Pressure on Simi Valley to Extend Streak

Same time next year: During Easter Vacation, 1986, the Simi Valley High School baseball team won the Colonial tournament in Orlando, Fla., and vaulted to the top spot in Collegiate Baseball magazine’s national prep rankings.

This year, more specifically last week, there was no such accomplishment. But with several new faces--the Pioneers lost some key players to graduation--there was considerably less pressure for Coach Mike Scyphers. The Pioneers happily took third place, finishing with a win Saturday over Walton, Ga.

“I think we felt a little more relaxed going into the tournament than last year,” Scyphers said. “Going in last year, everybody expected us to do extremely well. We had gotten all that publicity and all those write-ups. We felt this year that we would go and have a good time and play relaxed.”

The real pressure for 1987 begins this week when the Pioneers return to Marmonte League play. Simi Valley, which reached the Southern Section 4-A semifinals last season, will try to add to its streak of 19 consecutive league wins, beginning with today’s home game against Newbury Park.

“This group really wants to go undefeated (in the league) to match last year,” Scyphers said. “And with each game that goes by, the pressure will grow for us to go undefeated.”

If the pressure is rising to a high pitch, the Pioneers are going right with it.

Catcher Tim Laker, the only senior starter back from last season, has an 18-game hitting streak and averages almost two hits a game. He is batting .538 and has also pitched three games.

Junior shortstop Greg Gerber, with a .492 average, has had a hit in each of his last nine at-bats, setting a school record.

Junior pitcher Scott Sharts, all 6 feet 6 inches of him, is 8-1 with a 2.83 earned-run average. He is also batting .436, leads the team in home runs with 7, in runs batted in with 22, and has already set the school record for homers in a career at 13, with more than a year left.

Six area players made the 21-member West team for the nation’s best baseball prospects, as selected by Collegiate Baseball: pitcher David Holdridge and infielder Brent Knackert, both of Huntington Beach Ocean View, shortstop Tom Redington of Anaheim Esperanza, pitcher Larry Gonzalez of Chino Don Lugo, shortstop Matt Bogogno of La Puente Nogales and Simi Valley’s Laker.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based publication commissioned George Kirchgassner, coach at Colonial High in Orlando, Fla., and Paula J. Finocchio of the Orlando Sentinel to pick the teams for the East and West, with input from 28 college coaches and four major league teams.

From all-star to ineligible: Congratulations to LeRon Ellis of Santa Ana Mater Dei and Ricky Butler of Ocean View and several others. Congratulations on being some of the best basketball players around and being selected to play in postseason all-star games.

Now take a seat. Your high school sports careers are over.

According to a California Interscholastic Federation rule, anyone who plays in an all-star football or basketball game becomes ineligible for any other sports.

The rule is an attempt to restrict time away from school but it has been undermined by its own out-dated standards and inconsistency.

Playing in national all-star basketball games has been the height of some players’ careers. So why should Ellis, a 6-11 center who high jumped 6-8 in a meet earlier this season, be prohibited from further track competition since his appearance in the Dapper Dan game a few weeks ago in Pittsburgh?

And why should Butler be forced to chose between basketball, the sport he will play in college, and volleyball, a sport he simply enjoys playing?

More to the point, why does the rule apply only to football and basketball? One major tennis tournament must take more students out of school than any of the all-star basketball games.

As Butler told The Times’ Tom Hamilton: “It’s stupid. You played hard and worked hard for basketball and felt you deserved to play one all-star game.

“I like volleyball. It’s fun. But I had to let my teammates down. They should let you play. You’ve worked hard in one sport, you should also be able to play another, and you should be able to play in an all-star game.”

Nearly one-third of the nation’s junior tennis players spend more than $10,000 annually for training, according to a survey taken last week at the Easter Bowl tournament in Miami, a field that included several top Southern Californians.

More than 60% of the entrants said the annual income of their families falls below $80,000, and 87.4% said their families are making financial sacrifices to support their tennis. Despite the costs, only 8% of the junior players practice on school or public courts.

Carlos Bustos of University High in Irvine was one of the big surprises of the competition, an unseeded player who reached the championship match Sunday before losing to second-seeded Jared Palmer of Saddlebrook, Fla., 6-3, 6-1.

Prep Notes Santa Ana Foothill’s Ted Mullen, one of Orange County’s most successful football coaches, has resigned to become the new coach at Anaheim. Mullen replaces Roger Stahlhut, who quit in January. In six seasons at Foothill, Mullen compiled a 59-15-2 record and led the Knights to the Southern Conference championship in 1981. Mullen, who has also coached at Irvine University (1980) and Villa Park (1970-79), has a career record of 134-50-5 with two Southern Conference championships. . . . John Monger, the only football coach in the 15-year history of Don Lugo, has left to take over at Chino, his alma mater and the cross-town rival. The Conquistadors’ record under Monger was 111-38-3, including the 1979 Southeastern Conference championship and seven straight victories over Chino.