DIGEST : Poly Loses Coach, Tennis Program

Poly High has dropped its tennis program because of a lack of interest and the loss of prospective coach Ron Harris, according to Athletic Director George Tideback.

Harris was to have replaced Don Lamar, who resigned after one season. But Harris moved to Seattle last week, and only eight students expressed interest in trying out for the team.

“We’re not what you would call a tennis school,” Tideback said. “When we dropped the program, only two students asked me about reinstating it. It wasn’t like a floodgate.”

Tideback said there is little likelihood that tennis will be resurrected at Poly next year. Students can play for other schools, but their scores will not count.

The first round of the Southern Section basketball playoffs will begin Tuesday with what is expected to be the largest postseason field in the section’s 77-year history. The boys’ tournament will begin Tuesday and the girls’ will start Wednesday. Wild-card games, if any, are scheduled for Monday.

Two years ago, before the section radically altered its playoff format--grouping schools by enrollment to conform to the state tournament--177 boys’ teams reached the playoffs. Last year, the number jumped to 215, and because of further modifications in the format, the number could approach 300, or about 75% of the section’s eligible schools.

The Southern Section scrapped last year’s rule barring teams with losing records from advancing to the playoffs and it will devise 32-team brackets for all 10 divisions. Some divisions may have fewer than 32 entries, some teams could be granted byes.

The top three teams in each league automatically qualify for the playoffs, and the brackets will be filled out with at-large teams chosen under a point system that emphasizes strength of schedule.

Four Antelope Valley High boys’ basketball players found guilty of misdemeanor assault last month in Juvenile Court have avoided expulsion from school but will not return to the team this season, Coach Skip Adams said.

Senior Kevin Junior and juniors Martine Stokes, Herbert Sellers and Joseph Montgomery, who were suspended after an on-campus incident in December, are academically ineligible, according to Adams.

Stokes, Sellers and Montgomery, however, will be welcomed back to the team next season, provided they meet eligibility requirements.

“It’s good news that they’re back in school,” Adams said. “They’re glad to be back and I’m glad for them and their families. I assured them that we’ll just have to put this behind us.”

None of the players were starters for the Antelopes (20-4, 8-1 in league play), who Tuesday clinched their second consecutive Golden League championship.

Danny Everett, winner of gold and bronze medals in track in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, will be the honorary starter for The American Heart Assn.’s Heart Run on Sunday at the Warner Center in Woodland Hills.

Everett, who won the 1988 NCAA 400-meter title as a UCLA junior, set a world indoor record (45.04 seconds) for the same distance at a meet in Stuttgart, West Germany, last weekend.

Jackie Hansen, a former world record-holder in the marathon (2 hours 38 minutes and 19 seconds in 1975), and the first woman to crack the 2:40 barrier, will serve as a co-starter

The race, an official warm-up for the Los Angeles Marathon on March 4, will start with the five-kilometer run at 8 a.m. and conclude with the 10K race at 8:30.

Information: 818-984-0001.

Tisha Walker of Thousand Oaks finished eighth in the original program in the U. S. Figure Skating Championships on Thursday night in Salt Lake City, boosting her overall standing to ninth place.

The 15-year-old Walker will complete the competition in Saturday’s free-skating program.

Bill Webb, the former men’s track and field coach at Cal State Northridge, has been named an assistant men’s coach on the 1991 Pan American Games track team.

Webb, an assistant at Tennessee since 1986, coached Northridge from 1979-85. During his tenure at Northridge, the Matadors finished among the top eight teams in the NCAA Division II championships every year, including a runner-up finish in ’79.