In Just a Few Minutes, Pick Up Some Wit and Wisdom

A mole, we are told, can dig a 6 1/2-foot tunnel in 12 minutes. In the same amount of time, you could fix yourself a cup of coffee, butter some toast and polish off this column.

Just something to think about while you breeze through today’s tidbits . . .

* What does $2.40, $32.50 and 74 cents buy you these days? One plastic jump rope, 50 pounds in dumbbells and a coach’s whistle, respectively. That’s what we hear from the bill-payers at Corona del Mar, Newport Harbor and Estancia, anyway.

* Forget the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon. Forget the Tour de France. If you want to witness complete athletic exhaustion, head over to the Cypress High track.

The Centurion boys’ team had only 15 members this season, meaning each needed to compete in three or four events in order for Cypress to have a chance at victory. Still, the team finished fourth at the Orange County Championships and runner-up in the Empire League to perennial power Esperanza. The Centurions even set school records in both relays.

“We’re always passed out in the middle of the field at the end of meets,” Cypress sprinter/jumper/relay runner Scott Elkin says. “Jimmy Hutsell (sprinter and relay anchor) is literally almost unconscious. He needs help getting off the field.”

* The license plate on her car may be “HOOVER,” but Woodbridge third baseman Deanna Black isn’t advertising for a home appliance. It simply fits better than the “Human Vacuum Cleaner” nickname she earned for her stellar defensive play.

* It seems strange and somewhat sad that in an era of escalating violence, high school track athletes can be disqualified for holding hands while crossing the finish line. It happened last week to three Laguna Hills 3,200-meter runners at the Pacific Coast League championships.

Mayra Medina, Heidi Sickler and Heather McGlone ran together from the start and had a comfortable lead when they crossed the finish line. But because they held hands, they were DQ’d for unsportsmanlike conduct. Fortunately, league coaches voted to allow the three entrance into this weekend’s Southern Section preliminaries anyway.

* They’ll be weighed, timed and evaluated for speed, strength and agility. They’ll run, jump, throw, catch, lift weights and then go home.

Who are they? The 400 to 500 high school juniors participating in the preseason football combine Saturday at El Camino College, Valenica’s Chris Draft and Huntington Beach’s Tony Gonzalez included.

* Esperanza’s Kristy Kierulff may surprise some with her success in the high jump, but not her mom, who has seen her daughter accomplish some impressive feats.

Donna Kierulff says she once found her daughter, then a toddler, on top of the refrigerator. Kristy had pushed her high chair next to the refrigerator, stood on the high chair tray and jumped up from there. Donna suspects a cookie jar provided the incentive.

“Kristy would do some pretty good jumps off the roof, too,” Donna says. “The amazing thing is, she never broke a bone.” Not yet, anyway. Kristy, a sophomore, lists sky-diving as one of her many desires.

* Quick. Somebody get Matt Montgomery a crash helmet. The Western outfielder picked up a rather strange habit recently--running full speed into a chain-link fence by the dugout after he makes an out.

Says Western Coach Jeff Broussely: “Matt’s kind of out in left field.”

Even when he plays in right?

* Scott Cathcart, the Southern Section’s media director, will become assistant athletic director at Cal State Long Beach. Not a bad job for the one-time professional tree-trimmer who lived in his beat-up van (he called it his Urban Assault Vehicle) and whose habit of never wearing socks once inspired then-Commissioner Ray Plutko to go out and buy him some.

* You would think cross-country, track, basketball and being a lifeguard would be enough for Lia Rousset. But the Newport Harbor freshman counts kayaking as her No. 1 sport. She competes in the Pan-American Regatta this weekend in Mexico City.

* Dave Hamel is a pretty fair tennis player, which makes sense because he coaches the sport at Canyon High. His favorite endeavor, though, is pole vaulting.

Hamel, who turns 40 next month, was a league champion in the pole vault for Garden Grove High in 1971. Two weeks ago, he gave the sport another try. Canyon was hosting a track meet and Hamel couldn’t resist. He grabbed a pole--and cleared 9 feet 6 inches.

“It’s a feeling you can’t get anywhere else,” says Hamel, who went 14-7 for Chapman College in the early 1970s. “Though I suppose bungee jumping would be close.”

* Hamel vaulted on aluminum poles while at Garden Grove, and bamboo poles before that. Obtaining the latter required some interesting tactics.

“There was a house down the street that had bamboo, 40 to 50 feet high, growing in the back yard,” Hamel says. “So we’d sneak over the fence, cut one down and be running down the street with this 40-foot long bamboo shoot.”

Sounds like a bamboo-zle to me.

Barbie Ludovise’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Ludovise either by writing her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, 92626, calling (714) 966-5847 or by fax at 966-5663.