Coach Recovering After Surgery

San Dieguito baseball Coach Jerry Clements is giving up cigarettes--the hard way.

Clements, 52, was working on San Dieguito’s field Feb. 12 when he felt a tightness in his chest. He sat down and it went away. He went back to work and the pain returned. Then it intensified. Remembering that the same thing had happened 10 years earlier--and it led to a double-bypass surgery--Clements drove himself to Scripps Hospital Encinitas.

On Tuesday, he had an angiogram. On Wednesday, he had open heart surgery. Although expected to take five hours, it took only three. Dr. Pat O. Daily performed the surgery. Daily also performed the 1981 surgery on Clements who, at that time, was an air traffic controller and a heavy smoker.

Clements’ wife, Sharon, says her husband has given up smoking whether he likes it or not: she emptied the ashtrays in the cars, got rid of all the ashtrays in the house and gave away all the cigarettes Jerry had stored up.

Clements began walking Saturday as part of his rehabilitation. He is expected to miss the next five weeks of the season and will be replaced by assistant Pat Sanchez. Practice begins today.

However, the second-year coach--he also was the head coach two years at MiraCosta College--should be a presence around the diamond.

“In three weeks, I expect him watching practices and watching the games,” Sharon Clements said. “The last time he got out, he was in the hospital for a week. I picked him up and on the way home, we stopped. He sat in the van and watched his son (Gerald Jr.) play a varsity baseball game at Carlsbad High. That’s how crazy he is for baseball.” And some of the San Dieguito players are crazy about their coach. A group of them went to the hospital last Tuesday morning, introduced themselves as the grandchildren of Gerald Clements, and were allowed a visit. Of course, none of them looked like Clements, and when they tried to do it again in the afternoon, the nurse had wised up. She sent them to the bench.

Add Clements: Sharon said she has received numerous cards from concerned friends of Jerry’s: “I got a lot of cards saying, ‘What can I do, what can I do?’ I feel like telling them, come clean my house.”

Trivia time: Who is the only San Diego Section wrestling coach who also won two section wrestling titles while competing in high school?

Division among the ranks: Division II boys basketball coaches left Saturday’s seeding meeting complaining about the 16-team tournament in their division. Division II had to eliminate seven teams to get to the 16-team limit. Division I had to eliminate only one. Divisions III, IV and V didn’t have to eliminate any schools.

“Our division is the only one where you have to eliminate so many teams,” El Camino Coach Ray Johnson said. “I don’t think they should eliminate anybody. If they’re going to let all the lower division schools in, they should let all the schools in. Because of enrollment, some teams are punished.”

To comply with the state playoff format, the five divisions are broken down strictly on a school’s enrollment. Johnson was the Avocado League representative. He had hoped that Oceanside might get the final spot in the playoffs. No such luck.

Vista Coach Greg Lanthier, who was not on the seeding committee, echoed Johnson’s sentiments.

“Let all 23 teams in,” he said. “Then there are no borderline teams that don’t make it and there are no borderline decisions.”

As it is, each league has one voice in the seeding meeting. Politics is inevitable in the current process.

Carlsbad Coach John Nelson said the Avocado League, which has six of its eight teams in Division II, is not fairly represented. It gets only one vote, just like the Metro Conference, which has one of its eight teams as a Division II entry.

“I would like to see it set up more like the House of Representatives than the Senate,” he said.

Quotebook: The quote bank on that came from the seeding meetings came from Torrey Pines Coach John Farrell: “You can’t take a mule to the Kentucky Derby.”

Getting up there: Vista and Torrey Pines played perhaps the best high-scoring girls’ basketball game in section history last week when Vista scored a 76-75 victory against the Falcons. The 151 points between the two teams ties for fourth most in the section in one game. The other four games in the top five were all blowouts, including Mt. Carmel’s record 98-57 victory over San Dieguito in 1987.

In the victory for Vista, freshman guard DeAngela Minter scored 24 points to raise her season average to 6.5. She picked up the slack from the triangle and two that limited Cindy Rand to eight points.

Both teams shot well. Vista made 56.9% of its shots (33 of 58) while Torrey Pines made 47.3% (27 of 57).

It was the start of a bad week for Torrey Pines, which averaged 68 points for two games and lost them both. San Dieguito beat the Falcons in the final game of the season, 63-61.

All in the family: Three sets of brothers competed Saturday--and all performed well--at the 2-A San Diego Section wrestling meet.

Five of the six athletes reached the championship match and the other finished third.

Valhalla seniors Jeremy and Jason Hendrick both won championships. Jeremy (145 pounds) improved his record to 39-7 while Jason (160) is now 40-1. Both are two-time section champions.

Mt. Miguel’s Pete Piraino (171) and his brother John (189) both finished second. Pete, a senior, is 34-7 this season. John, a junior, is 28-9.

El Camino junior Sean Garlock (152) lost in the finals and dropped to 21-8. His brother, senior Robert Jr., took third at 160 pounds. He is 21-6.

The Garlocks have a third wrestling brother, freshman Troy (130 pounds), who was unable to compete because of a knee injury suffered a week earlier. Coincidentally, their dad, Robert, is El Camino’s coach.

Phone talk: San Diego’s boys’ basketball team defeated Lincoln for the first time in five years Friday, but for some reason, the Times didn’t get a phone call with the game information. Dennis Kane, the San Diego coach, was contacted at Bully’s Restaurant by Times writer Kim Q. Berkshire. Overhearing the phone conversation from this end:

“Dennis? Yeah, can you tell me what the score was of tonight’s game? You don’t know? Can you tell me anything about the game? It was a great game?”

Trivia answer: Valhalla Coach Glen Takahashi won the section wrestling title in 1966 at 123 pounds, and won the following year at 130 pounds. He competed for Monte Vista High, which won section team titles both years.

Laura Palmer contributed to the notebook