BRIEFLY : All-Star Team Heads for New Zealand

The Santa Clarita All-Stars, an eight-player basketball team, will leave Saturday for a two-week, four-game trip to New Zealand that also includes a stop in Australia. The trip was organized by Lee Smelser, basketball coach and athletic director at College of the Canyons.

International rules will be used in the games. Gary Gray, a senior at Granada Hills, is the only high school player who will make the trip.

Current Canyons players Dana Pump and Don Barberie, a Crespi High graduate, also will make the trip. The other players include: Mel Braxton, who played two seasons at Canyons and a year at New Mexico State; Jon Hoffman, who will transfer to Cal State Long Beach after playing at Glendale College; Brian Fogel, who will play at Cal State Sonoma after attending Santa Monica City College; Kevin Barbarick, who will attend UC San Diego after playing at Allan Hancock Junior College, and Loyola Marymount’s Mike Yoest, who played at Crespi.

The trip will cost each player about $2,000, Smelser said.

Shrine Football Teams Open Training Camps

The players and coaching staffs for the 35th Shrine football game are scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles today for the opening of training camps in preparation for the Aug. 2 game at the Rose Bowl. After pre-training physical examinations and a luncheon, the players will leave for a trip to Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park. After an all-you-can-eat chicken dinner, the players will engage in a pie-eating contest.

The North team, composed of players who will be college freshmen in the fall, will practice at Cal State Northridge, while the South team, featuring the best players in Southern California, will practice at Occidental College.

Five Valley-area players will participate for the South team: Simi Valley’s M.J. Nelson, Notre Dame’s John Perak, Westlake’s Gary Wellman and Canyon’s Randy Austin and Joe Zacharia. Canyon Coach Harry Welch is one of the coaches for the South team.

Watts, Burnham Win at Track Meet in Oregon

Quincy Watts of Taft High, Angela Burnham of Rio Mesa and Steven Lepken of Valencia each won two events at the Track City Classic age-group competition in Eugene, Ore., last weekend.

Crissy Mills of Tarzana and Ralph Blanks of Royal High also won individual events at the meet.

Watts, 16, the state champion at 200 meters, won the 100- and 200-meter dashes in the intermediate division (for athletes born in 1970 and ‘71). He ran 10.57 in the 100 and a wind-aided 21.15 in the 200. The 100-meter clocking was only .01 seconds shy of his personal best.

Burnham, 14, duplicated Watts’ feat in the girls intermediate division. She won the 100 in 11.78 and the 200 in 24.64. Like Watts, Burnham’s 100 clocking was only .01 seconds shy of her personal best. The state 100 champion as a freshman, she is undefeated in age-group competition this year.

Lepken, a 13-year-old who will be a freshman at Hart High, turned in an outstanding distance triple in the youth division (for athletes born in 1972 and ‘73). He won the 1,500 in 4:20.5 and the 3,000 in 9:32.2.