Loyola Moves Up, Volleys to Top Again

Another year, another Southern Section boys’ volleyball title for Loyola. The three-game sweep over Newport Harbor for the 4-A crown last Saturday was Coach Roger Yano’s fifth championship in six years with the Cubs, and even moving them up provided only an occasional challenge.

“In a way, it has sort of verified how good the program was in the past,” said Yano, whose teams won four 3-A titles and reached the semifinals the other year. “. . . That was foremost on our minds at the start of the season.

“At the beginning of the year, so much was made of us being in the 4-A now. But we felt that’s where we belonged.”

The Cubs, who returned 10 players from the 1987 championship team, proved it by losing only to Santa Monica, the top-ranked team for much of the season, in a one-game pool play format at the Palisades Tournament and then 2 of 3 against University High of Irvine in the Redondo-Mira Costa Tournament.

“With other teams, you pick out a weakness and play to that,” Newport Harbor Coach Dan Glenn said. “But they don’t seem to have any. They’re so powerful, they hit harder than any team we’ve seen this year.”

Newport Harbor’s longest run of the match came at the start of the final game, when the Sailors scored three straight points.

As the scores began to roll in Monday afternoon at the Southern Section team golf finals at Canyon Country Club in Palm Springs, Chris Zambri, the No. 1 player for two-time defending champion Westlake, noticed an unlikely challenger on the leader board.

It was Estancia of Costa Mesa, which had its two top players in at four-over par 76 and two others at 75 and 78. They crashed the party that figured to belong to Long Beach Millikan, the eventual winner, and Westlake, the runner-up.

“Estancia?” Zambri said. “I’ve never even heard of Estancia.”

Today, though, he has. The Eagles tied for third and will represent the Southern Section along with Westlake, Millikan and La Verne Damien at the California Interscholastic Federation-Southern California Golf Assn. championships June 6 at La Jolla.

Bret Johnson, the El Toro quarterback, who led the Chargers to back-to-back Southern Conference titles and is headed to UCLA, has a namesake. They don’t look anything alike and the other one can’t compete in college because he’s a professional. Bret Johnson has two legs and throws well on the run. My Son Bret has four legs and simply runs--at Hollywood Park. The horse, whose owner is listed as Johnson, went off at 7-1 in the fourth race May 18 and paid $5.60 to show.

The coincidence is almost too much. Bret has one “t,” an irregular spelling of the name. The horse owner is named Johnson. Red and white silks, the favorite color of Bob Johnson, the El Toro coach and father of Bret. The two-legged Bret, that is.

“One of my friends plays the ponies, and he called me about it,” said Bob Johnson, who says he knows nothing about the horse or its owner. “I couldn’t believe it. I could not even believe it. We laughed like crazy.”

Would he drive from south Orange County to Hollywood Park in the future to see the horse run?

“I’d drive a lot farther than that,” he said. “The whole thing is too funny.”

Scott Davison of Redondo took over the all-time state lead for career hits eight days ago, when he pushed his total to 146 with 3 hits, including 2 home runs. He was also the winning pitcher in the 12-4 first-round 4-A victory over Lompoc to increase his record to 16-0. Since then he has posted two more victories, including a 6-1 decision over Cerritos in Friday.

Prep Notes

Tom Milich of El Dorado of Placentia has been named swimming coach of the year and Joe Kelly of Palos Verdes top cross-country coach in Region Eight of the National High School Athletic Coaches Assn. The area covers New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Hawaii and Utah.

Coley Candaele, the promising distance runner at Carpinteria, is the nephew of Casey Candaele of the Montreal Expos and the son of UC Santa Barbara football assistant coach Rick, a former assistant at Lompoc High. Last Saturday, Coley, just a sophomore, won the Southern Section 1-A 800 meters in 1:55.85 and the 1,600 in 4:11.04, the latter the best time of any of the four division champions. In December, he was the quarterback for the Warriors, who won the Inland Conference title. . . . The Keebler Invitational, one of the top national high school meets, has girls’ events for the first time. It remains a seniors-only competition. The competition in suburban Chicago is set for June 18.