Preps / Scott Howard-Cooper : Dana Hall Overlooked in Football, Not Track

Football coaches at the University of Washington figured they landed a real sleeper when they signed Dana Hall of Pomona Ganesha, a 6-foot 3-inch safety who didn’t get a lot of attention outside his area. A lot of people still may not know Hall, who as a football player, didn’t even make an all-conference team. But he has become impossible to overlook in track.

Third in the state last season in the 110-meter high hurdles, just 3/10ths of a second behind winner Terry Johnson of Anaheim Katella, Hall has the top times in California in 1987 in two events, the highs, a hand-timed 13.7 seconds, and the 300 intermediate hurdles, 37.53.

He also won at Arcadia and Mt. San Antonio, even though he was bothered by a persistent head cold, one he hopes will disappear this week now that the Giants have a week off before the Hacienda League preliminaries at Chaffey College.

Hall’s goal is winning at the state meet in June at Sacramento. If he does, he will share the glory with Kenneth Hall, his older brother who doubles as a personal coach.

“I’ve been chasing him a long time,” Dana said after winning three events at the Mt. SAC Relays. “That makes me a better person. Most everything I have, I owe to him. When I was a sophomore, I wanted to stop doing the hurdles, but he wouldn’t let me stop. He just kept pressing me to get better.”

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Dana finishes his regular workouts, then joins Kenneth, a former Ganesha standout who now competes for Mt. SAC, for extra attention on technique and conditioning.

Hall said he will concentrate on football at Washington, but will also go out for track if time permits.

The comeback trail: Canoga Park, which started the season 1-3 despite having nine players back, has now won eight straight games and moved into the No. 4 spot in The Times’ City baseball rankings.

At the same time, Canoga Park’s Mike Kerber, a 6-4 junior who missed the first five weeks of the season with tendinitis in his elbow, has also returned to form. He has struck out 15 in his last 10 innings, 9 of those last Thursday in a 4-1 win over No. 9 Woodland Hills El Camino Real. That victory moved the Hunters into a second-place tie in the West Valley League.

Chatsworth, the West Valley leader, is now No. 1 in the City, having moved ahead of Sun Valley Poly, which had been the top-ranked team all season. Last Thursday was the turning point. Sylmar beat Poly, and Chatsworth hammered Woodland Hills Taft, 12-0, as Pierre Amando allowed two hits in six innings of pitching.

Poly, of the East Valley League, and Chatsworth are both 13-3, but Chatsworth gets the nod for the top spot by virtue of a 5-2 win when the teams met April 14 in the fifth-place game of the Holt-Goodman Tournament. In a bit of a showdown, Chatsworth will play host to Canoga Park today.

A City subcommittee has recommended that Tom Smith, the B team football coach at Reseda Cleveland, be removed from all coaching assignments for the 1987-88 school year, alleging that he used “undue influence” in persuading junior high athletes to play for the Cavaliers while teaching at Madison Junior High in North Hollywood.

Despite the recommendation, the district’s Interscholastic Athletic Committee postponed a final verdict until its next meeting, May 18.

Most Madison students live in the Van Nuys Grant district. Officials there made the allegations of recruiting in January.

“We need to talk to some more people at both schools,” City Commissioner Hal Harkness said. “The feeling is that we don’t have all the facts yet.”

Smith attended the meeting Monday, but declined comment.

Add coaches: Craig Raub, who guided the Granada Hills Kennedy girls’ basketball team to three City 4-A championships, has resigned after nine years to pursue other interests. He will remain at the school as a teacher and boys’ tennis coach. No replacement has been named.

Ira Sollod, an assistant at Burbank for seven seasons, has been named basketball coach at cross-town rival Burroughs. The Indians also named a new football coach, Robert McElwee, an assistant at the school last season on the team that went 11-2-1.

Bruce Carlisle, who led Cerritos Whitney to two straight Southern Section Small Schools basketball titles, has been named coach at Whittier La Serna.

Roy Gilmore will not be back as basketball coach at Westlake. Exactly why seems unclear.

Athletic Director Bob Fisher said that Gilmore resigned after leading the Warriors, who previously had never won a playoff game in the school’s 10 years, to the 1987 Southern Section 4-A championship game.

But when questioned last week by John Lynch of The Times, Gilmore said: “Well, I guess I resigned. I wanted to spend more time with my family, I guess. I don’t know.”

Steve Keith of Glendale, one of the top basketball coaches in the Southern Section, is in the running for the vacant position at Irvine. “I’m kind of waiting for a phone call myself to see what’s going to happen,” he said. That call may come this week.