Preps : Southern Section Might Get a Shot in the Arm

Bombs away: The three-point shot made its debut in the Southern Section last week as play began in two leagues in Orange County. The Freeway League even had one more gimmick for its first games, a Tipoff Tournament with all three opening-night games at Cal State Fullerton. The Sunset League opened two days later.

League representatives will make recommendations regarding the three-point shot at next spring’s Southern Section general council meeting. Commissioner Stan Thomas, for one, said chances are good that the rule will be adopted section-wide in the next couple years.

“Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the three-point shot was an agenda item next year, and if it’s passed, it could go into effect for the 1988-89 season,” he told The Times’ Tom Hamilton recently. “If the schools want it, heck, let’s do it.”

Added Coach Jim Harris of Huntington Beach Ocean View: “At first, I wondered why should we change such a great game? But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the rule is coming sooner or later. You’re going to see a three-point shot in every high school game in the next couple of years.”

Not that everyone will be happy about it.

“To me, it adds one more thing for an official to screw up on,” Long Beach Millikan Coach Bill Odell said.

Santa Fe of Santa Fe Springs, which has won 15 of the last 16 Whitmont League wrestling titles, took a big step toward another and reaffirmed its No. 1 ranking in the Southern Section 2-A Division with a 33-30 win over No. 2 Pico Rivera El Rancho last Thursday.

Senior Lyndon Campbell, a two-time Southern Section champion and the state winner at 114 pounds last season, improved his record to 22-0, 19 of which came by fall, in the 135-pound division. He is being recruited by 30 colleges, including Penn State, Notre Dame and Arizona State.

A newer standout, Danny Garcia, a sophomore heavyweight, gave the Chiefs the win over El Rancho with a victory in the final bout of the night, upping the team record to 14-3 after winning the Southern Section title last season. The previous losses were by six points to Alhambra Keppel, No. 3 in the 3-A, by 11 without Campbell to Rosemead, No. 5 in the 3-A, and by 12 to Las Vegas Eldorado in a major invitational in Las Vegas. Coached by Paul Sevillano, a 1976 graduate of the school, Santa Fe also has a 13-point win over Victory Valley, No. 1 in the 3-A last season.

In a 4-A showdown last week, third-ranked Placentia El Dorado defeated second-ranked Anaheim Loara, 27-20, to pin the Saxons with their first loss of the season after 12 straight victories. Todd Tomazic of El Dorado, defending Southern Section champion at 169 pounds, decisioned Brian Malavar, the fifth-place finisher in the class, 6-2, in a key bout.

Wilmington Banning and Pasadena Muir, two of the premier football teams in the state, have agreed to a home-and-home series in 1987 and ’88.

Muir, meanwhile, has named Dwain Thornton, a former assistant and a head baseball coach at the school as head football coach, to replace Jim Brownfield, who is taking a leave of absence for health reasons.

Prep Notes

Arroyo, which won the Southern Section 3-A boys’ title, has been ranked No. 1 in the final state cross-country poll by California Track and Running News. . . . Erick Anderson, one of the top football prospects in Illinois, made a recruiting visit to UCLA this weekend. The 6-3 linebacker/fullback from Glenbrook South High in the Chicago suburb of Glenview, has already gone to Michigan and also has trips planned to Penn State, Northwestern and Notre Dame. . . . Senior Tank Collins of Pomona, one of the top basketball players in the state, is academically ineligible and will be lost to the Red Devils until at least the end of January. His last appearance was in the Tournament of Champions, where he totaled 122 points to tie former Santa Ana Mater Dei star Tom Lewis for the tournament scoring record. . . . George Kersh, a senior from Pearl, Miss., broke the national indoor record for the 880-yard run Saturday with a 1:51.26 at Lousiana State. That cut more than a half-second off the previous mark of 1:52.0 by Larry Kelly of Park Ridge, Ill., a standard that had stood since 1965. Kersh had the best prep 800-meter time in the country last season (1:48.86) and finished eighth at that distance at the World Junior Games.