised. “Legislators are more accessible than you think.”

Looking ahead, Rendon is looking forward to becoming a regular ol’ legislator for a bit.

“I spent 20-some years in the nonprofit sector doing administration, and I came to the Assembly and spent three years as a legislator and loved it because it was so different than running a nonprofit. It was so incredibly different than administration and HR and budgeting,” said Rendon. “It was three great years, and then I was like, ‘Oh, it’s back to HR and administration and facilities and hiring and firing.’”

It was a “cruelly short glimpse into another life,” Rendon said, “I’m excited about going back to that aspect of the legislature.”

In other news

The governor signed two bills last week from Orange County legislators, both dealing with education.

One was Assemblymember Tri Ta’s legislation requiring school districts to notify nearby community colleges when a college or career fair is planned. Specifically, districts would need to notify community college districts with overlapping jurisdictions.

The Westminster Republican’s bill comes as enrollment in the California Community College system has declined.

“California’s community colleges play a crucial role in educating the state’s future workforce and providing an accessible education for Californians,” said Ta.

The governor also OK’d Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva’s bill updating California statute with the teaching credential program local school agencies must provide to braille instructional aides. It was backed by the California Teachers Association.

“This vital bill ensures that California statutes are updated to accurately identify the teaching credential pathway program for braille instructional aides, addressing the teacher shortage crisis, particularly in special education,” said Quirk-Silva. “Our most vulnerable students with the greatest needs often have the least qualified teachers, and this legislation is a crucial step in providing expert educators for all students, with equity and inclusion.”

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Novak Djokovic’s bid for Wimbledon title No. 8 and Grand Slam trophy No. 24 starts on Monday

• July 3, 2023

By HOWARD FENDRICH (AP Tennis Writer)

WIMBLEDON, England — Listen to Novak Djokovic’s opponents explain why he is as successful as he is – why he will begin his pursuit of a fifth consecutive and eighth overall Wimbledon championship on Monday; why he also will be attempting to claim an Open era-record 24th Grand Slam trophy over the coming fortnight on the All England Club’s grass courts – and they’ll offer plenty of answers.

His best-in-the-game return of serve. His dangerous two-handed backhand. His elasticity. His stamina. His defense. His ability to read someone else’s intentions, get to where a ball is headed and send it back with force, a combination Casper Ruud described this way after losing to Djokovic in the French Open final: “He sort of just goes into this mode where he just becomes, like, a wall.”

Listen to Novak Djokovic explain why he’s done what he’s done and why, at age 36, he’s still doing it, and he’ll offer a reason far less tangible and far less observable, something he mentioned during his victory speech at Roland Garros a few weeks ago.

“I try to visualize every single thing in my life and not only believe it, but really feel it with every cell in my body. And I just want to send a message out there to every young person: Be in the present moment; forget about what happened in the past; the future is something that is just going to happen,” Djokovic said. “But if you want a better future, you create it. Take the means in your hands. Believe it. Create it.”

Speaking that day about his own hopes and dreams as a 7-year-old kid, Djokovic noted two primary goals: getting to No. 1 and winning Wimbledon.

He’s already been No. 1 for more weeks than any man or woman in the half-century of computerized rankings. Now he will try to pull even with Roger Federer by earning title No. 8 at the oldest of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. Djokovic is one ahead of the injured Rafael Nadal – and three ahead of the retired Federer – for the most singles majors won by a man, with 23.

“Those two guys,” said Djokovic, who faces Pedro Cachin of Argentina at Centre Court on Monday, “were occupying my mind for the last 15 years quite a lot.”

His 23 is the same number Serena Williams ended her career with last season; only Margaret Court, who won 24 across both the amateur and professional eras, has more.

“Grand Slams are the goal. I don’t know how many, but I think he has in his body a lot more,” said Djokovic’s coach, Goran Ivanisevic. “It’s fascinating to see, because sometimes you think, ‘OK, now you have 23.’ But he’s going to find, again, some kind of motivation to win 24, maybe 25. Who knows where is the end?”

Entering the 2011 season, the so-called Big Three’s Slam standings looked like this: Federer with 16, Nadal with nine, Djokovic with one.

After winning his initial major title at the 2008 Australian Open, Djokovic went through an 11-major span where four of the losses came against Federer or Nadal in a semifinal or final.

His self-confidence waned a bit.

“That’s where I was really doubting myself, whether I could do it or not, because you get far but then you fall on the last hurdle,” Djokovic said. “The more times you kind of fall, the more you question everything, you know what I mean?”

And yet, with the same tenacity he uses on a court – “The mental fortitude he has is unbelievable,” was how his first-round opponent in Paris, Aleksandar Kovacevic, put it – Djokovic dug in away from the court and found ways to improve. And still does that, which is part of why most consider him, and not top-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, the favorite as Djokovic continues to pursue the first calendar-year Grand Slam by a man since Rod Laver in 1969.

