SIDELINES : Whiteman No Longer Wrestling With Demons From Quake

Joel Whiteman literally doesn’t know what hit him. All he remembers of the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 17 was the shaking.

Moments later, he was bleeding from a two-inch gash atop his head. Briefly, he lost consciousness.

“I still don’t know what it was,” said Whiteman, a junior wrestler at 171 pounds for Granada Hills High. “I was running out of my room and I probably ran into a shelf or something.”

As for his wrestling, Whiteman had hit a wall.

A severe concussion was diagnosed, and Whiteman took medication for weeks to relieve the pain of severe headaches. When the Northridge quake struck, Whiteman, though only a sophomore, was midway through his second season as captain of the Highlanders’ varsity. He has not wrestled since.

“It’s annoying, watching all your teammates wrestle and not being able to join in,” Whiteman said. “It’s hard to express. You just get disappointed.”

His wait soon will be over. Whiteman, who has been hampered by a sprained right knee this season, plans to make his return to the mat Jan. 19 when Granada Hills plays host to Fremont in a City Section dual meet.

“It’ll be good to be a part of things again,” he said.

We are family: Valley College sophomore wing Kenyth Henry and freshman center Tomer Yachini know how to butter up a teammate.

In this season’s team program, the two list Laker guard Nick Van Exel as their favorite NBA player.

It just so happens that Valley sophomore wing Derek Gates is a cousin of--you guessed it--Van Exel.

Gone but not forgotten: With the recent commitments of Royal High football players--Jermaine Smith to Washington, Steve Zirnite to Fresno State and Mike Reddington to Navy--the Highlanders soon will hold the distinction of being the only school in Ventura County to have graduates playing at a service academy and in the Pacific 10, Big Ten, Big Eight, Big West and the Western Athletic conferences.

The other players are: Jason Wendland (Northwestern), Tim Ross (Colorado), Ryan Fien (UCLA) and Jason Evans (Pacific).

Long memory: The Westlake boys’ basketball team is following the lead of its counterpart at Crescenta Valley, which voluntarily moved into a higher playoff bracket last year because of a glut of strong teams--Dominguez, Inglewood and Muir, to name a few--in the Southern Section’s Division II-A.

But Westlake’s move to Division I-AA, the bracket in which Crescenta Valley reached the championship game last year, was precipitated by another factor: “Billy Miller was looking at the brackets and he said, ‘Coach, we want to play this team,’ and he was pointing to Diamond Bar,” Westlake Coach Gary Grayson said.

Diamond Bar, which knocked Westlake’s top-ranked football team out of the Division III playoffs last month, is in Division I-AA in basketball. Miller is a senior standout and a top college football recruit.

Stats

With last week’s 85-74 loss to UC San Diego, the Cal Lutheran men’s basketball team (4-4) not only surpassed its total number of defeats during last season’s 25-3 campaign, it lost three games in a row for the first time since the 1991-92 season.

The streak could reach four today when the Kingsmen play host to Nebraska Wesleyan, the seventh-ranked NCAA Division III team.

Derrick Clark of Cal Lutheran has moved into 13th place on the Kingsmen’s all-time rebounding list with 443. Clark, a 6-foot-4 senior forward who is in his third season at the school, has averaged 7.4 rebounds a game.

Quarterback Dave Lins of Crespi High finished his high school career second among the school’s passing leaders with 3,409 yards. Cody Smith (1989-91) passed for 4,486 yards but in three seasons. Lins did not play quarterback as a sophomore.

This season, Lins set single-season records for completions (207) and yards (2,103). Lins broke Smith’s record of 2,028 yards, set in 1991. Smith and Lins set both marks in 11 games. Lins shattered Ron Redell’s single-season mark of 150 completions, set in 1988 in 12 games.

Lins ranks second in completions (334) and touchdown passes (24). Smith ranks first with 346 completions and 43 touchdown passes.

Quotebook

Ventura College men’s basketball Coach Philip Mathews, on his Pirate team that has 10 freshmen on its 12-man roster: “They are still in diapers right now. When they start wearing underwear, I’ll tell you.”

Things to Do

The Cougar Holiday Classic basketball tournament at College of the Canyons features three local men’s teams: Moorpark, Antelope Valley and host Canyons. Today’s winners’-bracket action begins at 5 p.m.; the championship game is scheduled for Thursday at 7 p.m.

Contributing: Fernando Dominguez, Jeff Fletcher, Vince Kowalick and John Ortega.