Sophomore Moore on Track for Atlanta

He has been winning races and setting records since he first stepped on a track as an 8-year-old, so those who know Obea Moore were not surprised by his performance in the Southern Section finals Saturday at Cerritos College.

Moore, a sophomore, won four events, helping Pasadena Muir successfully defend its Division I team title. He won the 200 and 400 meters and ran the anchor leg on the Mustangs’ victorious 400- and 1,600-relay teams.

The highlight was a 45.96-second time in the 400, which shattered the division record and is the second-fastest time ever run by a sophomore.

Moore, 16, said he could have done better.

“A lot of people probably think I would be elated by my performance,” Moore said. “But I’ve been competing for so long that I don’t let victories get in the way of my personal goals. I’m happy about the meet, but I think I could have done even better.”

Muir has a rich tradition in track and field, and coaches there eagerly awaited his arrival after learning of his numerous age-group records. As a freshman, Moore played a significant role in the team’s state title quest.

The expectations do not bother Moore.

“People have been putting responsibility on me for as long as I can remember, so it’s really no different on the high school level,” he said. “I’m just doing what I’ve always done.”

Moore gets considerable guidance from his club coach, James Robertson, who has him on a program to qualify for the 1996 Olympic team in the 400. Moore alternates running the 400 and 800 every season, with an eye to peaking for his specialty in time for the trials for the ’96 Atlanta Games.

The Muir sophomore will compete in the Southern Section Masters meet Friday night at Cerritos College. The top five finishers in each event will qualify for the state meet June 2-3 also at Cerritos.

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Moore is not the only one who turned in an impressive performance last week. Fremont’s Clarence Scott was a double winner in the City Section preliminaries Thursday at Van Nuys Birmingham High.

Scott, a junior, won the long jump at 25 feet 4 1/2 inches, the top high school mark in the nation this season, and also won the 200 in 21.29 seconds.

“I ran down the [long jump] runway and it was like I didn’t want to come down,” Scott said of his record jump.

The City Section finals will be held Thursday at Birmingham. The top three finishers in each event will advance to the state meet.

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The Simi Valley baseball team won an appeal to get into the Southern Section playoffs last week, but its stay was a short one.

Mission Hills Alemany scored in the bottom of the seventh inning to post a 5-4 victory over the Pioneers in a Division I first-round game Friday. A day earlier, Simi Valley had replaced Westlake as the Marmonte League’s third and final playoff team.

Even though Simi Valley had defeated Westlake twice during the season, league officials awarded the postseason berth to Westlake on a coin flip. Simi Valley Coach Mike Scyphers said the decision was unfair and appealed to the Southern Section.

In a rare case of the section overturning a league ruling, an appeals committee rule that head-to-head competition should have been considered before a coin flip and put Simi Valley in the playoffs.

If that was not enough drama, the Pioneers’ game against Alemany was also the final one for Scyphers. He had announced his forced resignation last week after two years of controversy over his conduct on the job.

“This final game was important because the kids deserved the right to be here,” said Scyphers, who had been at Simi Valley for 17 years. “All of these distractions have made it difficult for the kids to stay focused, and I tried to [protect] them from as much as I could.

“But in the end, it proved to be too much for everyone to handle.”

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The Orange County-Long Beach area has the top high school baseball talent in the nation, according to a recent survey conducted by Baseball America magazine.

Professional scouts and college recruiters responded to questions based on the following criteria: strength and organization of high school, youth and amateur programs, facilities, coaching, volume of players and length of season.

San Diego finished No. 3, and Fresno-San Joaquin Valley was No. 9.

Prep Notes

The City Section softball finals will be played today at UCLA. In the Division 3-A game, Verdugo Hills takes on Garfield at 3 p.m., and the 4-A game between Granada Hills and San Pedro follows at 5. . . . The Southern Section boys’ volleyball finals will be held Saturday at Cypress College, beginning with the Division III match at 2 p.m. and concluding with Division I at 7.

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Times’ Top 20 Baseball Poll

The Times’ top 20 high school baseball poll, with teams from the City and Southern Sections.

School Sect. Div. Rec. LW 1. Millikan SS I 23-2 1 2. Fountain Valley SS I 22-3 2 3. Fontana SS I 23-2 3 4. Mater Dei SS I 20-5 4 5. Bishop Amat SS I 24-3 5 6. La Quinta SS III 24-3 6 7. Marina SS I 21-6 8 8. Calabasas SS IV 24-0 9 9. Arlington SS II 23-3 11 10. GH Kennedy City 4-A 22-4 10 11. Gahr SS II 20-4 12 12. Ayala SS I 21-5 13 13. Temecula Val. SS II 23-3 18 14. Bell City 3-A 24-2 17 15. Corona SS III 22-5 19 16. Glendora SS II 20-6 NR 17. Arcadia SS I 20-6 NR 18. Nogales SS I 18-8 NR 19. El Segundo SS II 20-8 NR 20. Lakewood SS I 20-7 7