“The thing that you have to admire about him is that he’s been very clear on what it is that he wants to achieve – trying to get that Grand Slam record. When he put himself in a position to do that, he delivered,” said Andy Murray, who won two of his three major titles at Wimbledon. “He didn’t look like he was getting nervous or overthinking it or any of those things. Yeah, he went and did it. It shows the strength of character that he’s got.”

So where did this belief come from?

Djokovic points to several factors: his upbringing during a time of war and embargo in Serbia in the 1990s; his parents (“95-plus percent of people … were laughing at them, and were discouraging them to spend whatever is left over from the family budget into such an expensive sport,” he said); his first coach and “tennis mother,” Jelena Genčić; and a later coach and “tennis father,” Niki Pilić.

All helped him grow as an athlete and person.

When he was 7 or 8, Djokovic said, Genčić would show him videos of the best male and female tennis players. She also taught him “the importance of relaxing and listening to classical music, reading poetry, singing, and reading, breathing consciously and so forth.”

His mother, he said, “is a rock,” and his father “instilled in me such power of belief and positive thinking.”

That, as much as any particular shot or talent, is why, Djokovic says, “On a daily basis, I’m the best on the court.”

It’s why he has won 11 of the past 20 Grand Slam tournaments.

And it’s why he wants to keep going.

“I don’t feel more relaxed, to be honest. I still feel hungry for success, for more Grand Slams, more achievements in tennis. As long as there’s that drive, I know that I’m able to compete at the highest level,” Djokovic said. “A few days after Roland Garros, I was already thinking about preparation for grass and what needs to be done.”

​ Orange County Register 

Los Alamitos horse racing consensus picks, Monday, July 3, 2023

• July 3, 2023

The consensus box of Los Alamitos horse racing picks comes from handicappers Bob Mieszerski, Art Wilson, Terry Turrell and Eddie Wilson. Here are the picks for thoroughbred races on Monday, July 3, 2023.

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Ferreira 1st American with back-to-back international hat tricks as US advances in Gold Cup

• July 3, 2023

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jesús Ferreira became the first American to score international hat tricks in consecutive games, and the United States advanced to the CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinals with a 6-0 rout of Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday night.

Ferreira scored in the 14th and 38th minutes against 101st-ranked Trinidad, then converted a penalty kick in the third minute of first-half stoppage time.

Cade Cowell scored in the 66th, four minutes after entering, and Gianluca Busio in the 79th — the first international goal for both. Brandon Vázquez added his third goal in the fifth minute of stoppage time as the No. 11 Americans won by six goals for the second straight game.

A 22-year-old son of former Colombian midfielder David Ferreira, Jesús Ferreira joined Landon Donovan as the only Americans with three hat tricks. Twelve of Ferreira’s 14 international goals have been against Caribbean nations, including four against Grenada in June 2022 and three versus St. Kitts and Nevis on Wednesday.

“When I see his movement and his confidence in the penalty box, you can tell that the game has slowed down for him,” U.S. interim coach B.J. Callaghan said. “All of the work that he’s doing, leading our line defensively, dropping down, helping buildup play, for me he’s having a really complete tournament.”

The U.S. won Group A on goal difference over Jamaica and advanced to a quarterfinal at Cincinnati on July 9 against Canada, Guatemala or Guadeloupe. The Americans have 40 wins, one loss and five draws in the Gold Cup group stage

The U.S. won its group for the 16th time in 17 Gold Cups, along with a second-place finish to Panama in 2011.

Trinidad was eliminated, finishing with a win over St. Kitts and a pair of losses. The Soca Warriors denied the U.S. a trip to the 2018 World Cup with a victory at home.

Ferreira put the U.S. ahead in the 14th minute. Cristian Roldan shuffled the ball to DeJuan Jones, who cut back to Ferreira. He settled the ball and poked the ball in from near the penalty spot.

Ferreira doubled the lead in the 38th when goalkeeper Marvin Phillip palmed his initial shot and Ferreira put the rebound in off a leg of defender Sheldon Bateau.

Guatemalan referee Mario Escobar awarded the penalty kick when Alvin Jones pulled down Djordje Mihailovic, and Ferreira sent his kick to Phillips’ left.

Goalkeeper Matt Turner, defender Miles Robinson and Roldan were inserted into the starting lineup in place of Sean Johnson, Matt Miazga and Cowell.

Midfielder Alan Soñora missed the game because of a strained right hamstring and will be replaced on the roster. Midfielder Aidan Morris was allowed to leave camp for what the U.S. Soccer Federation said were personal reasons.

Jamaica, which drew 1-1 with the U.S., advanced with a 5-0 win over St. Kitts at Santa Clara, California. The Reggae Boyz went ahead on an own goal by goalkeeper Julani Archibald, then got goals from Jonathan Russell, DiShon Bernard, Daniel Johnson and Cory Burke.

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