HIGH SCHOOL NOTEBOOK : Hansen Burns Oil as Coaches Remain Cool

You gotta do what you gotta do. For Granada Hills High kicker Grant Hansen, that means burning the midnight oil.

Hansen, also the Highlanders’ punter, plays in an adult ice hockey league in North Hills one night each week. Trouble is, this is Southern California, and there isn’t enough ice to go around.

That means that Hansen’s games sometimes don’t get over until the wee hours. In fact, certain games don’t begin until 11 p.m. A preseason scrimmage last week, held on a school night, didn’t end until around 1 a.m. The earliest games start at 9 p.m.

“It’s only once a week, so my parents let me do it,” he said.

And his coaches? Do they know?

“Uh, no,” he said. “They probably don’t really care.”

Granada Hills is 0-4.

This isn’t a good omen.

It’s been rough enough for winless Granada Hills--which faces archrival Kennedy this week--but this is almost embarrassing.

Included in the Highlander game program is the usual fare--pictures of players and cheerleaders, rosters, upcoming games and the like.

Yet on the second-to-last page is an advertisement for a local physical therapist, which includes two photos. Here’s the kicker: Featured in one of the photos is former Kennedy quarterback Tony Smets.

FOOTHILL LEAGUE

In Defense of Welch . . .

Jim Barker, the Pomona-Pitzer assistant coach who witnessed Friday’s fight between Canyon Coach Harry Welch and team booster club member Tim McKeon, said Welch displayed remarkable calm in the face of danger.

Welch, who filed an assault report against McKeon with the L.A. County Sheriff’s office in Newhall on Monday, claimed McKeon held him by the throat and struck him several times outside the coaches’ office after a 25-14 loss to Quartz Hill.

Barker, who attested to the throat hold in his witness statement, said he didn’t see the entire altercation, and saw no punches thrown. But what he did see was no less troubling.

“(McKeon)’s got him around the neck, pushing him up to a fence,” Barker said. “I don’t know Harry Welch. I’m not a friend. I was there watching players. But a coach in this situation couldn’t have done more to handle it any better. If (Welch) knocks the guy’s hands off, that’s a physical act.

“(Welch) didn’t do a thing. I don’t know if there are many coaches in the United States who could have handled it that way. If everyone could, we wouldn’t have so many problems in our society.”

Welch elected not to file assault charges against McKeon and has not commented about the situation.

WEST VALLEY LEAGUE

First in Line

Is college basketball recruiting competitive, or what?

Eddie Miller, a sophomore who transferred to Chatsworth from Notre Dame, already has drawn the attention of Division I recruiters.

In fact, an assistant from UCLA stopped by campus last week to watch Miller work out, which is rather unusual in light of Miller’s age.

“I was shocked,” Chatsworth Coach Sandy Greentree said. “He said some very impressive things about Eddie and said they want him to know that they were the very first school out to visit him.”

SANTA FE LEAGUE

Through a Coach’s Eyes

Bell-Jeff Coach Doug Woodlief disagrees with the assessment that what happened between his team and Santa Clara on Saturday night was a bench-clearing brawl.

“It was just a little scuffle,” Woodlief said. “No one got off our bench. The word brawl raises a lot of eyebrows. Some people see that as pretty ugly. To me it was a scuffle. I’ve seen a lot worse things.”

Two incidents occurred in the third quarter of the game, which Santa Clara won, 34-15. One player from each team was ejected.

HIGH DESERT LEAGUE

The Good With the Bad

Paraclete continued its rebuilding by upsetting Mojave, 41-18, last week and starting the league schedule with a victory. But not all is well with the Spirits.

Mike Kendrick, a returning all-league running back and the team’s top ground-gainer this season, injured an ankle in practice last week and will be out for at least one more game, and probably longer. Kendrick has gained 387 yards in 71 carries this season.

Coach Steve Hagerty said he doesn’t know the extent of Kendrick’s injury because the team has no trainer.

Compounding the problem, Kendrick’s replacement, sophomore Lance Austin, went down with a back injury in the second quarter on Friday. Austin is expected to be back for this week’s game at Silver Valley.

MARMONTE LEAGUE

Fast Start

First-year Agoura volleyball Coach Chris Everson has brought a new approach to coaching the Chargers this season: It’s called low-key.

