Cleveland-Fairfax Game Called Off

After facing one another for years in Valley League play, slamming each other around in the playoffs last season and playing this season in a tournament game, Fairfax and Cleveland highs called off another rendezvous: Today’s scheduled nonleague basketball game at Cleveland High has been canceled.

Cleveland Coach Marc Paez said that he and Fairfax Coach Harvey Kitani had agreed to cancel the game to allow their teams more practice time. Both teams played in three tournaments in December--the maximum allowable--and needed more time to prepare for City Section conference play, which begins Friday.

“We’ll both get three days of practice this week by canceling the game,” Paez said Tuesday. “I know that if we’d have played them, we’d have spent all day (Tuesday) preparing specifically to beat Fairfax rather than working on the things we need to do to improve as a team.”

Both teams played in the St. Monica and Iolani (Hawaii) tournaments last month.

Cleveland (10-4), winner of nine of its past 10, will open Northwest Valley Conference play at Chatsworth on Friday at 7 p.m.