THE HIGH SCHOOLS : Montclair Prep Calmly Awaits Playoff Fate

Don’t even broach the subject around point guard Steve Cain. He doesn’t want to hear a word about consecutive victories or being unbeaten in the new year.

Streaks are made to be broken and Cain doesn’t want to be the one who puts the mojo on Montclair Prep’s 15-game victory parade.

“Don’t ask me about it,” said Cain, a senior. “I don’t want to think about it.”

It is prompted by superstition, but his mum’s-the-word stance also summarizes how most players and coaches at the school are approaching a postseason eligibility hearing with the Southern Section on Monday.

At stake are possible playoff berths for Montclair Prep’s winter and spring sports teams. Fingers are crossed and sectional titles ostensibly are at stake.

Every so often, a ballplayer asks baseball Coach Walt Steele about the school’s playoff ban.

“They’ll ask, ‘What’s the scoop, what’s new with that?’ ” said Steele, who typically responds in less-than-optimistic fashion.

“If I hear ‘Probation, probation, probation,’ then I figure that we’re on probation until I hear otherwise,” Steele said.

A reprieve, however, could arrive as soon as Monday, in a hearing before an executive committee panel at the section’s headquarters in Cerritos. The ban stems from an agreement reached last April between the section and the school. Montclair Prep admitted to recruiting violations in the football program and accepted penalties that included a postseason ban for all sports for the 1991-92 school year and a three-year playoff ban for the football team.

However, the Southern Section reduced the penalties last fall when former assistant football coach Eric Sparks recanted much of his testimony against the school. The section pared the football playoff ban from three years to one and agreed to allow winter and spring sports to petition for reinstatement.

Two years ago the section’s basketball playoff format was expanded to admit all teams. Quipped boys’ basketball co-Coach Howard Abrams: “The only schools in the nation who aren’t eligible for the playoffs are us and UNLV.

“I hope they consider that basketball’s never done anything wrong.”

The Montclair Prep basketball team--as is the case with all of the school’s teams--is not even eligible to be listed in the section’s Division V polls. Entering last week, the top-ranked team in Division V was Brethren Christian at 14-2.

The boys’ basketball team is 17-1 and appears to be a solid contender for the Division V-AA title. The Mounties’ lone defeat came at the hands of Harvard-Westlake, 76-75, in a tournament game. Montclair Prep already has defeated Delphic League contenders Bel-Air Prep and Crossroads, the latter by 40 points. The Mounties are 4-0 in Alpha League play.

“It would be a shame to be the only team in the Southern Section that doesn’t make the playoffs,” Cain said. “Especially with our record.”

Enthusiasm remains high in spite of the fact that the season might end at the final regular-season buzzer.

“In basketball, we’re just looking at the league title,” said Cain, who also plays baseball. “We’re going at it one game at a time. If they let us in the playoffs, it’s an added incentive.” (Montclair Prep teams other than football can compete for league titles.)

Steele, whose baseball team has won the past two Southern Section 1-A Division titles, again would be expected to field a contender for the championship in the spring. The starting rotation of pitchers Russell Ortiz, Osman Khan and Cain returns, as does infielder Brad Fullmer, a highly regarded junior.

Many at the school who over the past year have seen testimony given and recanted, sentences meted out and commuted, coaches chastised and left unpunished, are ready to roll with the punches. Considering the mixed signals of the past few months, call the prevailing mood cautious pessimism.

“I’m just kicking back and waiting to see what happens,” Steele said. “I’ve told all the kids to expect not to go (to the playoffs).

“I guess I’m more of a realist.”

Dawn patrol: When Alemany baseball Coach Jim Ozella says that his schedule forces him to be “up at the crack,” he isn’t talking about the report of a ball on a bat. But he could be.

Many schools allow athletes to enroll in a last-period physical education class in their sport of preference. For instance, football, basketball or baseball players routinely take a physical education class in the final time slot of the day and work out with potential teammates.

Alemany uses a rotating class schedule, however. Since Alemany has no winter P.E. class in baseball, Ozella said that when the new semester begins this week, ballplayers will meet from 6:45 to 7:40 a.m.

Never mind wearing a mitt on one hand. Players need a glove on the other too. And if that inside fastball off the hands stung batters in the spring, try it in the dead of winter.

“I’ll tell ya,” Ozella said, “it’s cold out there that early.”

Watering hole: A swimming pool is being constructed on campus at Cleveland, a joint effort between the Los Angeles Unified School District, which provided the land, and the L.A. Recreation and Parks Department, which supplied the funding.

The hole already has been dug, but the project has been swamped by problems. Literally.

According to Cleveland baseball Coach Steve Landress, who lives a few blocks from the campus, the water table in the area is about 10 feet below ground level. Seepage has caused more than a few problems.

“They’re pumping water out of that hole 24 hours a day,” Landress said.

Parental guidance required: When St. Genevieve baseball Coach Scott Smith puts together a fund-raiser, he covers all of the bases. Then he covers the grandstands.

The Valiants will sponsor a daylong fund-raiser on campus Saturday, a huge affair that begins with clinics at 9 a.m. An instructional clinic is scheduled for players between the ages of 8-13 at 1 p.m., and a sports card show featuring San Diego Padre pitcher Greg Harris is set from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Clinics from 9 a.m. to noon have been scheduled for coaches and parents.

Parents?

Smith said that he decided to toss parents into the equation because he sees a definite need to modify the behavior of many.

“We kind of came up with that one ourselves,” Smith said. “You’ve got parents yelling at their kids to do this or do that.

“This is to help them understand what they need to teach their kids. It’s about positive reinforcement and how not to push.”

Smith’s family contacts have helped him pull together an impressive array of instructors. Smith’s brother, Steve, is a minor-league instructor in the Seattle Mariners organization and a former minor league manager. Jim Skalen, Seattle’s minor league coordinator, also will help conduct the clinics.