HIGH SCHOOL NOTEBOOK : Hart Basketball Team Drums Up Support

Schurr High Coach Tommy Thompson requested that two additional minutes be placed on the scoreboard during pregame warm-ups of the Spartans’ Foothill League game against visiting Hart last week.

“He asked me if I wanted more time to listen to their band,” said Hart Coach Greg Herrick, who gestured his approval with a thumbs-up sign.

“They’re really good. There are some really bad bands out there. I’m going to send a note to their director and tell him how much we appreciated them. The national anthem was awesome.”

Herrick’s public endorsement of the Schurr band, however, has created some hard feelings on the Hart campus.

“The band teacher came up to me and said, ‘Why don’t you ever say anything good about our band?’ ” Herrick said. “I said, ‘Because I never heard you play. You never come to any of our games.’ ”

That will change tonight. The Hart band will make its season debut in the league finale against Burroughs. A victory on the court will clinch Hart’s first league title since 1984.

“I’ll see how good they really are,” Herrick said. “It’s going to be the Battle of the Bands.”

Strength in numbers: Burbank gave Hart a scare in a 56-52 loss last week. Burbank opened up a 19-8 lead in the first quarter, missing only one shot from the field, before Coach Fred Cook yanked all five starters.

“When the team has a good practice, I try to give them all a chance to play.” he said.

Hart Coach Greg Herrick, however, found the move perplexing.

“When you’re one and seven (won-lost record), you don’t have too many good players,” Herrick said about Burbank. “He used subs in waves. I don’t know why he did that. If I were the coach, I sure wouldn’t.”

Hart tied the score, 26-26, at the beginning of the third quarter and went on to lead by as many as 10 points in the fourth quarter.

Records: Thousand Oaks’ Chris Loll had 240 rebounds this season as the week began, eclipsing the school record of 227 by Steve Ornelaz in 1976-77. Loll has scored 935 career points, 65 short of Ornelaz’s school record of 1,000 set in 1976-77.

Nordhoff guard Tim Sebek broke the school record for points scored in a career in the Rangers’ 66-65 win over Santa Paula on Tuesday. Sebek, a junior, scored 30 points to bring his high school career total to 1,037, surpassing the old mark of 1,009 set by Richard Hawks during 1982-85.

Simi Valley soccer player Brian Weaver set the school single-season record for assists with 22 when he assisted Chris Brown on a goal in the Pioneers’ 4-1 win over Agoura last week.

Shopping around: Canyon has two openings on its football schedule next fall and Coach Harry Welch is soliciting area teams. The Cowboys lost Leuzinger, which dropped Canyon after last fall, and its game against St. Louis of Honolulu in Hawaii last year was a one-time arrangement.

The Cowboys will open the season with nonleague games against Hart, Notre Dame and Thousand Oaks. Canyon then has two open dates before starting Golden League play at Quartz Hill. Welch has entertained offers from Fontana and Long Beach Poly but is looking for Southern Section opponents closer to home.

“We’d play any team in the San Fernando Valley or out in Ventura County,” Welch said. “I’d love to play a Crespi or Buena or any Foothill League team.”

Injury report: The medical chart continues to grow for Faith Baptist, the defending boys’ Southern Section 1-A Division champion.

Darren Wyre and Fernando Garcia, starters on last season’s team, were injured in a road loss to Campbell Hall 10 days ago. It was bad enough that neither was able to play in last week’s two Delphic League games, which the Contenders split.

It now appears that Wyre might not play until next season. The 6-foot junior swingman, who is averaging 11.6 points, suffered a broken nose in the first half against Campbell Hall and had surgery the following day, Coach Stuart Mason said.

“He might be able to come back (for the playoffs),” Mason said. “But it’s up in the air. It was a very bad broken nose.”

Ditto the status of Garcia, who sustained a sprained knee against Campbell Hall. Garcia, a senior forward, is averaging 10 points and seven rebounds. Mason said that Garcia could play this week if he feels up to it.

Add Faith Baptist: Alex Estrada was nicknamed “Loafie” by his father, because, as a baby, Alex was so small that he supposedly looked like a loaf of bread.

In two games last week, Estrada was more than the bread, he was the Faith Baptist butter too.

In the Contenders’ 92-46 defeat of Buckley on Friday, Estrada recorded a triple-double. Estrada, an All-Southern Section guard last season as a sophomore, had 30 points, 16 assists and 10 rebounds.

In a 66-63 overtime loss to Brentwood, he had 28 points, six assists and six steals.

Against all odds: Before the season, Crescenta Valley Coach John Goffredo was only 10 wins shy of 200 career victories and thought he might be able to reach the plateau before Pacific League play began.

Twenty-three games later, with one regular-season game remaining, Crescenta Valley is 8-15.

“I figured that I could get it this year,” Goffredo said. “I did some figuring and found out that we have averaged 18 wins for 28 years. It’s been one of those years.”

Stirring straw: It is easy to pinpoint the electrifying play of Quartz Hill guard Chris Young as the reason the Rebels are 8-1 and on top of the Golden League, but the steady play of point guard Lee Allen has made him nearly as valuable to the Rebels.

In last Friday’s win over Palmdale, Allen had a typically efficient night: seven points, six steals and six assists. Allen, in fact, leads the Rebels with four assists a game and is second only to Young with three steals a game. “He makes us go,” Coach Don Moore said.

On the run again: Just when you thought you had heard the last of Calabasas, the Coyotes (8-12, 2-5) rose up and won a pair of Frontier League games last week, dumping Fillmore and Santa Paula.

Coach Bill Bellatty credits the turnaround to a change of attitude.

“I just told the kids, instead of going east-west, let’s try going north-south,” Bellatty said. “I was too tight on the kids before. We tried to slow it down against Santa Clara and it wound up hurting us. Now when we get the ball, I tell the guys, take it to the hole. We’re having fun. We’re running again.”

Fillmore Coach John Wilber is a believer.

“The difference between them the first time around and the second was enormous,” he said. “They were driving, penetrating, making things happen. They’re coming on.”

Staff writers Steve Elling, Kirby Lee, John Lynch and Brian Murphy contributed to this notebook.