Debate Surfaces When Subs Don’t

Football season is still in its infant stages and already a coach has had to answer to cries that he ran up the score.

The man who wasted no time in angering his opponents is George Giannini, whose Montclair Prep Mounties are ranked No. 2 in the state in Division 1-A by Cal-Hi Sports. Montclair Prep started the season with a 37-0 win over Serrano last Saturday that raised questions about Giannini’s tactics.

Montclair Prep led, 23-0, with 2:59 left when tailback Michael Jones scored on a 41-yard run. Then, after an interception by first-string safety Leland Sparks, fullback Derek Sparks carried the ball three consecutive times, scoring on a 15-yard run with 17 seconds left.

Foul, cried Serrano Coach Gary Weiberg.

“You keep your No. 1 tailback in the game when it’s 30-0 in the fourth quarter,” Weiberg said. “That’s not too classy. We’d like to play them again next year, if they’ll play us.”

Giannini claimed that with 24 players on his roster, he did not have the depth to juggle his lineup late in the game.

“My backup tailback is Derek Sparks,” he said. “So if I put him there, I have to put (guard) Neimad Durham at fullback. Then I don’t have a backup for him. In a normal situation you would try (to substitute). But in our situation, you can’t.

“We didn’t tell them to try to score, we just kept running dives.”

Further questions were raised when, after the final touchdown, the kickoff coverage team began to chant, “Who rocks the house? The Mounties rock the house!” Even Giannini thought that the chant showed poor sportsmanship.

“I don’t encourage that and I didn’t like it,” he said. “It wasn’t meant as a put-down. Our kids had just won their first game. We talked to them about it and told them we don’t want anything done that can be construed as making fun of the other team.

“It wasn’t a malicious, rub-your-nose-in-it type thing. Our kids were just happy to win the game.”

From ball boy to starter: Kennedy Coach Bob Francola jokingly called Troy Bregel the “world’s biggest ball boy” last season. Bregel, now a 6-foot-1, 210-pound sophomore, will start on either the defensive or offensive lines for Francola this season.

But he will have some of the world’s broadest shoulder pads to fill. Jeff Bregel, Troy’s older brother and a 1982 Kennedy graduate, is a starting guard for the Super Bowl-champion San Francisco 49ers.

“I’m sure he’ll feel a lot of pressure to perform because of who he is,” Francola said. “I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on him, but he’s too good to keep off the field.”

A pick-up pick-up: Canoga Park basketball Coach Jeff Davis was playing a game of pick-up basketball at a local gym over the summer when a stranger approached and asked to join in. After the game ended, the conversation between Davis and the player went something like this:

Davis: “So, what college do you go to?”

Player (blushing): “I’m still in high school.”

Davis: “Oh, yeah? What school?”

Player: “I’m not sure, I just moved here. Probably Canoga Park.”

Davis: “ Hey! I’m the coach at Canoga .”

The player in question is Damon Smith, a senior transfer from Fremont High in Oakland. Smith, a 6-foot-2, 170-pound guard, sure knows how to make an entrance.

“I don’t know much about him as far as what he did at Fremont,” Davis said. “But he looked pretty good to me.”

A big drop: Quentin Bauer was an average cross-country runner last year as a Westlake sophomore. Now, as an Agoura junior, Bauer has cut almost two minutes off his 1988 three-mile time.

Ten months after covering the Moorpark College course in 17 minutes, Bauer turned in a 15:07 effort Saturday at the Kiwanis Seaside Invitational to finish second behind teammate Bryan Dameworth, the two-time defending state Division I champion.

“This is really a breakthrough for Bauer,” Duley said. “He’s got all the right tools and I think he’ll get nothing but faster.”

Bauer’s improvement came when the Chargers needed it the most.

Derek Kite, expected to be Agoura’s No. 2 runner this fall, moved out of the school district and is attending Camarillo.

Change in plans: Today’s football match-up between Birmingham and El Camino Real, originally scheduled as an official game, has been changed to a scrimmage. It will be played at 3 p.m. at Birmingham.

Mike Glaze and staff writers Steve Elling, Vince Kowalick and Brian Murphy contributed to this notebook.