Prep Notebook : Belmont, San Pedro Play for City Soccer Title Tonight

Belmont High School, with just three starters from last season’s team, will go for its second straight City Section soccer title tonight at 7:30 at Westchester against undefeated San Pedro.

The Sentinels, who beat Bell for the 1985-86 championship, are 11-1-2, the loss and one of the ties having been against Lincoln in Northern League play. San Pedro, which lost to Bell in last season’s semifinals, began the playoffs unseeded, despite having won the Marine League title. The Pirates then got to this point by defeating third-seeded Chatsworth in the quarterfinals and second-seeded Sun Valley Poly in the semis.

“Knowing (Belmont) is a good team sort of motivates my team much more,” San Pedro Coach Henry Nozaki said. “I’m not sure about the outcome. I hope it will be 17-0 in the sense that it would be our 17th straight win. We’re looking forward to the 17th.

“We’re relatively confident about this game. . . . We don’t know much about Belmont except that they are the defending champion.”

San Pedro has the City’s leading goal scorer in Raul Haro, with 36, but Belmont won last season when Bell had Waldir Guerra, who set the record with 45. This season, Belmont is led by junior Edgardo Ortega, who has 14 goals, including all three in a semifinal shutout over Granada Hills Kennedy.

“I like the talent we have here,” Belmont Coach Ron Melin said. “We knew at the start of the season we were going to be a good team, but we didn’t know how far we would get.”

The Sentinels may be asking themselves the same things next season. They will lose only four starters to graduation.

Prep Notes Mid-Valley League champion Kennedy will play East Valley League winner Poly in a preliminary soccer game at 5 p.m. It is not officially a third-place game and is considered an exhibition. . . . The second annual California Baseball Coaches Assn. clinic, jointly sponsored by Cal State Los Angeles and Goodman’s Sporting Goods, will be held Saturday at 8 a.m. in the Cal State L.A. gym. There is no admission charge and the session is open to all high school coaches. Speakers include coaches Al Farrar of UC Santa Barbara, Skip Claprood of Citrus College, Sam Blalock of Mt. Carmel High in San Diego, Mike Curran of Anaheim Esperanza, assistants Frank Sanchez of USC and Dr. Coop DeRenne of Hawaii, and shortstop Kevin Elster of the New York Mets. . . . Vanderbilt has received oral commitments from a pair of area running backs, Brett Hayes of Playa del Rey St. Bernard and Andy Iacenda of Newhall Hart. Hayes was an All-Angelus League pick, and Iacenda was named to the All-Foothill League team. . . . The Crenshaw basketball team has been invited to play in the 1987 Fort Worth, Tex., Westside Lions tournament. Tom Rogers, the director of the tournament, took a plane to Los Angeles last week to get a first-hand look at the Cougars and Fairfax, the other possibility. “Crenshaw is the younger team,” he said. “They started a senior, three juniors and a sophomore when I saw them. Fairfax has (junior) Chris Mills, and he’s a great player, but in my opinion, with as many seniors as Fairfax has, they won’t be as good a team next year.”

Sunny California? Riverside Rubidoux’s boys’ soccer game at Rialto Eisenhower last Friday was canceled because of a wind-chill factor of below zero. . . . The Simi Valley girls’ soccer team jumped out to a 13-1-3 start, good for the No. 2 spot in the Southern Section 3-A poll, as goalie Angela Washburn had 14 shutouts. The only loss was a 1-0 setback by Hawthorne last Friday, which gave Hawthorne goaltender Sandra Haycroft her 10th shutout. . . . Jeff Cirillo of Burbank Providence, the Southern Section Small Schools player of the year in baseball in 1986, will miss the rest of the basketball season with a dislocated thumb on his left hand after averaging 20.3 points a game. He is a right-handed pitcher and is expected to play baseball in the spring. . . . Colton is atop the Southern Section field hockey poll, followed by Newport Harbor of Newport Beach, Glendora, Garden Grove Santiago and Huntington Beach Edison.