You Should Have Seen Her Breaking Ball

This is the playoffs, right? You’ve got to play hurt in the big games. No one needed to tell that to Erica Smith, the star pitcher for the Avalon High School softball team.

What Smith pulled off last Thursday in a first-round playoff game against Coast Christian was above and beyond the call of duty.

She scored a run in the first inning to help her own cause, a 5-0 shutout in a Small Schools game at Avalon, lowering her already impressive earned-run average of 0.12.

And she did it with a broken leg.

All except scoring the run, because that’s when it happened, with a home-plate, leg-first slide into the Coast Christian catcher. Smith was carried off the field by teammates, but she was allowed to continue. The injury wasn’t X-rayed until after the game.

“Which wasn’t too smart of us,” assistant coach Tim Evans said later the same day. “But she said she wanted to go back out. Besides, she was our only pitcher, so we weren’t going to argue with her.”

When Coach Rich Hernandez--34-2 in league play the last three years since taking over a team that went 0-10 a season before he arrived--agreed, it was with unusual instructions to Smith: Strike out every time you bat.

That worked fine, except when she was hit by a pitch and had to take first. Hernandez told Smith to immediately take a big lead off the base, practically begging to be caught.

Happily, she was picked off.

“She was so gutsy,” Evans said. “It just about made you cry, especially when you realized how she was hanging in there.”

Twin killing: Kris Schwengel was an effective starting pitcher for the Santa Monica baseball team, compiling a 5-1 record and a 2.48 ERA for a Viking team that made the 4-A playoffs. In times of trouble, he could turn a lead over to the season’s top relief pitcher in the Southern Section, Kurt Schwengel, his identical twin.

Kurt, 4-0 last year as a starter, has opened only one game this season. Instead, he is 1-2 out the bullpen with nine saves to set a Southern Section single-season record. The win came in his only start--a no-hitter in April at the Mexicali International Friendship Tournament in Mexico, where he was named Most Valuable Player.

“It’s different,” said Coach Eddie Frierson, whose Vikings were eliminated in the first round last Friday by Westlake without either Schwengel getting in the game to pitch. “It’s like blinking your eyes, and you’ve got a stronger arm in.”

Remember all the talk about Tom Redington of Anaheim Esperanza and Danny Macias of El Monte Mountain View chasing the Southern Section career home run record? Well forget it.

Ed Pierce of Glendora has hit 24 to better the record of 22 set by Andy Ruscitto of Placentia Valencia between 1983-85. Thirteen of Pierce’s homers came in his sophomore season.

Beyond the surprise, there is the mystery.

The Soviet Union’s Junior National basketball team beat the local all-stars, 102-80, Sunday night at Cerritos College. The relative ease with which they did it, with a second-half lead never fewer than eight points, was the mild surprise.

The mystery is how this Soviet team lost to a group of 17-and-under all-stars last Thursday in overtime at Memphis, Tenn. The home team there, without any seniors, did what LeRon Ellis and Sean Higgins and Co., with several of the top players on the West Coast, were unable to do three nights later.

The 17-and-under all-stars joined a New York City AAU club as the only teams to beat the Soviets in the first eight games of the tour.

“I think if we were to play those two games now, I have no doubt we would win,” Coach Vladimir Obukhov said. “As concerning Memphis, it may have been too difficult. Besides their players, the referees helped them very much.”

The most disappointing development of the Southern Section track finals Saturday at Cerritos College had to be Angela Burnham’s pulled hamstring during the 4-A 400 relay. The defending state champion at 100 meters, she was then forced to withdraw from the 100, 200 and 1,600 relay.

The best clutch performance--or best surprise--probably came in the boys’ 4-A triple jump. Chris Perry of Pasadena Muir, expected by his coaches to finish third, won the event with a best of 48-5 for 10 points toward the team title in a tight finish instead of six.

Prep Notes The calendar: The City baseball playoffs open today, with Canoga Park the top-seeded team in the 4-A and three-time defending champion Venice in the 3-A. Southern Section boys’ team tennis has its quarterfinals today in the 4-A, 3-A, 2-A and 1-A, with the semifinals in all divisions, including the 5-A, Thursday. The City softball playoffs continue today with the quarterfinals. . . . Beverly Hills forfeited its two Southern Section 5-A tennis playoff victories because of an ineligible player. Buena and Corona del Mar, which suffered the two playoff losses to Beverly Hills, play today for the right to meet Santa Barbara in the semifinals. . . . Shandon, a member of the Tri-County League, will move to the Central Section for football next season only. . . . Ned Booher, a football coach at three Ohio schools since 1958, has been named to head the program at Riverside Notre Dame. Most recently, he compiled a 182-53 record at Northmont High in Clayton, with 10 league championships and five undefeated seasons. . . . A group of alumni and faculty from Bosco Tech will meet a team of players from the L.A. Raiders in a celebrity basketball game Friday at the Rosemead school. Tickets are $5, with proceeds going to the Bosco athletic department.

The L.A. Loyola volleyball team that won the Southern Section 3-A title last Saturday, its fourth in the past five years under Coach Roger Yano, will return 10 of 15 players for next season. . . . Dan Ruff of Fairfield Union High in Lancaster, Ohio, hit his 52nd career home run recently to break the national record. . . . Santa Paula made its first appearance in the Southern Section baseball playoffs in 32 years last Friday with a 2-A first-round game against La Mirada. The Cardinals lost, 12-6, but still finished with the Frontier League title and a 17-4 record. Bishop Diego of Santa Barbara earned its first postseason berth since 1957 and also went out in the first round, 8-4, to Paraclete in a Small Schools (large) game. . . . Larry Anderson of Lynwood has been named football coach at Anaheim Katella. . . . Mary Katherine Cook of San Jose Del Mar and Paul Chan of Encinitas San Dieguito have been named scholar-athletes of the year by the California Interscholastic Federation.