Versatile Straus Able to Toot His Own Horn

With the North Hollywood boys’ soccer team’s 4-1 wild-card playoff loss to Bell on Tuesday, senior Darren Straus finally will have a normal Thursday afternoon again.

Every autumn Thursday for the past two years, Straus pulled double duty as the lead trumpet player in the Huskies’ band and as an All-East Valley League fullback on the soccer team.

He practiced with the soccer team from 2 to 4 p.m., after which the band marched onto the field for its practice. Straus was the only soccer player who didn’t march off, trumpeting solos and acting as the assistant drum major until 6:30 p.m.

“Thursdays were pretty hectic,” he said.

Straus maintains a 4.0 grade-point average--”higher when you factor in the advanced placement courses,” he said--and works at an ice cream parlor.

“He’s got a lot going for him,” North Hollywood soccer Coach Rick Pally said. “He’s kind of a renaissance man.”

SPANISH SPOKEN HERE

On many area soccer teams, a preponderance of Hispanic players are bilingual or speak only Spanish. Many coaches speak only English, creating a communication problem.

“Sometimes some of those teams get torn apart,” Ventura High Coach Ken Magdaleno said. “Players need to communicate.”

But Magdaleno and Hueneme Coach Bob Miller, among others, have created a positive situation from a potential stumbling point.

Miller speaks no Spanish, but this season, his third as coach, he brought in a Spanish-speaking assistant, Jose Baez, a former Oxnard player.

“It’s made a great difference in the team,” Miller said. “Not just because he’s bilingual but because he can go out there and demonstrate (in practice).”

Of the 18 players on the team, all but two speak Spanish.

“Baez’s credibility is a little greater than mine,” Miller said. “He has been instrumental in making changes and getting the boys to perform at a little higher level than I had.”

Magdaleno, on the other hand, is bilingual and points to that as a reason for increased player participation.

“I’m getting more and more Mexican kids coming out because I can speak Spanish,” he said. “A lot of times these kids get a little lost around school. But to be a part of a school activity can really make them feel like high school is a neat thing.

“It gives the Spanish-speaking kids and the English-speaking kids a chance to interact where they might not normally do so.”

CITY SAVIOR

The Monroe High boys’ soccer team plays host not only to a rejuvenated Washington team in today’s quarterfinal playoff match, the Vikings must contend with Mike Asfall, the Washington coach and a spirited proponent of inner-city soccer.

Asfall, 33, a former All-City player at Hamilton and member of the All-Armed Forces team from 1977 to 1982 while in the Navy, tried out for the 1980 Olympic team. Now, in his second season as Washington coach, he has turned his focus to City Section soccer.

“L.A. Unified has gotten a bad rap,” Asfall said. “We have schools like UCLA, Northridge, Cal State L.A and Dominguez Hills, where coaches have to cross South Central L.A. to get home, but they don’t recruit there. What does that say for our sports programs?”

Asfall, one of the few African-American soccer coaches in the area, is trying to expand the sport’s profile at Washington.

“I’m a black coach,” Asfall said. “And I’m trying to bring the black players out of the woodwork in this school.”

Asfall said there is one African-American and two students from Senegal on his team. In addition, two Jamaican students have expressed interest in playing next season. Most of the players are Hispanic.

In Asfall’s first year, Washington went 12-3-2 and advanced to the playoff quarterfinals. And though the Generals are 7-2 this season, Asfall sounds more concerned with his players as students. He said that at least six Generals possess a grade-point average of 3.5 or higher.

“I’ve tried to establish more than just a soccer team,” he said. “I’d like for these kids to go on to college from South Central L.A.”

AMY FISHER

You’ve seen her story on all three television networks. Now catch her act as the Calabasas soccer goalie.

Just kidding. The Amy Fisher that minds the nets for the Coyotes girls’ soccer team is no relation to the notorious woman by the same name, but Fisher has heard all the jokes that inevitably go along with her moniker.

When she recently won free tickets on a radio call-in contest, the disc jockey asked her name. “Wow, I bet you’re popular,” he said when she told him.

“At first it was kind of annoying, but now I think it’s funny,” she said. “At least now everyone knows who I am.”

Fisher, a senior goalkeeper, overcame reconstructive thumb surgery that caused her to miss her sophomore year. She re-injured the thumb this season, but will wait until summer for surgery.

“I’m a senior,” she said with a laugh. “I have to play.”

Perhaps, but she didn’t feel the need to watch the made-for-TV movies about the more widely known Amy Fisher.

“I missed all three,” she said. “I was baby-sitting. It really didn’t interest me.”

