Sollod Fuel Powers Burroughs : Boys’ basketball: An alumnus has returned to shape an also-ran into a Foothill League power.

It was enough to make a guy fork over his lunch money. But not enough to make the Burroughs High basketball team knuckle under.

Rival Hart was at it again, bullying Burroughs before the teams’ Foothill League opener in January. The welcoming party in the Indians’ gym, in fact, had Burroughs Coach Ira Sollod and his players circling their wagons.

“Wait a minute,” Sollod said, excusing himself from a trio of courtside reporters. “I gotta go watch these animals.”

Several Hart fans had perched themselves above the exit from the visitors’ locker room, a perfect vantage point from which to deliver verbal assaults--and ones of a more dangerous nature.

“They were throwing pennies at us and one guy wanted to start a fight with me,” Burroughs forward Ray Velasquez said. “People always told me it’s tough playing at Hart.”

It got tougher.

Midway through the second half, several members of Hart’s football team unveiled an eight-foot-long banner and chanted in unison, reminding Burroughs of the 47-11 thumping Hart had inflicted in October.

Finally, Velasquez (6-foot-4, 260 pounds), a lumbering and sometimes sporadic-shooting senior, found himself the target of verbal attacks whenever he handled the ball.

“Those people,” Velasquez said simply, “have no class at all.”

And about as much success with their boos and barbs.

Burroughs, buoyed by Velasquez’s 16 points and double-figure performances by three other starters, rallied to claim a 74-71 come-from-behind victory--its first of two over Hart this season. The completion of the season sweep marked Burroughs’ third win over Hart in the past four meetings.

A parting shot? Not from the shy, soft-spoken Sollod. Never one to be vindictive, the congenial coach remarked, “It’s a really big win because they’re definitely the team to beat.

“It’s a really intense, really competitive rivalry. It’s great to beat them.”

And so it goes for Sollod, 29, who in three years has transformed Burroughs from the browbeaten to the broad-shouldered, posting a second consecutive league title this season and earning the Burbank school a measure of respect against Hart while maintaining restraint.

“I really try to be someone the kids can look up to,” Sollod said. “There are a lot of coaches out there who get (technical fouls) and just go crazy with outbursts. But I think if a coach is going crazy all the time, the kids tend to get crazy. I’m up a lot and yelling at plays and so forth, but as far as getting on the refs. . . . I really take pride.”

Sollod, proud yet humble, has yet to be whistled for a technical foul this season and has been charged with only one in three years. Sollod (rhymes with solid) is rock-solid, seldom in someone’s face--a referee’s or player’s--and content to let the shots be taken only on the court.

“He’s very cool and calm,” said Velasquez, who transferred this season from Hoover. “He hardly gets upset and that shows. He is very low-profile. Our coach is definitely very special.”

So too was the Indians’ season sweep of Hart (Both schools are nicknamed Indians.). It served as a long-awaited comeuppance.

For the past decade, Hart has walked all over Burroughs, winning a combined eight league titles in football, baseball and basketball, while Burroughs, until last season, celebrated a solitary football title in 1981.

This season, Burroughs (16-6), which will open the Southern Section 4-A Division playoffs Tuesday against an opponent to be determined, knocked everyone’s block off with a 10-0 league record--the first Foothill League team to go undefeated since Hart in 1982.

Suddenly, Burroughs basketball is the big game in town.

“Since we’ve been winning, we get a lot of teachers and students who maybe never came to the games showing up in the stands,” said Sollod, a 1978 Burroughs graduate. “It’s a pretty tight, pretty small community. You know, now it’s Burroughs basketball.”

Said Vice Principal Brian Hurst: “We have developed a really competitive rivalry with Hart High School. But we are the best (in the league)--until somebody beats us.”

Strange words coming from Burroughs’ mouths. In football, Hart has defeated Burroughs every year since 1981 while winning five league titles and two Southern Section championships. In baseball, Hart has won two league titles and made one Southern Section championship-game appearance since joining the Foothill League in 1980.

In basketball, Burroughs has been the most futile. Last season it won its first league title since 1968. There have been only four since the school opened in 1948.

