THE HIGH SCHOOLS : An Injured DaCorsi Spent Time on Notre Dame Bench Wisely

Injuries.

Athletes fear them and coaches dread them, especially when they happen to key players, yet they sometimes can prove beneficial.

Take Bobby DaCorsi of Notre Dame High.

The 6-foot-5 senior, angry after fouling out in the season’s third game, kicked a bench in disgust. He suffered a broken toe and missed nine games, but the unexpected time off provided him with the opportunity to observe his teammates from a different perspective.

“When you look at a team from the outside, you pick up some things,” DaCorsi said. “Before I got injured, I thought that G. C. (Marcaccini) and I had to shoot the ball all the time in order for us to win. But when I was injured, I noticed that the team could score without me by just working the ball around for the open shot.”

That observation has improved the shot selection of DaCorsi since his return to the lineup.

“His shot selection has improved a lot,” Coach Mick Cady said of DaCorsi, who scored a game-high 21 points--including 17 in the second half--in Friday night’s 60-58 win over St. Bernard. “He’s taking a lot better shots than I ever remember him taking.”

This does not mean DaCorsi, who is averaging 18.1 points a game and 20.5 since his return, has stopped gunning from outside. He is just more selective when unloading from three-point range.

Against St. Bernard, DaCorsi made four of four three-point shots in the second half, including his final one with 30 seconds left that gave the visiting Knights their margin of victory and improved their record to 13-3 overall, 4-0 in Mission League play.

“I made a vow to (Cady) that we weren’t going to lose a game when I returned,” DaCorsi said. “So far, I’ve kept to it.”

Notre Dame has gone 7-0 with DaCorsi in the lineup. The Knights were 6-3 when he was injured.

“He gives us another offensive weapon,” Cady said. “With Bobby out, G. C. was our main offensive threat and the other teams tended to key on him. But with Bobby back, they can’t do that. They have to worry about more than just one guy and that opens things up for us.”

Better league: DaCorsi, for one, is glad that Notre Dame left the San Fernando Valley League for the Mission League.

“I like this league a lot better,” DaCorsi said. “It’s much more competitive. You have to play hard every game to win.

“There were some pretty weak teams in the San Fernando Valley League. There were times when you didn’t have to play that hard to win.”

Exciting league: The Golden League, along with the Marmonte, appears to be the most-competitive boys’ basketball league in the region.

Canyon is the early Golden leader with a 3-0 record, but Palmdale (2-1), Quartz Hill (2-1), Antelope Valley (1-2) and Saugus (1-2) appear capable of making a strong bid for the title.

Palmdale, minus leading scorer Chris DeGlopper, beat Quartz Hill, 67-65, on a basket with five seconds to play Friday, and Quartz Hill defeated Saugus, 63-61, in double overtime on Tuesday.

Disgruntled coach: After six years as a walk-on football coach on different levels at Santa Clara, Larry Lawrence resigned Thursday.

Lawrence, who took the Saints to a 15-10 record during the two years he guided the varsity, quit because he did not agree with the suspensions last season of several of his players for disciplinary reasons.

“I didn’t agree with the administration on the football team,” Lawrence said. “Players were suspended for disciplinary reasons that I disagreed with. I was always the second or third person to hear about the suspensions and I didn’t feel that was right.”

According to Lawrence, a Santa Clara student athlete is suspended from a team for one week for breaking a school rule. If he is caught breaking a rule a second time, he is suspended for the rest of the season.

That’s what happened to quarterback Alan Lyle, who sat out the last nine games.

In other disciplinary action, five players were suspended before the team’s Southern Section Division VIII playoff game, a 38-0 loss to Cabrillo.

“I just felt I should have had more of a say in it,” Lawrence said. “The suspensions were decided by a panel, and I was never consulted on anything. I think I should have had more knowledge about what was going on since I was the football coach.”

Quick starter: Traditional track-and-field strategy says that the fastest sprinter should anchor a relay team, but Rio Mesa co-coach Brian FitzGerald intends to buck that wisdom when the Spartans compete in the girls’ 4 x 160-yard relay Jan. 18 in the Sunkist Invitational at the Sports Arena.

Sophomore Marion Jones, the defending state champion in the 100 and 200 meters, will run the opening leg in the 4 x 160 relay.

FitzGerald reasons that with the Sports Arena’s 160-yard track, Rio Mesa will have a better chance of winning by taking an early lead with Jones, and maintaining it, than by coming from behind, with Jones anchoring.

“That track is so tight that you have to run an extra five yards on the turns to pass someone,” FitzGerald said. “And with Marion being our best starter, it just makes more sense to get an early lead.

“We’d rather make other teams have to pass us, than have us have to pass them.”

Renaissance: The L. A. Baptist boys’ basketball team muddled through a 9-15 season last year and 1990-91 seemed to promise more of the same when the Knights won just one of their first seven games.

In a dramatic swing, L. A. Baptist (6-8), a Southern Section 2-A Division team, has won five of its past seven games, including a 46-39 upset last week of Canyon, a 5-A school.

Veteran Coach Maury Neville offers no single reason for the turnaround, saying that the Knights simply are starting to play patient, error-free basketball.

The bruising rebounding of 6-foot-4 junior Dane Brown also has helped. Brown, the football team’s quarterback, is averaging 11.5 rebounds a game.

One thing remains certain: the Knights are not hot because of their offense. Leading scorers Alex Pistone and Glenn Dodson average just 11.3 and 10.5 points.