The Preps / Pat Cannon : Gahr Needs Two Wins for a San Gabriel Valley League First

Heading into the final week of baseball competition before the playoffs, 11 Southern Section teams remain unbeaten in league play.

Gahr, ranked No. 1 in the 3-A division, needs to beat Warren today and Downey on Friday to become the first school in San Gabriel Valley League history to complete an unbeaten league season.

Coach Tom Bergeron’s team is 23-2 overall and 10-0 in the SGVL. In his 14 seasons at the school, Bergeron has won seven league titles but never a Southern Section championship. He had his best chance in 1983, when the Gladiators lost to Loara, 5-2, in the championship game.

This season’s team is led by senior shortstop Brett Barbrie, who is hitting .367, and junior right fielder Pat Redaja, who is hitting .485. Redaja has 47 hits and is within striking distance of the season record of 57 set by Tom McKay of Montclair Prep in 1981.

Get on the Crossroads’ bandwagon. The Cougars have won 15 straight Delphic League baseball games and claimed their third straight league title last week. Led by two-time All-Southern Section shortstop Doug Pitkin, Crossroads is 21-3-1 overall and ranked No. 1 in the Small Schools division.

Should Crossroads falter, No. 2-ranked Rosamond could scamper away with the title. The Roadrunners are led by outfielder-pitcher Jim Robson, hitting .540 in Desert-Inyo play. Robson, a 6-foot 4-inch, 190-pound athlete, is a three-sport starter, playing linebacker in football and center in basketball.

There is a number of good right-handed pitchers in the area this year. Four of the best are Edgewood’s Larry Gonzales, El Segundo’s Jim Hudson, Sunny Hills’ Paul Abbott and Redondo’s Paul Johnson.

Hudson, a senior, has an 11-4 record. In the four losses, however, his teammates failed to score a run. Gonzales, who stands 6-3, is a flame-thrower with an 8-0 record and an earned-run average of 1.12. Abbott has a 9-1 record with 117 strikeouts.

Johnson, a standout since his freshman season, has a 12-2 record with a 1.20 ERA. Last year as a junior, he had what appeared to be a mediocre 8-8 record, but six of the losses were in one-run games, two by the score of 1-0. At one point in the season, Johnson threw consecutive no-hitters but lost one of the games.

If you like masked men, outstanding catchers also are plentiful. The best of them may be Santa Monica’s Kelly Mann or Glendora’s Kurt Brown.

Mann, who is going to UCLA, is regarded as the best defensive catcher in the past several years.

According to Allen Simpson of Baseball America, “(Brown) has tremendous power, an arm that has been clocked to second base in 1.85 seconds and speed.”

A linebacker in football, Brown has signed with Cal State Long Beach.

City baseball won’t really heat up until later this month, but scouts are high on Venice first baseman Colin Franker and Chatsworth shortstop Glenn Stevenson.

Defending 3-A champion Arcadia will be at Glendale High to take on Loyola tonight at 7:30 in a Southern Section semifinal volleyball match. The championship game is set for Saturday night at Westminster.

“We’ve lost to them twice already,” Arcadia Coach Chuck Freberg said. “So I’m putting in a little something new in practice today (Monday). If the kids pick it up, Loyola might have trouble adjusting to it. If we don’t learn it . . . well, like I said, we’ve lost to them twice already.”

Arcadia (10-6) has two quality players in Mike Pearson and Chris Ballmer, but top-ranked Loyola has strong players in abundance.

“They’ve really got great depth,” Freberg said. “I think their two best kids are Parker Blackman and Tom Parr. But (Coach Roger Yano) has got 14 good kids, and he rotates them in and out, and they don’t lose a thing. They’re tough.”

Los Altos and Bishop Montgomery will play at La Serna in the other 3-A semifinal. In the 4-A division, Corona del Mar will play North Torrance at Newport Harbor, and Edison will take on Dana Hills at Laguna Beach. All matches will begin tonight at 7:30.

Guess who’s probably coming back to Cleveland High?: If you said All-American forward Trevor Wilson, who was kicked off the basketball team last week, give yourself a Kewpie doll. It seems that Wilson and assistant coach Bob Braswell, who is expected to be named the head coach, have resolved their differences and Wilson will probably be reinstated.

College basketball would do well to abandon the early signing date in November. Scouts must pay homage to the men who run summer leagues, creating body brokers who are more powerful than the high school coaches.

Summer leagues have degenerated into an endless series of slam dunks, name-calling and finger pointing. There is no defense and even less passing. It’s b-o-o-o-ring.

Prep Notes

The Southern Section will hold a council meeting Thursday at the Ramada Inn in Norwalk. A close vote is expected on whether the 473 member schools will return to the State basketball playoffs. . . . Patrick Johnson, defending City pole vault champion from Huntington Park, won four events and his sister, Candy, won two in the Eastern League track meet last Friday. Patrick is one of the state’s best pole vaulters and has an outside chance to become the first City titlist since Fremont’s Hubert Black in 1972. . . . Attention reader Dick Bank: You can watch sprinter-hurdler Choo Choo Knighten in the City qualifying meet Friday at Birmingham High in Van Nuys. However, defending City sprint champion, Steve Broussard of Manual Arts has a pulled muscle and may be forced to sit it out. . . . Hart outfielder Mark Culbert has signed a letter of intent with the University of Hawaii. . . . Watch out for Bel-Air’s baseball team, the champions of the Westside League. The coach is Roger Cannon. With a name like that, he’s got to be a hot shot.