Since taking over for the departed Alan Segal, Everson has quietly guided Agoura (9-1, 5-0 in Marmonte League) to the No. 5 ranking in Southern Section Division I and No. 16 in California.

“He’s not a screamer,” Royal Coach Bob Ferguson said of Everson early in the season. “It’s a complete difference from last year.”

Everson said he takes a different tack from the volatile Segal, and the players have responded well.

“They feared (Segal) and that’s how he controlled the team,” said Everson, who learned from Segal while coaching Agoura’s junior varsity the past three seasons.

“I try to be real positive with everything. I’ve talked to a couple of the seniors and they feel the team is coming together and reacting better to the positive environment.”

*

A lot can happen between now and Nov. 27 when the state high school cross-country championships are run in Fresno, but the Thousand Oaks boys’ cross-country team has been the dominant squad in the state in the first month of the season.

The Lancers, runners-up to Hart in last year’s state Division I championships, turned the tables on the Indians, 51-118, in the Stanford invitational on Saturday after winning the Seaside, Mt. Carmel and Royal invitationals during the preceding three weeks.

It was Thousand Oaks’ third victory of the season over Hart, the three-time defending state Division I champion.

“(Stanford) was definitely a confidence-builder,” Lancer Coach Jack Farrell said. “We feel like we’ve seen every ranked (Division I) team in the state except for Santa Ana and we’ve handled them all.”

Brandon Del Campo led Thousand Oaks with a third-place finish at Stanford, running 15 minutes 34 seconds over the 5,000-meter course. He was followed by Kevin Marsden (sixth in 15:47), Jeff Fischer (seventh in 15:51), Chadd Aldrich (16th in 16:06) and Keith O’Doherty (19th in 16:09).

*

Agoura cross-country Coach Bill Duley has guided the Chargers’ girls’ team to three consecutive state Division I titles, but he admitted that his squad was overmatched against Saratoga Springs (N.Y.) in the Vulcan Classic in Birmingham, Ala., on Saturday.

Saratoga Springs, the No. 2-ranked team in the nation by Harrier magazine, placed five runners among the top nine finishers to total 28 points. Agoura was second with 76 points.

“They were awesome,” Duley said. “We had a couple of girls who did not run that well, but even if they had, we would not have scored much lower than 50 points.”

FRONTIER LEAGUE

Rangers in Free Fall

The defending state champion Nordhoff girls’ volleyball team fell out of the Southern Section Division IV top 10 rankings this week after losing four of its first five matches, despite opening the season as the division’s top-ranked team.

The Rangers are enduring a remarkable run of bad luck and worse timing.

“We haven’t had the same six girls on the court for practice in about four weeks,” Coach Cher Glass said last week.

Five players were sidelined for Nordhoff’s most recent loss. The reasons were varied: Pulled neck ligaments (All-Southern Section second-team setter Julie Sandefur), ear infection (Stephanie Keeter), concussion/broken nose (All-Southern Section second-team outside hitter Jamie Sawyer), an emergency appendectomy (Nancy Helm) and “routine sickness” (Rica Zimmerman).

Around the Leagues. . . .

* Because of Deron McElroy’s concussion, Crespi has found someone to kick. Mark Herz took over for McElroy last week and was perfect on three extra-point attempts. McElroy, also a tight end, had made only one of four attempts. Although McElroy will play again this week, Herz will kick.

* Crescenta Valley quarterback David Fielder, who has missed most of the season with a sprained ankle, kicked for the Falcons last week.

* Burbank is 1-3, but perhaps by through fault of its secondary. The Bulldogs have 14 interceptions, including six by Charles Baker and three by Vaughan Lucas. Three of Baker’s came in Friday’s 14-7 loss to Arroyo. The single-game Southern Section record is five shared by four players, including Sean Montgomery of St. Bonaventure in 1984.

* Saugus has nine interceptions. Matt Gillis, Phillip Waterman and Nick Lawson each has two interceptions in one game.

* Junior Aaron Davis of Ventura has rushed for 100 or more yards in three consecutive games. He has gained 412 yards in 60 carries and scored five touchdowns, filling the gap left when Derek Swafford graduated.

Kennedy Cosgrove and staff writers Steve Elling, Jeff Fletcher, Dana Haddad, John Ortega and Jason H. Reid contributed to this notebook.