PREP REVIEW / ELLIOTT TEAFORD : County Golf Teams Hoping for a Stroke of Luck

Clearing out the prep notebook while awaiting today’s announcement of the baseball and softball playoff pairings:

Five Orange County high schools are among the 12 teams playing for the Southern Section golf championship today at Canyon Country Club in Palm Springs.

Dana Hills, Estancia, Laguna Hills, Servite and Sunny Hills qualified for today’s team final.

In regional play last Monday, Sunny Hills and Westlake had the lowest qualifying scores. Both shot 371 at Olivas Park Golf Course in Ventura in qualifying for the Northern Regional.

Dana Hills, which shot 401 at El Niguel Country Club in Mission Viejo, led the Southern Regional qualifiers and Servite (376 at Montebello Country Club) led the Central Region.

Today’s top four teams will advance to the CIF-Southern California Golf Assn. tournament June 11 at El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana. They will meet the top teams from the Central, City and San Diego sections.

Add playoff previews: The Southern Section team tennis playoffs begin Tuesday. Pacific Coast League rivals Woodbridge and Laguna Beach are the No. 1- and 2-seeded teams, respectively, in the 3-A division. Woodbridge is the defending champion. Laguna Beach features Jon Leach, the national champion in the 16-and-under division last year.

In 4-A, Dana Hills is seeded second and Corona del Mar is third.

Just Janet, Just Watching: A familiar face was at the Southern Section 3-A swim finals Saturday night--Olympic gold medal-winner Janet Evans.

“I just came down to see this meet, and for Mother’s Day,” said Evans, now at Stanford.

Evans handed out the award medals for the 500-yard freestyle, an event she knows well. She won it three consecutive years while at El Dorado, and also set the national high school record in the event at the 1988 3-A finals with a time of 4 minutes 37.30 seconds.

Nicole Williamson of Los Alamitos, a friend of Evans who had finished second to her twice, won the 500 freestyle Saturday.

“I’m just glad she was a year ahead of me. I got to win one, too,” said Williamson, who will swim for Michigan next year.

Add swimming notes: Natasha Kohne of Rancho Alamitos and Foothill’s Sionainn Marcoux have been selected to the South swim team for the U.S. Olympic Festival July 6-15 in Minneapolis. Fountain Valley’s Michelle Ham and Trabuco Hills’ Amy Ward will swim for the West. Ryan Cox of Capistrano Valley will swim for the North.

Where are they now dept.: Former Valencia standout Mike Edwards, who made The Times’ all-county football and baseball teams, has abandoned his bid to play both sports at the University of Utah, and will concentrate on baseball.

In 35 games as the Utes’ starting third baseman, Edwards is hitting .348 with 27 runs batted in and seven home runs.

Add where: Danielle Scott, who was runner-up in the Southern Section singles tournament as a senior at Corona del Mar three years ago, was the University of Arizona’s No. 1 singles player.

She led the Wildcats to the NCAA tournament in Gainesville, Fla. Arizona defeated BYU, 6-0, in the first round before falling to Stanford, which won its fifth consecutive title Sunday.

Last add where: Adam Keefe, ex-Woodbridge center now at Stanford, will participate in the U.S. national basketball team trials that start Thursday in Colorado Springs, Colo. The team will play in the July 23-29 Goodwill Games in Seattle and the Aug. 8-19 World Championships in Argentina.

Signings dept: Corona del Mar’s Carter Reece has signed a letter of intent to play volleyball at UC Santa Barbara. Reece, a 6-foot-5 middle blocker, is the Sea View League’s most valuable player this season. Newport Harbor setter Alex Opoulos, a first-team All-Sea View League selection, has accepted a soccer scholarship to Santa Barbara. El Toro volleyball player Mike Shannon, a middle blocker, has announced he will attend Pepperdine.

Christine Otto of Liberty Christian signed a letter of intent to swim at Arizona. Otto won the 500-yard freestyle at the Southern Section 2-A finals Saturday.

Proving it’s never too early to think hoops, the powers that be have announced the pairings for the Dec. 10-15 Tournament of Champions, one of Orange County’s top boys’ basketball events.

The 1990 field includes state Division I champion Mater Dei and state Division III champion Servite. Long Beach Poly, the defending tournament champion, also is entered in the tournament, which will be played at Ocean View.

Good Luck, Buck: John Klink, athletic director at Dana Hills High School, said he will appeal to the Southern Section this morning on behalf of hurdler Jeremy Buck who was disqualified in Saturday’s 4-A track and field preliminaries.

According to Klink, Buck, the county leader in the 300 hurdles, was leading the field in his heat, but was misled--and ultimately eliminated from Friday’s finals--by an inaccurately placed hurdle. Klink says he has videotape that clearly shows that the hurdle is two feet askew, with a portion of it resting on the track curb. Section rules, however, do not allow videotape to be used in appeals.

Prep Notes

Leigh Steinberg, sports agent of the stars, will be the speaker at the 29th annual Athletic Awards Breakfast, honoring athletes from Corona del Mar and Newport Harbor, at 7 a.m. Friday at Le Meridien Hotel in Newport Beach. For tickets call 644-8211. . . . Jeff Duensing, a 5-foot-11, 248-pound senior offensive lineman at Esperanza, was named lifter of the meet at the 12th South Orange County Weightlifting Championship at San Clemente. Duensing, who will attend Fullerton College in the fall, bench-pressed 350 pounds and had a squat lift of 600 pounds in the heavyweight division. . . . Robby Price of Saddleback has been named State Scholar Athlete of the Year. Price, the Sea View League champion in the 3,200, 1,600 and 800 meters, will receive a $2,000 scholarship. He has maintained a 4.55 GPA and has been accepted to UCLA, UC Irvine and California. . . . The Huntington Beach Volleyball Club will offer a clinic and tryouts for its regional and Junior Olympic teams Tuesday through Thursday at Edison. The tryouts are from 6:30 to 9 each night and are open to boys 12-18 years old. The entry fee is $20. For more information, contact Cheri Boone at (714) 963-9405.