Quarterback March: Left, Right, Left

Each season, coaches search high and low, left and right, long and hard, to find a player who can pass a football. Some never find one and are caught in an endless quarterback quandary.

At Alemany, there’s no talent shortage at quarterback. The Indians, 3-0-1 and ranked No. 5 in The Times Valley poll, have two players capable of handling the position. And they have two players who do . When Coach Enrique Lopez looked left and right, he liked what he saw.

Roy Talavera, a 6-1, 185-pound senior right-hander, has started each of Alemany’s four games. Sophomore Joey Rosselli, a 6-1, 170-pound, left-hander, has played in the second half or sooner.

If Rosselli and Talavera’s statistics were added together, the pair would rank No. 2 among Valley-area Southern Section passers. Rosselli has passed for 412 yards and three touchdowns and Talavera has 377 yards and three touchdowns. Combined, that’s 789 yards and six touchdowns, and only Darren Renfro of Hart (884) has thrown for more yardage.

If the right hand doesn’t get you, the left hand will.

The scheme is all a part of Lopez’s master plan to slowly work Rosselli into the system, which would free Talavera to concentrate on playing in the secondary.

Everything has been rosy with tandem quarterbacking. After a 25-25 tie in the opener at Los Banos, Alemany has won three straight, including wins over Granada Hills and Kennedy, two 4-A teams from the City Section.

“Roy has been the team leader since these guys were freshmen and won the Del Rey League championship,” Lopez said. “Joey is 15 years old. He’s out there with guys that are 16 and 17, players that are much bigger and more mature.

“We’re trying to gradually work Joey into the starting spot. So far it’s worked as well as we could have ever hoped.”

While Rosselli has produced offensively, Talavera has saved strength for defense. He also returns punts.

“Roy’s strength is defense,” Lopez said. “That’s not to say that he’s not a solid quarterback, but he’ll probably play in college as a defensive back. He’s more rested this way, too.”

“Joey has been picking everything up so fast it’s surprising,” Lopez said. “He came into the Los Banos game and rallied the team and moved the ball. It was the same thing against Granada Hills. It’s just a matter of time before he’s our starter, maybe even in the next couple of weeks.

“A lot of sophomores can be timid. But Joey really fits in with the varsity.”

He fits nicely into Alemany’s future, too.

Schaeffer shaker: Reseda Coach Joel Schaeffer was not feeling well this weekend. “I’ve been walking around, pouting and going through withdrawal,” Schaeffer said.

Was he depressed because of the NFL players’ strike?

No, Schaeffer actually was upset that the Regents were unable to play Monroe last Thursday because of the earthquake that forced the cancellation or postponement of all City Section athletic events.

To make matters worse, while every other City school rescheduled its football game for a later date, the Reseda-Monroe game was instead canceled, leaving Reseda with an unwanted bye.

“I think it was an unfair thing to do,” Schaeffer said. “It’s so . . . rude.”

Monroe officials said that the teams couldn’t play last Friday because many students would be observing Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday.

Darryl Turner, Monroe’s assistant principal in charge of athletics, said that part of the problem was miscommunication between the school and the City Section. “We called downtown to see if we could play Saturday, but they said all events have been canceled for the weekend,” Turner said.

By the time he found out the game could have been played, Turner said it was too late to reschedule the game because the students already had been told that all athletic events had been canceled for the weekend.

Dreams die hard: Linebacker Jason Bailey of Montclair Prep had hoped since his sophomore season to earn a scholarship to a Division I University.

Bailey trained long and hard in pursuit of his dream, both in the weight room and on the field.

With 4.7 speed in the 40, a best of 300 pounds in the bench press and 550 in the squat--and a 3.5 grade-point average to boot--the 6-2, 205-pound Bailey had plenty to offer. UCLA, USC, Washington, Stanford, Cal, Colorado and Oregon State all had contacted him.

But Bailey future took a major detour during Montclair Prep’s 17-7 loss to Norwalk last Thursday. Bailey, a linebacker who also punts for the Mounties, was forced to run with ball after a bad snap and suffered a broken right ankle when he was tackled.

“I feel really angry,” Bailey said. “I don’t feel like I played up to my potential the first two games. But in the last two I was just starting to come into my own.”

Although Bailey realizes that schools such as UCLA and USC may ignore him now, he is confident of earning a scholarship from one of the others.

“It’ll probably hurt my chances at a big school,” he said. “But I think others like Stanford will still be interested.”

Montclair Prep Coach Pat Blackburn said Bailey will be missed. “We have to go on without him. It’s a very big loss but we can’t cancel the rest of the season,” he said.

Bailey could return to the lineup if the Mounties qualify for the playoffs. He will be in a cast for five weeks and rehabilitation would take two more weeks.

Cross-country: Don Patti led Hart to a fifth-place finish at the prestigious Stanford Invitational on Monday. Arroyo, the defending Southern Section 3-A champion and top-ranked team in the state, ran away with the team title, scoring 48 points.

Bend of Oregon (114), Bellarmine of San Jose (144), Corona del Mar (157) and Hart (159) rounded out the top five. Patti, a senior, was timed in 16 minutes, 14.1 seconds over the three-mile course and placed seventh.

Chris Parker and staff writer John Ortega contributed to this notebook.