NEW KID ON THE RIM

Beefy guys who wear No. 54 are not supposed to do anything more than crowd the middle, throw some elbows and try for a few rebounds.

Somebody forgot to tell that to Newbury Park’s Sean Burnett.

Burnett, a 6-foot-1, 180-pound junior forward, recently moved up from the junior varsity and immediately began making an impact . . . with his outside shooting.

Burnett made four three-point baskets as part of 14 points last week as Newbury Park upset Westlake, 69-66. Two days earlier, Burnett scored 16 points and had 13 rebounds in a 58-56 loss to Channel Islands.

“Here’s this big, stocky kid, wearing No. 54, of all numbers, and he just went out there and buried four three-pointers,” Westlake Coach Gary Grayson said. “He’s just been killing everybody.”

BIG-LEAGUE WELCOME

Mike Scyphers, baseball coach at Simi Valley High, welcomed home former Pioneer players Scott Radinsky and Tim Laker, whose high school baseball jerseys were retired in a pregame ceremony last week in the Simi Valley gym.

Radinsky, a relief pitcher for the Chicago White Sox, and Laker, a catcher for the Montreal Expos, raised their framed jerseys high over their heads to the delight of the capacity crowd while Scyphers showered the pair with praise.

During introductions, Scyphers, apparently carried away with emotion, gushed that Radinsky and Laker “combined to form the greatest pitcher-catcher combination this state has ever seen.”

SCHOLAR-ATHLETES

Birmingham is off to its fast start under the tutelage of fourth-year Coach Al Bennett.

Sure, Bennett is proud of what the Braves (9-5, 2-1 in Valley Pac-8 Conference play) are doing on the basketball court, but the coach also delights in his team’s work in the classroom.

The 11-member team achieved an average grade point of 3.23 for the fall semester.

“If we’re not the best, I’d bet we’re pretty close to being the best academic team in the Los Angeles (Unified School District),” Bennett said.

And it looks as though the Braves might stay at or near the top for a while. Scott Lewinter, a forward who earned the team’s only 4.0 grade-point average, is a sophomore.

CENTER OF ATTENTION

Volleyball’s loss has been basketball’s gain for the Bell-Jeff girls’ teams this season. Bolstered by the return of Carrie Breedlove and Maia Casagrande, the Guards are 13-2 and ranked fifth in the Southern Section Division IV.

Breedlove, a 6-1 senior center, and Casagrande, a 5-10 senior forward, skipped basketball last season to focus on club volleyball. That forced Coach James Couch to use guard Cathy Flores in the post.

“Last year, I had to put Cathy on the centers and it slowed down our running game,” Couch said. “This season, I’ve been able to turn them loose.”

Since losing their first two games to Dorsey and Lompoc, the Guards have won 13 in a row.

“Right now, we’re riding pretty high,” Couch said. “We were leading both of the games we lost at halftime and ran out of gas, so we’ve really worked on our conditioning since then.”

TOO SERIOUS?

Probably no one knows the importance to the community of the girls’ basketball rivalry between Buena and Ventura better than veteran Buena Coach Joe Vaughan. The game generally draws capacity crowds and grabs the local sports page headlines for days.

But Vaughan felt his team took the game too seriously last Thursday in a 42-38 victory over the Cougars.

“Sometimes you can make a game too important,” Vaughan said. “When you do that, you don’t function very well.”

Vaughan said his team played too tentatively for much of the game. “I thought we came out hesitant and that seemed to carry over for most of the game,” he said.

CONFIDENCE BOOSTER

Some coaches worry how their team will react when it receives recognition in the polls. But Nordhoff Coach Jack Smith said the publicity has been all positive for his girls’ basketball squad.

“Once we got ranked (last week), the girls have played with a higher level of confidence,” Smith said.

The undefeated Rangers have run their school-record winning streak to 17 games and are 3-0 in Frontier League play.

Nordhoff is ranked second the Southern Section Division IV poll and 20th in The Times girls’ basketball poll for all Southern and City Section teams.

A big reason for the Rangers’ success has been their tough man-to-man defense.

“I’ve never played man-to-man defense until this year,” Smith said. “But in about five games this year, it has made the difference in winning and losing.”

Smith said Nordhoff’s veteran boys’ Coach Dick Sebek has been instrumental in helping the Rangers implement the new defense.

“Every time I come to something I’m not familiar with, I take it to Dick,” Smith explained. “He has forgotten more about basketball than I will ever know.”

Kennedy Cosgrove, David Coulson and staff writers Vince Kowalick and Paige A. Leech contributed to this notebook.