The High Schools : Chaminade’s Burdick Chooses Sides

On which side of the line of scrimmage is Chaminade’s Jeff Burdick more valuable?

As a defensive back, Burdick has 5 interceptions to lead Valley players. He returned those interceptions for 111 yards, including a 54-yard touchdown.

As a wide receiver, Burdick has 9 receptions for 278 yards--an average of more than 30 yards a catch. Burdick has hauled in touchdown passes of 68 and 83 yards.

The 6-foot, 160-pound junior caught 3 touchdown passes in a 27-14 win over St. Francis last week. Brady Mitchell, Chaminade’s top receiver with 20 receptions, was heavily covered. But not Burdick, who also has 5 yards passing as a backup quarterback.

Still, Burdick prefers to line up on defense.

“I think I read the quarterbacks pretty well,” he said. “I guess that’s because I’ve played a little quarterback.”

It-had-to-happen dept.: California Football Magazine distributed free copies of its season preview issue to fans at Saturday night’s Crespi-Servite game at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. The cover of the magazine features a close-up of Crespi running back Russell White, wearing a Crespi letterman’s jacket.

By the end of the game, Servite fans had littered their side of the stadium with paper airplanes made of White’s picture.

White didn’t exactly soar, finishing with 81 yards in 17 carries in a 35-20 loss.

Ball control: Servite tailback Derek Brown finished with 312 yards against a Crespi defense that looks more and more like a team weakness. Through 4 games, the Celts (2-2) have allowed opponents an average of 210 yards a game on the ground.

That can mean sustained, clock-milking drives, which hardly comes as a revelation to Coach Bill Redell.

“I spent the whole weekend thinking about this,” Redell said, “and I think part of the reason we haven’t been able to stop them is because our offense just hasn’t had the ball.

“We’ve played the first half of all our games pretty even, but in the second half we have just not been able to stop them.”

Case in point: Brown rushed for 221 second-half yards Saturday.

Familiar visitor: Dick Coury, the quarterback coach of the L. A. Rams and Redell’s former boss with a handful of USFL teams in the early 1980s, attended the game Saturday.

Redell was a Coury assistant with the well-traveled Boston Breakers, who later became the New Orleans Breakers. After Redell left the team, it relocated in the Pacific Northwest and became--you guessed it--the Portland Breakers.

“The towns kept changing, but the nickname stayed the same,” Redell cracked. “At least all the cities were by the water.”

Coury is no stranger to the waters of high school football. He coached at Mater Dei of Santa Ana for 9 seasons and compiled a career mark of 96-9-3.

Plainly speaking: Taft was beaten soundly by San Fernando, 31-15, Friday night in a Northwest Valley Conference opener, but Taft Coach Tom Stevenson was more than glad to talk about the game.

“In terms of the talent we have and the way it was used, it was the worst performance by any team I’ve ever been associated with,” Stevenson grumbled. “It was ugly. We were terrible.”

Tailback Kelvin Byrd, who gained 193 yards in the season opener, finished with only 42 yards in 17 carries--his second consecutive sub-100 week.

“When you don’t throw a single block all night, you don’t do very well,” Stevenson said.

Add Taft: Byrd is nicknamed Birdman. Perhaps, in the interests of aviary consistency, receiver-defensive back Uda Walker should be called Stork.

Walker is a 6-3, 160-pound senior with legs so thin that, in Stevenson’s words: “He’d make a great toothpick.”

Walker has made some great picks, too. He has a team-high 3 interceptions and caught 6 passes for 107 yards and a touchdown against San Fernando.

Missing link: It wasn’t big, bad Burroughs that blew down Glendale’s perfect season, it was the huffing and puffing Glendale linemen. With 2 offensive linemen out because of injuries and most of Glendale’s remaining linemen playing both ways, the Dynamiters were outscored, 17-0, in the second half of the 24-13 loss.

“We just kind of wore out at the end,” Coach Don Shoemaker said. “I don’t want to sound like going two ways was an excuse because Burroughs did what they had to do. We just need to get more kids involved in the game so some of these kids don’t have to go two ways.”

Quarterback Richard Callister wouldn’t mind the fresh bodies in front of him. Callister was on the run most of the game and, although he threw for 195 yards, he completed only 13 of 28 passes and threw his first interception of the season. Entering the game, Callister had completed 71% of his passes.

Injury: Canyon linebacker Sean McCune, who was strapped to a stretcher and taken to a hospital in an ambulance during Friday’s game with Notre Dame, suffered a concussion.

McCune collided with another player and minutes later collapsed on the sideline, according to Coach Harry Welch, who said McCune is questionable for Friday’s game against Alemany.

Day to day: Newbury Park quarterback Wayne Cook, who broke a bone in the base of his right thumb three weeks ago, has a 50% chance of playing against Westlake this week, according to Coach Ken Cook, who is also Wayne’s father. Wayne had the cast removed Monday and threw in practice later in the day.

“There is still some pain in the thumb,” Ken Cook said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Wayne is expected to visit his doctor again Thursday. Until then he will be kept out of contact drills.

One near miss: Harvard’s water polo team might be pleased with its near miss against Sunny Hills on Friday, but Coach Rich Corso will have none of it.

Sunny Hills, the top-ranked team in the nation in one publication, defeated Harvard, 8-7, in the second round of the South Coast Classic--one of Southern California’s premier tournaments.

To some, a 1-point loss would be a victory in itself. To some , that is.

“It’s not OK to lose by 1,” Corso said.

Harvard (10-3) is ranked first in the Southern Section 2-A Division team as is Sunny Hills in the 4-A. The Saracens finished the tournament 2-2.

New day, same opponent: The Marmonte League volleyball match between the league’s two best teams--Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park--has been rescheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday at Thousand Oaks.

Staff writers Tim Brown, Steve Elling, Chris J. Parker and Vince Kowalick contributed to this notebook.

FOOTBALL TOP 10 Selected by sportswriters of The Times

Last Rk Wk Team League Record 1 2 Channel Islands Marmonte 3-1 2 1 Crespi Del Rey 2-2 3 4 San Fernando North Valley 2-2 4 6 Granada Hills North Valley 3-1 5 5 Reseda Mid-Valley 3-0 6 3 Alemany Del Rey 3-1 7 8 Hart Foothill 2-2 8 10 Kennedy North Valley 3-1 9 NR Chaminade S.F. Valley 4-0 10 NR Burroughs Foothill 3-1

NR--Not ranked.