The Preps / Scott Howard-Cooper : Jefferson, With a Winning Record and New Image, Heads to Las Vegas

The Jefferson High School basketball team leaves Friday for the Las Vegas Holiday Tournament and will meet highly rated Oak Hill Academy of Mouth of Wilson, Va., later that night with a 5-2 record. Could it be that some of the early season success is due to a women?

If not, the unique work of Verda Talton certainly hasn’t hurt.

“It’s been very positive,” Jefferson Coach Wendell Greer said. “I can’t tell you how much her work has meant to the kids.”

While Greer has worked with the Democrats on the court, Talton, his fiance, has helped them off. At least their image.

As president of Trilateral Communications, a public relations firm, she has been working this season to improve the normally poor image of the inner-city school. Several other coaches have complained about a bad rap overshadowing positive happenings at their schools, but Greer, who has also been helped by Athletic Director Al Johnson and assistant principal Eta Seamster on that front, is one of the first to do something about it.

“This is something that will help solidify our program, to make kids want to come to Jefferson,” said Greer, now in his second year at the school. “It lets people know we have something good to offer.”

Said Talton: “When I first started, I didn’t look at the aspect of a P. R. firm helping a basketball team. I think Greer is very busy coaching and counseling the students. . . . He’s really not proficient at letter writing or publicity or promotions. He asked me to do it, and I said sure.”

Her work so far has included sending out press releases and letters to local businesses to help the team raise $4,500 for trips to Bakersfield and Las Vegas for tournaments, having the players give anti-drug speeches to community groups, beginning an adopt-a-player program between former and current team members and bringing representatives from Athletes in Action to Jefferson to speak.

The Las Vegas tournament, traditionally one of the best in the West, will also include Rolling Hills, Westminster La Quinta, Manual Arts, Downey Pius X, Gardena Serra and Irvine Woodbridge.

The out-of-state lineup has such stars as Brian Shorter of Oak Hill and Rodney Monroe of Hagerstown, Md.

Seeing is believing: Before the game, Jim Woodard, basketball coach at Woodland Hills Taft, stood to the side during warm-ups and surveyed the Toreadors’ much-ballyhooed opponent, Fairfax.

“I’ve seen every City champion since 1955, and they are the best City team I’ve seen,” he told Johannes Tesselaar of the Daily News. “Or, I should say, the most talented, since they haven’t won anything yet.”

Later that day, after Sean Higgins (32) and Chris Mills (30) drilled Taft for 62 points in a 104-66 win, Woodard thought otherwise.

“That’s the best team I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Unwanted surprise: UCLA Coach Terry Donahue showed up at Citrus College to watch Newhall Hart quarterback Jim Bonds during the Indians’ Northwestern Conference championship game against Temple City.

“I wasn’t ready for it,” Hart Coach Rick Scott told The Times’ John Lynch afterward. “We worked really hard to get the kids to concentrate, and whether it’s Terry Donahue, Heather Locklear or Farah Fawcett, if it’s somebody they know, it’s a distraction.

“I can see a high school quarterback being affected when he found out that the coach of the local college was on the sideline. I think there’s a way to go about recruiting. And when he calls again, I’m going to let him know I didn’t appreciate it.”

Prep Notes Don Swanson made it official and announced his retirement as football coach at Temple City after five years. No replacement has been named. Assistants Ed Mohr, another holdover from the Rams’ glory days of the 1970s when Bob Hitchcock was head coach, and Al Langdale also stepped down. In the 22 years that Hitchcock, Swanson and Mohr were together, Temple City won seven Southern Section championships and had the string of 46 straight wins that Canyon Country Canyon tied this season. . . . Tackle David Matter, the top player off a Loyola team that went 9-3, said he will attend the University of Pennsylvania. . . . The Rams and the U.S. attorneys office have created an hour-long drug awareness program that will be offered to high schools around Southern California, with a player, experts on drug education and abuse and a representative from the attorney’s office speaking at assemblies. The Rams also have a similar presentation for selected junior high and grade schools. For more information, call the U.S. attorney’s office at (213) 894-6159 or the Rams’ community relations office at (714) 535-7267. . . . Quincy Watts, who almost single-handedly led Woodland Hills Taft to the 1986 state track title, has suffered a stress fracture in his foot and is expected to miss the next 4-6 weeks of the basketball season. He will be ready for track, but for now, this is a definite blow to the basketball team. . . . Marc Davis of San Diego, who recently won the Kinney national cross-country title, has entered the boys’ two-mile event at the Sunkist Invitational Jan. 16 at the Sports Arena. . . . California placed five people on the 100-player Bally All-American football team: Running backs George Hemingway of Colton and Tommy Booker of Vista, linemen Tyrone Rodgers of Wilmington Banning and Scott Spalding of El Toro and linebacker-wide receiver Junior Seau of Oceanside. ESPN will air a 30-minute show on the team Saturday at 6 p.m.

Two days after he quarterbacked El Toro to the Southern Conference football title, Bret Johnson joined the basketball team. Last Monday, his first time on the court with the Chargers, he scored 20 against Costa Mesa. The next night, still without a day of practice, he hit 10 of 12 shots from the field and finished with 27 against University High of Irvine. No doubt a payoff from hard work during the summer months, when he played one-on-one with former Glendale Hoover shooting star Joe Hillman, now at Indiana. . . . The El Toro football team, by the way, has been named the state team of the year by Cal-Hi Sports. Encino Crespi, Concord De La Salle, Carson and Pasadena Muir were also considered. The publication put Crespi No. 1 in its 4-A Division; El Toro, Newhall Hart, Temple City, Santa Ana and Hacienda Heights Los Altos Nos. 1-5 in the 3-A; and Cerritos Valley Christian No. 1 in the 1-A. . . . The final USA Today national top 25 has City 4-A runner-up Wilmington Banning No. 11, champion Carson No. 16 and El Toro among the Best of the Rest. Valdosta, Ga., won the mythical title for the second time in three years.