Taft’s Hill Steps Into the Spotlight as a 3-Sport Standout : Prep basketball: Whether he is wearing high-tops, cleats or spikes, the senior makes a sizable impression.

An admitted traditionalist, Jim Woodard cannot stand . . . no, that does not begin to adequately describe his feelings. He abhors technicolor basketball shoes.

As has become the rage this season, Woodard’s Taft High players are sporting the latest in sartorial footwear--red shoes. Woodard does not allow players to wear T-shirts under their jersey tops, which always must be tucked neatly inside the waistband of their trunks. Perhaps this helps frame the coach’s dislike for the new high-tops, which are uniform in color from the laces to the soles.

Players from all over the city are wearing them. Green shoes at Dorsey. Black shoes at Grant. Red shoes at Cleveland, just to name a few. What in the name of Chuck Taylor is going on?

“I hate the red shoes,” Woodard said. “The only thing worse is the black ones. I can’t wait until this fad passes. At least, I hope it’s just a fad.”

You can bet that is the case with Cornell Hill, a Taft forward. Hill, a 6-foot-1 senior who started every game for the Toreadors as a junior, hardly stays in one pair of shoes long enough to break ‘em in.

In the old days, a guy like Hill would have been dubbed a triple threat. Last fall, Hill was a starting linebacker on the football team and, last spring, the most valuable athlete on the track team. More like a triple treat.

Of course, in the old days, they did not wear red shoes. Neither did Hill, it seems.

Three years ago, Woodard was standing on the blacktop behind the Taft gym, playing tennis. A reticent Hill and his father, on campus to register for school, appeared a few yards away. Woodard’s heart soon leaped--right after Hill did likewise.

“He walked out on the court and he was wearing slacks and street shoes,” Woodard recalled. “Some sort of loafers or something. They weren’t even tennis shoes.

“He walked over under the backboard--he must have been about 5-11 then--and jumped up and grabbed onto the rim.”

Woodard’s jaw dropped. So did his equipment.

“He laid down his tennis racquet and walked over,” Hill said with a grin. “He goes, ‘Hellooooo, I’m Jim Woodard and I’m the basketball coach. Would you be interested in playing here?’ ”

STREET SHOES

Hill grew up on a one-way street near the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles and did not play organized sports until he was in the ninth grade. But that does not mean Hill wasn’t a terror on the pavement. Every good athlete has a solid foundation.

Playing Pop Warner football was too expensive for Hill and many of his neighborhood pals, but there were games.

Adaptation was the key. Hill said his team took on all comers in wild games of touch football--in the street.

“We used to try to play on somebody’s front lawn, but people would see us coming and turn the hose on us,” Hill said, laughing. “The park was too far to go.”

The change of seasons? No problem whatsoever, even though the nearest basketball courts were at that same, distant park. Hill and friends simply became creative Rim-brandts.

“We had to make our own place to play,” he said. “We went and got a bicycle rim, took out the spokes and put it up. That never lasted long, though, because it always got bent.”

Just like “Hoosiers,” with a little asphalt thrown in for flavoring.

CLEATS

Tom Stevenson, who quit as Taft football coach after last season, calls Hill “the school’s best pure athlete since Quincy Watts.”

Say Watts? Quincy won three state sprint titles and was a Times’ All-Valley basketball player, but compared to Hill, he was a relative quiche eater: Watts, now at USC, never played football in high school. And for his first two years at Taft, neither did Hill.

In fact--discounting his rough-and-fumble games in the street as a youth--Hill had never played full-contact football until last fall. In Taft’s first scrimmage against Canoga Park, Hill played at inside linebacker. Aside from practice, it was his first time in pads.

“I was still learning,” Hill said. “Coach said, ‘React to the ball. Just play football.’ ”

That simple, huh?

