FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS: Mater Dei High School defeated...

FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS: Mater Dei High School defeated Antelope Valley, 15-11, in a semifinal game of the Southern Section Division I playoffs Friday night. In the City Section, defending champ Sylmar lost to Carson, 22-21. San Pedro blanked Reseda in the 3-A semifinals, 17-0. . . . In other semifinals, L.A. Baptist won and Notre Dame lost. (C16).

HOLLYWOOD MAGIC: Santa Clarita is becoming a national TV presence. Debuting this week on CBS was “Second Chances,” a Valencia-filmed series that uses Santa Clarita exteriors for the fictional city of “Santa Rita.” Those streets are already familiar to viewers of “Melrose Place” . . . an oddly suburban setting for what is supposed to be grungily urban Hollywood.

CLINTON VISIT: President Clinton visits Rockwell’s Rocketdyne Division in Canoga Park today to talk to aerospace workers, preceded by news that the company is getting $2.6 million in federal money to convert military technology to peacetime uses (A16). . . . Burbank-based Calstart, the advanced-car project (above), gets $3.4 million, less than it hoped.

LAND WAR: It’s still two weeks before Soka University and state park officials square off in court--but the war of words is booming (B4). The Sierra Club--which backs the state attempt to seize Soka’s campus--fired off a report calling Soka’s expansion plans one of “the most potentially damaging developments ever proposed.” Soka’s reply: “Pack of lies and exaggerations.”

TRADITION RETHOUGHT: Have medical advances and changing attitudes outmoded Judaism’s ancient restrictions on funeral rites for infants? “For a tradition that is so wise in most matters of loss, its answer for the death of an infant was hollow and unhelpful,” says a University of Judaism administrator. . . . The Valley religion column (B13) examines changes in a complex Jewish tradition.