Kennedy Plays On Despite Hardships From Earthquake : High school basketball: School is not in session and the gym is damaged, but Golden Cougars continue schedule.

New doesn’t necessarily mean better, a point hammered home with force Jan. 17.

Kennedy High is the newest of the City Section’s 49 high schools, yet it sustained the worst damage in the Northridge earthquake. El Camino Real is the second-newest campus, and it also suffered serious damage.

Both schools are expected to remain closed for the next few weeks, which has left the basketball teams in a state of flux.

Newest or not, Kennedy was dealt the worst hand of all. To recap: No school, no gym, no students, no practices . . . and an important game scheduled for Friday night.

“I was talking to (Taft Coach Jim) Woodard and said, ‘No fair, you’ve got an advantage,’ ” Kennedy Coach Yutaka Shimizu said.

El Camino Real is closed, but the team started practicing Monday in the girls’ gym. The boys’ gym must still be inspected for exposed asbestos. The six El Camino Real players who live in the L.A. Basin arrived for practice with no problems, Coach Neils Ludlow said.

“The kids seemed real anxious to (play),” Ludlow said.

Because of earthquake damage, Kennedy and El Camino Real were forced to adopt the district’s year-round academic calendar and will not reopen until mid-March at the earliest. Several schools in the L.A. Basin’s most populated areas are on the same calendar. And while the City has agreed to provide transportation for athletes who live in the L.A. Basin, it took several days to iron out what Shimizu called a series of “snafus.”

“We’ve been trying to get together for about a week,” said Shimizu, who has five players who live over the hill. “It took this long to pull it all together.”

In fact, today Kennedy will hold its first practice in three weeks. The Golden Cougars, tied for first place in the West Valley League at 2-1, last played Jan. 14. Kennedy plays at Cleveland on Friday at 7 p.m.

Other City schools have had logistics problems, but none as extensive as Kennedy. For instance, Woodard’s Taft team practiced during sixth period all last week. Taft suffered no damage to its gymnasium.

Conversely, Kennedy will play its three remaining league games on the road. “We can’t do much about that,” Shimizu said. “We have no gym.”

Shimizu has lined up nearby Porter Junior High for practices. The Kennedy girls’ team practiced Monday on the blacktop at school--and it was captured by television cameras.

City Commissioner Barbara Fiege said that a round-robin tournament for North Valley League boys’ teams scheduled Feb. 9-11 at El Camino Real might be moved if the campus remains closed.

“It’s possible,” she said. “We’ve set it for El Camino Real on a tentative basis. The gym itself is OK as far as structural damage.”