THE HIGH SCHOOLS : Canyon Football Talent Wins Over Welch

Attention Canyon High faithful: As spring football practice got under way this week, Coach Harry Welch said he is pleased with his team’s outlook for the coming season.

Said Welch: “I really feel good about our team.”

What? Harry Welch optimistic?

Now, there’s a switch. In recent years, Welch’s M. O. has been to point out his team’s inexperience and lack of talent, emphasize a tough schedule, de-emphasize his team’s strengths, then suit up and beat up the competition.

But Welch, whose teams have posted seven Golden League titles in eight years, will find it difficult to peddle preseason pessimism this year. The Cowboys, who reached the Southern Section Division II semifinals last season, will have seven starters returning on defense and six on offense.

Among the returning players are all-league linebackers Scott Blade and Mark Santos (who will move to safety) and running back David McDivitt, who rushed for 459 yards in 84 carries (5.5 average).

“That’s a really high number,” Welch said of his returning starters. “I feel really good about that. We’re not going to have the good receivers and the good backs, but we’ll go toe to toe with anyone.”

Add football: Hart, Canyon’s cross-town Foothill League rival, enters the spring more depleted than the Cowboys.

“We’ve got some big shoes to fill,” Coach Mike Herrington said.

The biggest belong to quarterback Rob Westervelt (2,064 yards passing) and multi-threat tailback Howard Blackwell (1,217 yards rushing, 777 yards receiving, 32 touchdowns). Both players will graduate next month.

Three players are vying for the quarterback job. The front-runner is junior Ryan Connors, who led the sophomore team to a league title last season. Senior Shane O’Brien and sophomore Davis Delmadoff also are in the running.

As for the tailback job, “We have no candidate to replace Howard Blackwell at this time,” Herrington said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Add Hart-Canyon: Herrington is none to pleased that Canyon will open the season with an exhibition game in Hawaii on Aug. 30 before facing Hart a week later in what traditionally has been both schools’ season opener.

“It takes away from the rivalry a little bit,” Herrington said. “They’ll be able to come back and know what their strengths are and we’ll be a question mark.”

Herrington also noted that the Indians’ coaching staff will not be able to scout Canyon’s game.

“We don’t know what to do,” Herrington said with a laugh. “We’d like to send someone over to scout that game. We usually pay a scout to travel and give him gas money and meal money. But I don’t know if we can afford to do that.”

Handcuffed: How impressive was John Flynn’s one-hitter for Covina in a 1-0 win over Rio Mesa in the first round of the Southern Section 4-A Division playoffs last Friday? Consider this: Rio Mesa (18-6-2) finished the season with a school-record .400 batting average (299 for 747) and averaged 10 runs a game.

“He mixed his pitches well, threw strikes, and our kids were a little anxious,” Rio Mesa Coach Rich Duran said.

Despite the loss, Duran is looking forward to the return of 10 players from a team that eclipsed school records in batting average, runs (260), and doubles (61). Dmitri Young, a junior who batted .588, set school records for hits (50), runs (46) and doubles (14). Mike Mitchell’s 44 runs batted in also set a school record.

Trophy dash: Rio Mesa track co-Coach Brian FitzGerald had never coached a Southern Section championship team, which might account for his eagerness to grasp the 3-A Division championship plaque last Friday at Cerritos College.

Southern Section officials, however, were hesitant to award Rio Mesa its plaque because the final event, the triple jump, had not been contested because of time constraints. The event was postponed until Tuesday.

With 14 of 15 events scored, though, Rio Mesa sported a 63-34 lead over second-place Estancia. And neither Estancia nor third-place Esperanza had an entrant in the event, which prompted FitzGerald to negotiate with administrator Dean Crowley.

“There was no way anyone was going to catch us,” FitzGerald said. “So I sort of convinced Dean Crowley to give (the plaque) to us.”

The divisional title was Rio Mesa’s first since 1979 when the Spartan girls won the 2-A championship under Coach Nick Wilson.

Double bridesmaid: Eric Hale of Simi Valley, who will attend Oregon State on a football scholarship in the fall, placed second in the 400 meters at the Marmonte League and 4-A Division championships, but it was his performance in the latter that surprised him.

Hale’s personal-best 49.28 clocking in the 4-A final made him the No. 7 qualifier for the Masters meet. “I didn’t expect to qualify,” he said.

In the 4-A final, though, Hale was wary of Marmonte League champion Bryan Krill of Thousand Oaks, who had beaten the Pioneer senior in three previous races this season.

“I was (concentrating on Krill) because he was on the inside of me,” said Hale, who beat the Lancer senior for the first time this season.

Krill finished a disappointing ninth.

Mike Glaze and staff writers Vince Kowalick and Jeff Riley contributed to this notebook.