NOTEBOOK : Crossroads High Baseball Team to Test Australians

The Crossroads School baseball team and Coach Chuck Ice will travel to Australia in late August and find out how the Great American Game is played Down Under.

Ice said Crossroads is going on a playing tour of Australia, arranged by Sports Exchange U. S. A., and will play Aug. 17-19 in a six-team tournament in Cairns and single games Aug. 20 in Brisbane and Aug. 25 in Sydney.

The field for the Cairns tournament includes three Australian prep teams and two other California teams: Huntington Beach High School and an all-star team from Santa Cruz, Ice said. In Brisbane, Crossroads will play Australia’s national prep champions, and in Sydney the opponent will be the country’s second-place team, he added.

The starting lineup for Crossroads will include most of the players who started for the Roadrunners last season when they won the CIF-Southern Section Small Schools (Large Division) championship.

The local squad includes senior catcher Eddie Lample; first baseman Danny Cosgrove, a June graduate; junior first baseman Andrew Bernstein, who will split time with Cosgrove; graduated second baseman Todd Marshall; sophomore shortstop Hugh Mangum; third basemen Jason Rodman, a graduate who will be at UC Santa Barbara in the fall, and senior Eric Newhouse.

Others are pitcher Mike LeBuffe, who will be at Princeton in September; senior pitcher-outfielder Steve Solomon; senior outfielder Kent Izeki, and junior outfielder Rudy Freedman. Kip Dillinger, an assistant coach, also will make the trip.

The final event in the 1987 Budweiser U. S. Pro Tour of Surfing and Bodyboarding will be held Aug. 21-23 at Surfrider Beach in Malibu.

The field includes Mike Lambresi, the tour’s top-rated surfer; Mike Stewart of Kona, Hawaii, who has already won the body-boarding championship; long-board division leader Jon Paskowitz of San Clemente, and Debbie Beacham of La Jolla, women’s points leader and a former world champion.

The total purse is $25,000. Competition begins at 7 a.m. each day. The finals will start about 1 p.m. Aug. 23.