Sollod, as a 6-foot-3 all-league forward (he’s an inch taller today) and two-year starter, suffered through some of the lean years, although he averaged a league-best 18 points a game during his senior year while leading the Indians to a second-place finish--their high-water mark of the ‘70s.

“The view of Burroughs is that we didn’t even have a basketball program,” Principal Tim Buchanan said. “We just weren’t successful. Before Ira, you’d just go to the games and cry.”

After a brief playing career at Valley College, Sollod, a 1983 graduate of Cal State Northridge, served a seven-year stint as junior varsity coach at Burbank High, winning three league championships and assisting on four consecutive varsity titles.

In 1987, Sollod returned to his alma mater--for which he admittedly feels overwhelming pride--and inherited an 0-10 team.

“It was a great situation to get into,” Sollod said. “There was nowhere to go but up.” Sollod began by organizing fund-raisers to finance a trip to Hawaii, and, in December, 1988, the Indians competed in the Roosevelt Classic, reaching the championship game before losing to Radford of Honolulu.

This season, the Indians trekked to San Diego where they finished fifth in the Mt. Carmel Invitational tournament. The trips, heretofore a rarity for the school, were designed to promote the program and team unity-- Sollod- arity, if you will.

“To get away and live with 11 other guys for a week--the social bit about just being together and becoming more of a unit--carries over onto the court,” Sollod said. “It’s a big thing. I’m not saying we wouldn’t have won the league if we didn’t make the trip, but it certainly helped.”

Sollod also has emphasized--and achieved--strength and balance throughout the school’s program, overseeing the development of the freshman, sophomore and junior varsity squads as well as the varsity. At one point this season, all four teams were atop their respective league standings.

“Ira has always been a perfectionist,” said Hurst, Burroughs’ coach from 1972 to 1977. “Everything is very businesslike with him and he relates well to the kids. I think he has orchestrated a very fine four levels of basketball. You’re seeing good, quality basketball at Burroughs.”

Especially at the highest level. The Indians are 33-13 over the past two years. This season, four seniors--Velasquez (18 points), forward S. J. Boldvich (14), and guards Marnie Calderon (13) and Doug Castaneda (11)--are averaging in double figures. At least four players have scored in double figures in nine league games. Six scored in double figures in Friday’s 108-82 victory over Schurr.

“I try and keep a balanced team, a lot of individual breakdowns as far as preparing for each game instead of just going out and playing five-on-five,” Sollod said. “It’s not like we’re all defense or all run-and-gun. They’re really good high school players. And they’re getting better each day.”

Especially Velasquez, the newcomer who has emerged as the Indians’ floor leader. He often raises his hand while hitching to the low post and often raises his voice when he witnesses low intensity.

Sollod, too, has found it necessary at times to raise his voice--to Velasquez, who sometimes becomes caught up in the competition and then is guilty of poor shot selection.

During Burroughs’ 79-78 title-clinching win over Alhambra, Velasquez, loose on a breakaway, attempted a thunderous dunk when a layup would have sufficed. The result was a high carom off the back of the rim followed by bench time and a brief lecture.

“He hadn’t slammed all year. It’s not like he’s been throwing them down all year,” Sollod said. “I had to tell him that the two points were there. I mean, look what the game came down to.

“Sometimes he just gets a little frustrated and he makes mistakes.”

Lesson learned, Velasquez re-entered the game and finished with 13 points.

“He told me what I did wrong, but that was it,” Velasquez said. “I mean, he didn’t downgrade me for it, he was very considerate. Some other coaches would have not played their player for the rest of the game. He isn’t narrow-minded.”

Sollod had stuck with Velasquez in the first game against Hart, even though he missed three consecutive hurried shots from the field in the third quarter and four free throws with less than three minutes to play.

But Velasquez, with the Hart crowd on his back, buried a clutch three-point shot with six minutes to play to give Burroughs a permanent lead.

After the game, Hart’s Chad Fotheringham stood shaking his head in the parking lot, trying to explain the pain of defeat. The 6-foot-6 center had scored a game-high 18 points, but plenty was bothering him.

“This is a really tough loss for me,” he said, visibly disgusted. “Just because it’s Burroughs.”