Tennis / Sam Farmer : Baseball Expatriates Serving Kennedy Well

The Kennedy High boys’ tennis team, which dropped from the 4-A to the 3-A Division this year, advanced to the City Section championships Friday for the first time by beating Poly, 27-2 1/2, on Tuesday.

Four of the Golden Cougars’ best players--Che Naveja, Tony Yean, Bobby Butler and Josh Etting--had planned to play baseball, not tennis, when they came to Kennedy. Yean and Naveja even played junior varsity baseball for a season.

“It was nice of the baseball community to spread the wealth,” tennis Coach Craig Raub said. “What the correlation between the two sports is, I don’t know, but baseball players can be a little wacky and eccentric and those two adjectives have our guys nailed.”

It is safe to say that the Kennedy baseball team has survived without the tennis players--it won the City 4-A championship last Thursday at Dodger Stadium.

Held service, lost the child: How excited was Jim Mintz after he beat Bob McCampbell in a recent practice match at the Cabrillo Racquet Club?

“He was jumping all over--almost manic about it,” said McCampbell, who manages the pro shop at the club.

Mintz dashed out of the club and raced home to tell his wife. In his haste, he left Alexis, his 2 1/2-year-old daughter, at the club.

“I guess my face kind of went blank when I realized (the mistake),” said Mintz, who quickly returned and picked up Alexis. “I’m the absent-minded professor.”

Awards dinner: An awards banquet to benefit the Ventura County Junior Tennis Assn. will be held Saturday night at the Radisson Hotel in Oxnard. All VCTA players, parents and coaches are invited to attend.

Information: 805-647-7263.

Grim outlook: A few members of the Harvard High tennis team considered “the Saracens” far too tame a nickname for the Southern Section 2-A Division champions.

Their recommendation? Change the mascot to the Grim Reaper--suggesting the demise of the opponent--clutching a tennis racket instead of a scythe.

Harvard Coach Harry Salamandra, who is also the dean of students, said that the players’ approach was too disorganized.

“If they really wanted to do it, they probably would have gone through the student council,” Salamandra said. “It was whimsical.”

SCTA regionals: Six public parks teams will participate in the Southern California Tennis Assn. 18-and-under regional championships at UCLA’s Los Angeles Tennis Center this weekend.

Teams participating include Glendale, Ventura, Canyon Country, San Luis Obispo, South Bay and San Diego. The semifinal round begins at noon Saturday and the final will be played at noon Sunday. Ventura is seeded No. 1 in the tournament and San Diego is seeded second.

Double fault: David Greenbaum of Glendale made a rather inauspicious return to competitive tennis last week. Greenbaum, who had not played in a tournament in five years, and partner Dick Merrill defeated Michael Rinn and Chuck Wideman, 6-4, 6-1, in the men’s 35-and-over doubles division of the Glendale Senior Public Parks tournament.

After the match, Greenbaum accidentally left his racket at Fremont Park.

“I woke up at 4 a.m. and said, ‘God, I don’t remember bringing my racket home,’ ” Greenbaum said. Still riding the high of the tournament win the next day, Greenbaum borrowed a racket, went to Palm Springs with Merrill, played a set and tore a muscle in his calf.

“The guy wins a tournament and then comes out on the long end of it,” tournament organizer Bob McKay said. “He was really excited and could hardly wait for the tournament to start . . . I’m sure he’s not that excited now.”