Teams Map Out Great Escape in Ridgecrest

For Golden League basketball teams, the bus ride north to the sleepy, high-desert community of Ridgecrest takes at least two hours on a long and lonely two-lane highway.

But the ride home sometimes can include a traveling companion.

Two weeks ago, after Quartz Hill High’s 51-49 double-overtime win over Ridgecrest Burroughs, the team bus was given a police escort out of town and a California Highway Patrol escort for several more miles.

Quartz Hill Coach Steve Hurst said his players were the targets of severe taunting by overzealous fans during the game’s closing minutes and that the situation became frightening after the final buzzer.

“One of the policemen remarked to me that this type of thing was becoming commonplace,” Hurst said.

That’s not news to Saugus Coach John Clark.

“We’ve had eggs thrown at our bus and we’ve had the police escort,” Clark said. “If you roll over and lose, they’re the greatest fans in the world. But when you make the mistake of beating them up there, it gets nasty.”

Saugus will travel to Burroughs tonight for an important game. Both teams are 5-2 in league play, one game behind first-place Quartz Hill (6-1).

Burroughs Principal Joe Carlson claimed that “only a few” fans were guilty of taunting Quartz Hill players. Still, he arranged the police escort as a precautionary measure and has begun to consider it a routine practice for visiting teams.

“Having been in those situations before, I figured I’d rather provide that ounce of prevention,” Carlson said. “That sort of thing is not commonplace, but once in a while you can sense (trouble) just through observation.”

IN LIMBO

Saugus senior forward Chris Hernandez remains suspended indefinitely for missing practice last Saturday.

Hernandez (6-foot-2), a starter averaging a team-high 6.8 rebounds, did not suit up for Tuesday’s game against Quartz Hill. He is expected to be in uniform tonight at Burroughs but will not start and might not play, Clark said.

“I’m still trying to work something out with him,” Clark said.

Hernandez was suspended after skipping practice to pitch in an off-season baseball game. Hernandez is expected to be a starting pitcher for Saugus’ baseball team this season.

QUITE A SCARE

Quartz Hill guard Dan Prince, one of the Golden League’s best players, was treated for chest pains in a hospital emergency room after Tuesday night’s game at Saugus.

Prince, averaging a league-high 20.5 points a game, was taken by ambulance to a Lancaster hospital about midnight after the team’s bus arrived home.

Hurst, the Quartz Hill coach, said doctors diagnosed chest-muscle spasms because of exertion and placed Prince on medication. Prince will not play in tonight’s game against Palmdale and is questionable for next week.

“He could be out the rest of the season,” Hurst said. “We’re going to have to play it by ear.”

PEEK PERFORMANCE

Hart forward Ali Peek on Tuesday set a school single-season record for rebounds with his 325th.

Peek grabbed 18 rebounds in an 80-49 Foothill League win over Burbank to eclipse Dick Skophammer’s record of 313 set in 1972.

In addition, Peek, a 6-foot-5, 250-pound senior, last week moved into second place on Hart’s career scoring list with 841 points. Steve Mehr, a 1984 graduate, is first with 1,123. Playoff games are not included in Hart’s records.

With 508 points this season, Peek ranks third on the school’s single-season scoring list behind Brett Wilson (539 in ‘89) and Skophammer (533 in ‘72).

Peek will break Wilson’s mark if he averages 11 points over Hart’s three remaining league games.

STAR QUALITY

Color Bob Johnson impressed.

The Granada Hills basketball coach said he tried every move in the coaching book to slow Cleveland junior forward Shawn Bankhead on Wednesday, and nothing seemed to work.

Bankhead finished with 38 points as Cleveland pulled out a 92-90 overtime victory.

Johnson, whose team played in the Simi Valley and Chaminade tournaments, said the 6-6 Bankhead--who averages 33.5 points a game--tops the chart of local players as a college prospect.

“Out of anybody we’ve played, he has the best potential,” Johnson said. “He looks good inside and outside. If I was a college recruiter, I’d be all over him.”

FANTASIA

North Hollywood sophomore forward Jamaal Johnson had given it a lot of thought. He talked to his parents about it and they were supportive. All he needed now was permission from Coach Steve Miller.

“He called me and said he wanted to change his name,” Miller said. “So, I said, ‘OK. Do you want to be called Abdul now, or what?’ ”

Johnson, who is now using the name of F. J. Johnson, wants to honor his deceased maternal grandmother by using the first initial of the nickname she gave him: Fantasia.

“She was very special to me,” Johnson said. “Later on down the line, I want to make that name a success in everything I do--even when I’m done with basketball.”

Perhaps the initials have brought some magic to Johnson’s game.

