MacLean, Hawking Pump Up : All-Stars Lift to Test Their Division I Mettle

The scenario is not strange: a high school senior graduates, feels the first hints of summer warming the hood of his car and promptly rifles through the garage in search of a beach chair and a Frisbee.

Essentials thus located, said graduate carves a sand niche at Zuma, somewhere between a lifeguard stand and a snack bar, not to be heard from until the evenings turn cool and college registration draws near.

Butch Hawking, not your average graduate, has a niche of his own, but it is far from the south swells and swell shapes found at Zuma.

Nearly every day, Hawking and best friend Don MacLean roll into Simi Valley High’s weight room, prepped for dumbbell curls rather than the curl, sit-ups instead of seashells.

“We could be out at the beach or going to the movies every night,” said Hawking, who was the point guard on Simi Valley’s Southern Section 4-A Division championship team last season. “But we realize what the benefits are in the end. The only way to reach that goal is with hard work.”

Hawking will leave the beaches farther in his wake Wednesday when he departs for the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. Basic training starts soon thereafter.

But first, the would-be Cadet and MacLean, Hawking’s UCLA-bound All-American teammate, will play in the Ventura County all-star basketball game. They, along with other standouts from the southern portion of the county, play a team from the North at 8 tonight at Ventura High.

Hawking and MacLean also will play Sunday in an all-star game in Santa Barbara, but the affairs are merely breaks from their summer sessions in the weight room.

The pair spend two hours in the morning preparing for the rigors of Division I basketball through an array of strength and endurance exercises.

Hawking already has added 10 pounds to his wiry 6-foot, 2-inch frame and would like to put on 10 more to reach 175 pounds by the fall.

The training is an extension of a program designed by Butch’s father, Bob Hawking, who resigned as coach at Simi Valley last month to take a job as an assistant at Pepperdine.

“We know it’s going to help us down the line,” Butch Hawking said.

It won’t hurt tonight, either, when the action likely will be wire to wire.

“We’re going to run the open-court game,” said South Coach Kevin Pasky, who coached at Agoura in the regular season. “We’ll let them use their talent and have some fun with it. We’ve given them a transition type of offense, which allows them an opportunity to spread out and run.”

Running for the South will be Thousand Oaks’ Kevin Martin (20.7 points per game), Calabasas’ Jon Drezner (24.3 points, 10 rebounds per game), Agoura’s Mike Armstrong (9.8 ppg) and Dave Corridori (15.3 ppg, 9 rpg), and Westlake’s Kevin Logan (16.7 ppg, 8.4 rpg), Bill Fassl (11.9 ppg, 6.3 ppg) and Nathan Heyman (7 ppg).

The North is coached by Buena’s Glen Hannah and Ventura’s Chris Taylor, who recently resigned. Three players from Buena (Shawn Kirkeby, Mike Sandoval and Craig Rasmussen) and three from Ventura (Joe Paul, Chris Hantgin and Jeff Hereford) anchor that team.

Hawking, for one, would like a victory for the South, even if it is only an all-star game. Simi Valley, after winning its Southern Section title, lost in the second round of the state playoffs to eventual champion Manual Arts.

“Hopefully, we can end it with a win,” he said. “We ended the season with a loss. It’ll be nice to go out with a win.”