Hurst to Replace Moore as Coach at Quartz Hill

As expected, Quartz Hill High named Steve Hurst on Thursday as basketball coach, filling the void left by veteran Coach Don Moore, who retired after this season.

Hurst, 41, was Moore’s assistant last season and had coached the junior varsity to Golden League co-championships twice in his three-year tenure. The Rebel varsity was 21-5 in 1990-91 and won its first playoff game in school history.

“I got the call on Thursday and I’m pretty excited,” Hurst said.

Hurst, the preferred choice of Moore, is a physical education teacher at Quartz Hill and a former All-Southern Section basketball player at Desert High. Hurst played at Oklahoma Baptist College and Institute in Shawnee, Okla., then coached in the Shawnee area for 10 years.

Hurst lives in California City but said that his new post will require some uprooting.

“Well, we just did buy a house,” Hurst said. “But now we’ll be looking for a new one (in Lancaster). I’ve gotta be close to school now.”

Scoring: Burroughs High Coach Terry Scott has encountered the dilemma before, but he is running out of options trying to find someone to keep the team’s score book during games.

“It’s tough for players to keep score because they’re always watching the game,” Scott said.

Scott thought he had found the perfect solution when he recruited a student to keep the book this year, but a new problem has arisen.

“He knows what’s going on, but he writes so small that I can’t read his hieroglyphics,” Scott said.

That was evident last week. Scott reported Burroughs’ loss to Schurr last week as 12-8. Schurr had the score, 13-8.

“I think it’s 12-8, but I don’t know,” Scott said. “We lost.”

Dwindling pack: The Van Nuys baseball team has lost four starters in the past 2 1/2 weeks and is down to a 10-player roster. However, those losses have not dimmed the enthusiasm of Wolves Coach Bill Gordon.

“In a way (the loss) is going to help us,” Gordon said. “We have five 10th-graders starting every day and getting better and better. Maybe we’re looking more into the future.”

Sophomores Rusty Howard and Alex Alvarenga lead the team in nearly every offensive category. Howard is batting .500, Alvarenga .421.

“If Rusty and Alvarenga keep growing and maturing, these guys can be monsters,” Gordon said.

Add Van Nuys: With Howard, a right-handed pitcher, in Hawaii last week, Gordon was forced to use six pitchers to get through the Wolves’ 13-5 loss to Roosevelt in the Franklin tournament last week.

“We basically threw the sink at (Roosevelt) and waited around to see what happened,” Gordon said.

The sink included two pitchers who had never thrown this year and another who had been brought up from the junior varsity for the tournament.

Howard had few qualms about leaving his teammates behind for a trip to the islands and earned begrudging approval from his coach.

“I couldn’t talk him out of it,” Gordon said. “I would have gone if I were him too.”

A few good men: Birmingham might not have the fastest sprinters in the area, but the Braves possess the best relay team since Taft ran 40.88 in the 400 relay in 1987.

Tony Serpas (11.10, 22.1), Patrick Abdelkerim (10.9, 22.6), Mike Moguel (11.0, 22.6) and Manuel Goodman (11.1, 22.4) are all on the regional 100 and 200 list, the most from any one school. Moguel (50.13) and Goodman (52.0) also are on the 400 list.

Together, the four timed the area’s second-fastest mark in the 400 relay at 42.7 and have run the sprint medley in 3:41.32, the best mark among Valley city schools this season.

A few good women: After the Arcadia Invitational last weekend, the Marmonte League has five girls with personal-best times in the 3,200 that would have ranked among the top seven in last year’s state final.

Agoura’s Deena Drossin, who won the state title in 10:29.60, ran a nation-leading 10:19.63 at Arcadia.

Thousand Oaks sophomore Stacy Auer’s 10:38.63 would have placed her second in the 1990 state final.

Katella’s Martha Pinto (10:42.51) would be bumped to third and Agoura’s Tiffany York (10:47.13) would place fourth ahead of University’s Tanya Brix (10:49.17), the third-place finisher in the state meet last year.

Westlake’s Jeannie Rothman, a 10:50.48 runner who placed fourth in the state, would drop to sixth and Channel Islands junior Veronica Barajas (10:51.47 in the Pasadena Games) would place seventh.

Pinto and Brix are back this season.

Mike Glaze and staff writers Paige A. Leech, Kirby Lee and Brian Murphy contributed to this notebook.