In his first game under his new name, Johnson came off the bench last week to score a career-high 15 points. He also had five rebounds and four assists.

TRIVIA QUESTION

What do City Section wrestling coaches Peter Dhanes of Birmingham, Paul De La Rosa of Wilson and Tom Jones of Monroe have in common?

Answer: All are graduates of Humboldt State in Northern California, a longtime NCAA wrestling power.

Interestingly, however, the school dropped wrestling this season because of budgetary problems.

Said Dhanes: “I wasn’t happy about that. I wrote them a little note on the back of my alumni check.”

RANGER RETURN

Second-place Nordhoff will play host to Santa Clara tonight, hoping to end the Saints’ 66-game winning streak in the Frontier League and reduce its two-game deficit in the standings.

Perhaps Larry Messer can bring some good luck to Nordhoff. Messer was a senior point guard for the Rangers in 1984, the last time a Frontier League team beat Santa Clara. Messer will return to Nordhoff tonight as one of five athletes who will be inducted into the school’s all-sports hall of fame.

Ceremonies will take place at halftime. Other inductees are Charles Manuel, a 1939 graduate who played baseball, Joy Beckett (1985, girls’ softball), Ty Jeffrey (1986, track and field) and Manuela Miller (1986, cross-country).

NOSE FOR THE BALL

Simi Valley sophomore forward Nathan Simmons sustained a broken nose last week during practice and missed the Pioneers’ 57-52 loss to Royal last Friday.

He returned to the lineup Wednesday and scored nine points in the Pioneers’ 71-62 win over Channel Islands.

Simmons’ absence “kind of screwed up our chemistry on Friday,” Simi Valley Coach Dean Bradshaw said.

PAINFUL END

The season came to an abrupt end for Jana Rigby, the all-time leading scorer in Nordhoff girls’ basketball history. Rigby, a senior point guard, underwent reconstructive surgery on her right knee two weeks ago to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

Rigby was injured Jan. 10 in Nordhoff’s Frontier League opener at Calabasas, three days after breaking Carrie Smith’s career scoring mark of 751 points.

Going in for a layup at the start of the fourth quarter, Rigby collided with a Calabasas player.

“It’s too bad her career had to end like that,” Nordhoff Coach Jack Smith said.

Rigby was the third Ranger player in three years to suffer torn ligaments. Carrie, the coach’s daughter, was injured in a Southern Section playoff game against Flintridge Sacred Heart in 1990, and guard Danielle Farrar damaged her knee last season.

“Jana is looking at nine months of rehabilitation,” Smith said.

Rigby, a four-year starter, was leading the Rangers in scoring and assists. She finished her career with 771 points after scoring 14 against Calabasas.

SHOCK WAVES

Rio Mesa girls’ basketball Coach Al Walker was expecting this to be a banner season with Marion Jones, a junior and a two-year letter winner, in the lineup to provide leadership to a talented but inexperienced group.

But two months after Jones’ transfer to Thousand Oaks, the young Spartans are still trying to find their groove.

“It was devastating when Marion transferred,” Walker said. “The effects are still being felt. We don’t have any leadership right now. The other players don’t have Marion to rely on.”

There have been a couple of highlights for Rio Mesa, however, in an otherwise bleak season. Freshman Debbie Douglas, a 5-7 guard, has been impressive as an outside shooter and sophomore Summer Peterson, a 6-2 center, has dominated at times on the inside. But Rio Mesa’s biggest problem has been consistency. “We are playing 10 or 12 good minutes and we need to play 25,” Walker said.

Even though she is now at Thousand Oaks, Jones has remained close to Walker and her former team. Jones and Walker talk frequently and she showed up for one of the Spartans’ games a few days after she suffered a broken wrist.

While many observers believe Jones might be out for the season, Walker said she has told him that she expects to play again this season. But even if Jones returns, it won’t bring any relief to Rio Mesa.

DENTAL CHECKUP

As the Van Nuys girls’ basketball team prepared to take the floor before its showdown Friday at North Hollywood, Husky Coach Rich Allen noticed that someone was missing--Van Nuys’ 6-foot-2 center, Cicely Brewster.

“It’s hard to hide someone who is that big,” Allen said.

It seems that Brewster had a dental appointment and didn’t make it back for the 4 p.m. tipoff, even though the junior varsity teams had played an overtime game that delayed the varsity contest by 15 minutes.

Brewster did not arrive at the gym until the start of the second quarter. She scored 13 points, but it wasn’t enough. North Hollywood won, 61-52.

David Coulson, Vince Kowalick and staff writers Steve Elling, Paige A. Leech, T.C. Porter and Jeff Riley contributed to this notebook.