COMMENTARY : New Year in Valley Will Be Predictably Entertaining

Sportswriters are somewhat of a sarcastic, cynical and skeptical group, the types who, when told to look into a crystal ball, would see only cheap , imitation glass. With that as background, the Valley sports staff dutifully submits a few predictions for 1995:

JANUARY

In a deft political move, Cal State Northridge will hire Pat Paulsen and Sonny Bono to campaign for the passage of a third student fee referendum for athletics. In a related move, Michael Milken and Barry Minkow will be hired as fund-raisers.

Randy Wolf, after learning the Waves don’t play any of their home games at Dodger Stadium, will leave the Pepperdine baseball team.

FEBRUARY

A lanky, 17-year-old freshman making his first collegiate start will throw 185 pitches to lead Northridge to a lopsided victory in a meaningless, early season nonconference baseball game. Asked if the number of pitches drained him, the kid will respond: “Naw, I was more tired yesterday after throwing three hours of batting practice.”

Circus Vargas will rent Alemany High’s inflatable bubble for a weeklong gig. During the circus, some clown will pop a safety pin, causing rapid decompression and thrusting the bubble into the air and on a zig-zag course over the North Valley.

MARCH

Coach Philip Mathews will guide the Ventura College men’s basketball team to the state junior college Final Eight tournament at UC Irvine. The Pirates’ impressive play will prompt Irvine officials to wonder why they didn’t hire him when they had the chance.

Cal State Northridge students, many of them claiming that they didn’t know the school ever had a football team, vote to eliminate the sport while increasing support for other athletic programs.

APRIL

After being rejected by every league in the Southern Section, the Montclair Prep football program will be embraced by the City Section. “We needed a team that can compete with Sylmar and Carson,” the City Section will say.

In a move to soothe ruffled feathers after adding Montclair Prep, the City Section will establish a new magnet program at Sylmar High. For football.

MAY

Noting that similar strategy “worked for softball in the late ‘70s,” Northridge Athletic Director Bob Hiegert will reassign lame-duck football Coach Bob Burt and place him in charge of the school’s women’s basketball team.

JUNE

Birmingham High officials will stipulate that the Braves’ new football coach must fire up the team by announcing his retirement prior to the start of each season.

Tennis player Meilen Tu of Northridge, already a pro at age 17, will defeat a player twice her age and lose to someone even younger.

JULY

The Northridge Little League World Series team will record the song, “Achy-Quaky Heart,” lamenting the players’ loss of innocence in the wake of its controversial instructional video that included only five players.

A la the old Baltimore Colts, Luc Robitaille will pack up the contents of the Ice-O-Plex and move to Pittsburgh in the middle of the night.

AUGUST

The Marmonte League, noting that fans have been known to occasionally yell rude and vulgar comments while attending sporting events, will ban spectators from league contests.

The Valley Pac-8 League will officially change its name to the Sylmar and the Seven Dwarfs Conference.

Some idiot will ask a Hart High football coach why the Indians never schedule Antelope Valley for a nonleague game.

SEPTEMBER

Moorpark College football coaches will recruit a mathematics whiz from a nearby elementary school to keep their statistics using a laser-age computer. They’ll scrap their old method and donate the beans to a soup kitchen.

OCTOBER

Local Division IX football teams, led by Nordhoff and Moorpark, will circulate a petition to ban Atascadero High from the playoffs.

An anonymous assistant coach from a rival school will secretly videotape Sylmar coach Jeff Engilman jaywalking, parking in a handicap zone and walking his dog without a leash during a weeklong surveillance.

A crowd of 4,087 fans--58 more than attended last season--will attend Northridge’s homecoming soccer game at North Campus Stadium.

NOVEMBER

Guided by Coach Bob Burt, the Northridge women’s basketball team will end a 36-game losing streak by defeating the Billy Barty-coached Little Couchpotatoes n Action. It takes two overtimes.

Five months after Coach Joel Schaeffer persuades the City Section to start a 2-A playoff, the Reseda High football team will receive the top seeding in the new division only to suffer an opening-round loss.

DECEMBER

After consulting with Michael Jordan, Keith Smith, the state’s career-leading high school football passer from Newbury Park, will ask for his release from the Detroit Tiger organization so that he might pursue a college basketball scholarship.

A high school football league will finally plunge over the edge and name every starter in the league to its all-star team.

* Compiled by Mike Hiserman.