THE HIGH SCHOOLS / STEVE ELLING : City’s Year-Round Schedule Hits a Bump in the Road

Driving to the hoop, hitting the passing lanes and drawing a traveling violation soon will take on a new meaning.

When the Los Angeles Unified School District adopted the year-round academic calendar for 1991-92, it was assumed that many problems would be ironed out on the run.

City Section basketball players will return from a two-week break to begin practice Tuesday and resume play Friday. During the week, players who are bused to the Valley from Los Angeles will be picked up daily, transportation varying depending on the number of bused players heading to a particular school. The remainder of the student body will not return to campus until the spring semester begins Feb. 14.

One school already is winging its way, one day and one problem at a time. Grant High, which has few bused players, will use one bus for its soccer and basketball players. But at Reseda, which has 11 students from the Los Angeles basin playing boys’ basketball at the varsity and junior-varsity levels alone, logistics are more complicated.

Three buses will be used to ferry Reseda players to the campus--one each for the boys’ and girls’ basketball teams and another for soccer. “It’s a money-saving effort,” Reseda boys’ basketball Coach Jeff Halpern quipped.

The first boys’ player scheduled to be picked up should board at 12:21 p.m., the last at 1:26, whereupon the bus will head toward campus. “Makes a long day for that first guy,” Halpern said.

Halpern said that he recently learned that no transportation plan had been formulated for game days. Junior-varsity games begin at 2:30 p.m., 64 minutes after the last player boards the bus. Games on the road would pose an even larger problem.

Halpern called his area busing supervisor, who said he had not been informed of the problem that day games would present. All Northwest Valley Conference games this season are scheduled to he held in the afternoon. Reseda players now will be picked up 45 minutes earlier on game days. “He said he was told that all he had to do was get players to school by 2,” Halpern said.

Another problem recently reared its head. A member of the boys’ junior varsity contacted Halpern last week and said he had moved, which meant that his boarding zone had to be changed. Halpern read the player a list of the pickup sites on Reseda’s route, none of which were close to the player’s new address.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Halpern said, “so I gave him the number of the area busing supervisor and told him to work it out.”

Whether the plan will work over the long haul is anybody’s guess.

Fall guys: The final score leaps off the results page--Chaminade 78, Montclair Prep -1.

It was not a typographical error. Montclair Prep, in its second wrestling match of the season, finished its nonleague tussle with minus-one point.

All 10 Montclair Prep wrestlers were pinned in the first round and the Mounties were docked a point when a frustrated wrestler punched his opponent, Chaminade Coach Greg Behrens said.

Eliel Swinton, a junior who came within four yards of leading region backs in rushing last fall as a tailback on the Mounties’ football team, was pinned 52 seconds into his match in the 189-pound division. It was the fourth match of Swinton’s career.

Who’s who in hoops: In the 1990-91 basketball season, one boys’ player from the region--Camarillo’s David Harbour--signed a letter of intent with an NCAA Division I school (Stanford).

Last fall, Reseda’s Marquis Burns (UCLA) and Taft’s Casey Sheahan (Cal State Fullerton) were the only players who put pen to paper with Division I schools, doing so in the early signing period. When it comes to the area north of the Sepulveda Pass, men’s Division I coaches are hardly star-struck. In fact, recent Division I signees from the region have had all the impact of a deflated ball on a dirt court.

One area youth coach has two words of advice: Stay tuned.

“Valley basketball has taken its lumps the past couple of years,” said Rich Goldberg, director of the Valley-based American Roundball Corp. youth league. “But there are some very good players out there who are going to make their mark in a few years.”

Goldberg’s hottest prospect is Eddie Miller, a 6-foot-5 eight-grader who attends Bell Junior High in Northridge. Miller has been playing basketball for only a little more than a year, but he has emerged as a prodigy.

Miller, who can dunk with ease and play any position, is expected to enroll at a parochial school in the Valley, Goldberg said.

Another eight-grader poised to set the nets afire is Brian Laibow, a 6-2 1/2 guard whom Goldberg said likely will enroll at Agoura High, where his father Ken is the junior varsity basketball coach. Laibow also plays ARC ball.

“They’re the two best players on the horizon,” Goldberg said. “If they continue to improve, they could easily be Division I players.”