HIGH SCHOOL NOTEBOOK : Camarillo Runners Made Sure Their 4-A Title Got Good Print

A 10 p.m. bed check assured Mike Smith, the Camarillo High cross-country coach, that all of his runners were tucked in nice and safe in their adjacent rooms Friday night at a Holiday Inn in Covina before the Southern Section championships.

Pre-race jitters, though, kept the Scorpions’ eighth-year skipper from an early slumber. At least his runners were getting rest, he thought.

Or were they?

Rather than pleasant dreams, senior Chad Malesich and juniors Shannon Brusca and Scott Stringer were having visions of grandeur.

The trio, Camarillo’s Nos. 4, 5 and 6 runners in the 4-A Division preliminaries at Mt. San Antonio College Nov. 10, were busy making championship T-shirts, which they hoped to wear after the 4-A final.

“They were a lot more confident than I was,” Smith said later.

Fifteen minutes after his final inspection, Smith heard commotion from one of the rooms across the hall.

“I could hear the TV,” Smith said. “I got up and pounded on the door. . . . I could see through the window that they were writing something. I thought they were studying.

”. . . I told them to turn the lights off and get in bed.”

The Scorpions, ranked No. 1 in the 4-A throughout the season, proudly sported their victory T-shirts Saturday after claiming the 4-A title with a 56-103 win over Santa Ana Saddleback.

Fast times: Canyon posted the third-fastest team time of the day at the Southern Section cross-country finals, but the Cowboys will not compete in the state Division I championships this weekend.

Canyon’s cumulative time for its first five runners was 80 minutes, 37 seconds and only Camarillo (78:59), the 4-A champion, and 2-A champion Agoura (79:44) ran faster.

Saddleback and San Clemente, which finished second and third in the 4-A, were four and 23 seconds slower than the Cowboys, but advanced to the state Division I championships based on lower scores.

The Roadrunners (103 points) and the Tritons (118) edged Canyon (121), ranked No. 2 in the 4-A.

“I feel that more teams should be let in from our section since our section is so big,” Coach Dave DeLong said. “I don’t feel ripped off, really. I do feel that California’s best teams are not represented.”

Oops: The Notre Dame girls’ cross-country team missed the 1-A final Saturday because of a mix-up in its schedules.

Second-year Coach Marc DeLeon thought the 9:15 a.m. race was scheduled for 10:30.

The Knights, who squeezed into the final ahead of favored Bell-Jeff, left the Sherman Oaks campus at 8:30 a.m. to head for Mt. SAC, 55 miles away in Walnut, and missed the race.

A football isn’t heavy: There can be a strange side to fatigue. Sometimes, it seems, a guy is just too busy to be tired.

Kennedy’s Ontiwaun Carter, for instance, carried the ball 43 times for 270 yards in a 24-15 win over San Fernando last Friday.

Was he burned out? Battered?

If so, it didn’t matter.

“He was highly motivated,” Kennedy Coach Bob Francola said. “It was not the time to be tired, it was not the time to let a bruise or an ankle (injury) keep anyone out of the game.”

To be sure, Carter was never out of the game offensively, since Kennedy (4-5) needed a victory to assure itself a playoff berth as the third-place team from the North Valley League. So Francola handed the ball to his tailback as often as possible. In fact, Carter should have carried the ball more than he did.

More? Quarterback Mike McMullen was the only other Golden Cougar to rush the ball--and he finished with one whopping carry for one sprawling yard.

As it turns out, McMullen’s carry was a miscarriage, so to speak.

“Either he went the wrong way or Ontiwaun went the wrong way,” Francola said of the missed handoff that led to McMullen’s one-yard dive. “Needless to say, it was a one-man show.”

Barrier buster: El Camino Real fullback Jamal Anderson, who needs 59 yards to reach 1,000 for the season, could become the first player in school history to reach that mark, according to former coach Skip Giancanelli.

Giancanelli, who coached at the school from its inception in 1969 until two season ago, says that Rodney Dillamar gained 900 yards in 1977, the year the school advanced to the City Section final for the first time.

El Camino Real, a first-round forfeit winner over Fairfax, will visit Granada Hills on Dec. 1. Anderson may have a tough night ahead of him--only one team has gained 100 yards on the ground against Granada Hills this season.

Anderson, a senior who also starts at linebacker, gained 40 yards in 11 carries in Granada Hills’ 21-0 defeat of El Camino Real in a Northwest Valley Conference game last month.

Alley Oop: Taft quarterback Edwin Velasco threw three touchdown passes in last week’s 21-20 win over El Camino Real, three times as many as he had entering the game. Obviously, then, the oh-so-refined Taft aerial machine finally started purring, right?

Well, sort of. On two of the three scoring strikes, Velasco rolled out of the pocket and lobbed the ball into the end zone, where a Taft player outjumped a defender.

Sign o’ the times: At Friday night’s Van Nuys homecoming extravaganza against Reseda, the administration pulled out all the stops to make the celebration of the school’s 75th year memorable.

District Attorney Ira Reiner, a 1953 alumnus, was grand marshal for the traditional parade, and a fireworks display before the game excited the capacity crowd.

Unfortunately, so did some noises sounding suspiciously like gunshots shortly before kickoff.

A car driving by on Kester Avenue emitted four popping noises, sending about half the crowd ducking for cover.

Perhaps it was just automotive backfire, but it served as a sobering reminder of things other than homecoming celebrations.

Staff writers Steve Elling, Vince Kowalick, John Lynch and Brian Murphy contributed to this notebook.