Notebook / Ray Ripton : A St. Bernard Unknown Creates Some Sparkling Moments in Opening Game

Junior Calvin Maspero of St. Bernard High School may not be as talented a football player as teammate Kevin Bayonne, the speedy tailback who is recuperating from a knee injury and is expected to return to action soon.

But for one brief, shining moment--actually several moments--Maspero made his teammates forget their yearning for Bayonne, a top college prospect, to return to give the Vikings more offensive spark.

Maspero began the season last Friday by returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown against Culver City. He broke a couple of tackles and raced 96 yards for the score.

Culver City recovered from Maspero’s opening charge and won, 21-14. Culver got timely passing from quarterback Frank Dolce to the Carter twins, Karlos and Kayton, and Dolce hit Pat LaGasse with a 10-yard pass for the winning touchdown in the last quarter. Junior John Price gave the St. Bernard defense something else to think about, running for more than 160 yards and scoring on a two-yard plunge.

Friday night St. Bernard will try to even its record, meeting El Segundo at 7:30. Culver is at Blair at 7:30.

Two former Culver City High football stars got to face each other last weekend in a college game in Ohio.

Eric Shackelford, a Times All-Westside selection in 1982, is a defensive back at Akron University, which defeated Kent State, 17-7. Playing tight end for Kent State was Calvin Guillory, an All-Westsider in 1982 and ’83.

Shackelford played quarterback and defensive back at Culver and Guillory was on the receiving end of many of his passes.

Tom Lewis, the itinerant 6-7 basketball star who left USC after his freshman year and recently found a home at Pepperdine, isn’t the only player with wanderlust who has shown up to play for Waves Coach Jim Harrick.

Antonio Martin, a 6-10, 225-pound native of Spain, also has enrolled at Pepperdine and might play there before Lewis. Lewis must redshirt this year, in accordance with NCAA regulations, but Martin might play this season if he overcomes tendinitis in his right knee.

Martin played for Spain’s junior national team, and older brother Fernando played for Spain in the 1984 Olympics and recently signed with the Portland Trail Blazers.

The younger Martin is undergoing treatment for the tendinitis, and Harrick said the big man from Madrid may be “two to four months away from playing.”

Harrick said Martin is his first foreign recruit in seven seasons at Pepperdine. He said that former Waves Orlando Phillips and Victor Anger, who are playing for Spanish professional teams, told Martin about Pepperdine.

“They recruited him more than (I did). It just shows you the strength of the program when you have former players recruiting for you.”

Pepperdine takes pride in the number of its athletes who graduate. But the school is trying to be even prouder.

Athletic Director Wayne Wright said his department has hired its first academic adviser for athletes, Melissa Emerson, a Pepperdine graduate who has worked in the university’s admissions office for four years and expects to take over her new job in October. She holds a bachelor’s degree in religion and human values and has completed course work for a master’s degree in theology and ethics.

Of 29 senior athletes at Pepperdine during the 1985-86 academic year, 19 have earned degrees, seven have returned to classes this fall and three are rookies with professional teams.

Wright said the school has done a good job in seeing that athletes graduate, “but we want to do better. We also need to provide academic assistance to the student-athlete who requires special attention, and this program will allow that to happen.”

Two Westside fencing schools did well in the recent California Division foil open at Los Angeles Valley College. In the men’s division, Frank Fox, Mike Robins and Adam Zyczkowski, all of Mori Fencing Academy of Beverly Hills, finished one-two-three, respectively. Xandy Brown of Culver City’s Salle Gascon Club took first place in the women’s division. Brown and Fox were undefeated in the tournament.