For Hill, it soon was. “Stevenson said we were going to run a two-stunt (blitz),” Hill recalled. “I said, ‘What’s that?’ He said to just run through the hole and get the quarterback. I said, ‘OK.’ ”

Hill bolted through the gap and found one shocked quarterback in full retreat. The quarterback was almost as confused as Hill.

“He just kept going back,” Hill said. “He kept running from me and I couldn’t get him so I grabbed his facemask. They told me that wasn’t allowed.”

Hill’s apprenticeship did not take long. In a victory over Reseda--a school that Hill says denied him admission before he enrolled at Taft, his second choice--he was unblockable. Hill finished with 12 solo tackles and five sacks. He also caught a 76-yard scoring pass and rolled up 100 yards in three kickoff returns.

The season ended in pain and disappointment, however. A pile of players fell on Hill during practice in the week preceding the Granada Hills game Nov. 3, resulting in a large hematoma on Hill’s right forearm. The numbness and swelling was immediate and extensive--Hill compared it to “a Popeye arm.” But this was no cartoon. After watching Taft lose from the sidelines on Friday night, surgery was performed the next morning.

“They said the nerves were dying and that they might have to amputate my hand,” he said. “I thought, ‘This can’t be happening to me.’

“It was all from football, in my first year. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I never expected this. I cried the whole night.”

The hematoma was so large that doctors could not sew the two sides of the incision back together. Later, metal staples were used and skin grafts were taken from Hill’s thigh to close the wound.

He wears a red sweatband over the baseball-sized scar while playing basketball. Even surgery could not camouflage his talent, however. In his first basketball game Nov. 27, less than a month after surgery, Hill came off the bench to make six of six free throws and score 12 points.

He hadn’t even practiced with the team.

SPIKES

O.J. Simpson had airport suitcases. Superman had tall buildings. Hill, whose targets fell somewhere in between, preferred major kitchen appliances.

“When I was little, I’d run down to the store,” he said. “On the way back I used to always be running and jumping over things. Old refrigerators, hedges, whatever. Grandma used to say, ‘Boy, you’re gonna kill yourself.’ ”

Hurdling is one of the few track events in which Hill does not compete. He holds the school record in the long jump at 23 feet, 9 inches, the best mark among Valley-area competitors in 1990. He has high-jumped 6-4, has a vertical leap that two years ago was measured at 33 1/2 inches and has run 100 meters in 10.6 seconds. He also runs legs on two relay teams. His selection as the track team’s most valuable athlete last spring was not a shocker.

A knee injury slowed Hill last season in the City quarterfinals, where he was one of the favorites in the long jump, his best event. Canoga Park’s Marcus Reed, Hill’s closest area rival, finished third in the state meet with a jump of 23-8, an inch shy of Hill’s personal best.

HIGH TOPS

Woodard calls Hill “one of our rah-rah guys,” because the latter can usually be found trying to pump up a teammate when the going gets tough. Woodard also admits that he might have the spelling a little sideways, because Hill also is considered a raw-raw guy.

“He does most of what he does off natural ability,” Woodard said. “He’s not the world’s greatest shooter, ballhandler or rebounder. But he gets the job done.”

But there have been times where Hill, who averages 8.6 points and 5.9 rebounds, has been a mountain of trouble. In a Northwest Valley Conference win at El Camino Real, Hill scored eight unanswered points in the final 1 minute 10 seconds--including a game-winning, acrobatic tip-in at the buzzer--to hand the Toreadors a 63-62 victory.

Raw talent? In Taft’s first game with arch-rival Cleveland, Hill banged home three thundering dunks. Woodard, in his 10th year as coach, said no Taft player ever jammed three times against the Cavaliers. Not Kevin Franklin, not Dedan Thomas.

Success has not resulted in a swollen noggin. Hill has even established his own philosophy: Some guys put people in stitches. Hill gets them in laces.

“Some people might be funny at telling jokes, but I’m not good at that,” he said. “Somebody else might be good with the girls or whatever. I’m good at sports.”