NOTEBOOK : Crucial Losses Hit Birmingham

Freak accidents, injuries and academic ineligibility have threatened Birmingham High’s hopes for postseason success.

Birmingham (7-2) is paying for its 38-12 victory over Van Nuys last week that left one player with a severed finger and another with a wrist broken in two places.

The left middle finger of senior linebacker Jon Zuccaro was severed just below the fingernail during a defensive play midway through the fourth quarter.

“I see him come running over to the sideline and (he) dropped to his back, screaming like you can’t believe,” Coach Chick Epstein said. “He was holding his hand in his stomach. When he pulled it away there was blood everywhere.”

Epstein initially thought Zuccaro had sustained a compound fracture in his finger. But when the doctor on the field cut off Zuccaro’s glove to investigate, part of the finger was left in the glove, and the middle finger already had started to blacken, according to Epstein.

Zuccaro is unsure how the injury happened, but he believes that he might have caught the finger in an opponent’s face mask.

“I thought I broke my finger,” Zuccaro said. “I didn’t know what it was until the doctor took off my glove. . . . It was a nightmare.

“I’m glad it was just some of my finger and not all of it. Life goes on, you know.”

Doctors were able to graft the skin from the tip of Zuccaro’s finger, which is now the same size as the adjacent index finger. Zuccaro (6-foot, 220 pounds), the Braves’ best defensive player, will miss the playoffs.

Starting wide receiver-defensive back Pierre Desrosiers sustained a broken wrist in two places when he fell on the cement border between the track and the playing field after a Van Nuys defender tackled him out of bounds. He too will miss the playoffs.

Marc Tucker, a second-string defensive back, suffered a head injury when the car in which he was a passenger was struck broadside late Friday night. Tucker spent the night in the hospital, was released Saturday and expects to get clearance to play tonight.

Birmingham has also lost starting linebacker Joe Palacios to grades.

Add Birmingham: The Braves ended a 21-year football championship drought by winning the Mid-Valley League title with a 6-1 record. Although the Braves are part of the weaker side of the Valley Pac-8 Conference, they defeated East Valley opponents Poly, North Hollywood and Grant. Only Sylmar (7-0) had a better record in the conference.

The Braves won the league with a comfortable four-game lead and they advance as the league’s only playoff representative.

Cutback, way back: Kennedy Coach Bob Francola learned in the second half of last week’s 38-21 defeat of Reseda that tailback Ontiwaun Carter was zeroing in on the school single-game record for rushing. It was then that Francola made his mistake.

“We don’t really try to emphasize the stats that much,” Francola said. “But when we heard he only needed another 29 yards or so to break the record, I decided to tell him. School records are worth telling the kids about.”

Carter’s eyes lit up, and he planned to make the scoreboard do likewise.

Francola said Carter was at the 250-yard mark late in the second half when he was informed of the record. Lo and behold, standing on the sideline was the record-holder himself, Edwin Jones, who rushed for 279 yards in a 1986 game.

“Then ‘Twan starts dancing around trying to find the extra yards,” Francola said, laughing. “He reversed his field on one and lost about 10 more yards.”

While he failed to dethrone Jones, Carter did reach another milestone. His 228 yards against Reseda give him 4,010 in his three-year career, far and away the school record, Francola said.

“When a kid gets 4,010 yards in three years, that shows he can stand the test of time,” he said.

Scorers: North Hollywood running back Leon Gable and Poly’s Jonathan Campbell have been neck and neck all year in their quest for the area City Section scoring title. In fact, they both had scored 23 touchdowns and one two-point conversion when the schools faced off last Friday. The Parrots might have won, 56-19, but Gable scored twice and Campbell just once, giving Gable a one-touchdown lead.

Poly, however, qualified for the 3-A playoffs with the victory. North Hollywood’s season is over.

Gable rushed for 1,777 yards in 271 carries this season.

Dept. of corrections: Canyon’s quarterfinal playoff game against Bishop Amat will be played at Canyon High on Friday at 7:30 p.m., not at College of the Canyons as previously reported.

Bad timing: Perhaps most stunning about Camarillo’s 33-8 victory over previously unbeaten and third-seeded Glendale on Friday in the first round of the Division II playoffs was the manner in which it was accomplished.

The Scorpions, who received the division’s at-large berth, scored on their first four possessions and led, 33-0, at halftime. After Brian Vellmure returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, Glendale drove to the Camarillo 12, but the Dynamiters turned the ball over on downs. Five plays later, sophomore Fahali Campbell broke free on a 77-yard touchdown run to put Camarillo ahead, 14-0.

“I think that touchdown really hurt us,” Glendale Coach Don Shoemaker said. “Our kids didn’t realize that you have to turn it up a notch in the playoffs. We just dug a hole for ourselves and picked the wrong game to have a bad game.”

It was only the second postseason appearance for Glendale in the past 10 years. The Dynamiters won the Foothill League title in 1980 and received an at-large berth in 1985. Glendale was 4-6 last season.

“If somebody told me that we’d be 10-0 entering the playoffs in August, I’d be pretty happy,” Shoemaker said. “We have made strides in starting a tradition.”

Staff writers Steve Elling, Kirby Lee and Paige A. Leech contributed to this notebook.