Notebook : A Number Was Up; Or Was It?

Newport Harbor Athletic Director Eric Tweit’s comments in last week’s Prep Extra have created a minor stir within the girls’ basketball program.

Tweit said the school doesn’t retire numbers, although he was present two years ago when the Sailors appeared to retire Michaela Ross’ No. 33.

Both white and blue jerseys were framed separately, and then-coach Shannon Jakosky pronounced it retired. The white jersey is hanging in the entryway of the Ross’ Costa Mesa home.

But Monday, Tweit stood by his original comments.

“My personal philosophy is that we’ve never done it before,” Tweit said. “I let [Jakosky] do it and looked at it as not being done. I looked at it as an unofficial thing.

“We’ve never retired jerseys in the past, we have no protocol that talks about retiring a jersey. The basketball coach at that time wanted to do it. But I wasn’t looking at it as something we were going to hang someplace. If we were going to retire jerseys, we would go back to the 1930s and ‘40s before we started with someone in the ‘80s and ‘90s.”

Ross graduated in 1993 as inarguably the greatest girls’ basketball player in school history, a three-time All-Southern Section Division III performer. She also tied for fourth in the high jump at the State track and field championships her senior year. Her track coach was Tweit.

She’s now a junior majoring in physiology at UC Santa Barbara with the hopes of entering UC San Diego’s medical school by 1999. She left Cal Poly Pomona after doctors told her she shouldn’t play basketball again if she hoped to avoid permanent injury. Her right ankle and foot were severely damaged in an auto accident Oct. 11, 1993. She is trying out for the crew team at UCSB.

“As far as we knew, we had cleared the presentation. We had waited until Michaela could actually walk onto the floor,” Jakosky said. “As far as we were concerned, we had an official jersey retirement. It wasn’t until after that, when we actually tried to hang the jersey in the gym, that Coach Tweit told us he would not allow anything like that to be hung in the gym.

“Coach Tweit was aware of the ceremony, he was there, and no one ever informed us it was a so-called mock ceremony.”

Especially upset was Ross’ mother, Valarie. “His statement is not true, they have retired a jersey,” she said. “Shannon told me Thursday no one will ever wear No. 33 again, but if the school doesn’t recognize it, who knows?”

That decision may rest with Jakosky’s successor, Bob Dukus.

Said Tweit: “I don’t know if our next basketball coach, when he buys uniforms, if he’s going to buy that number or what.”

Answered Jakosky: “We left him with nice new uniforms, so he won’t have to make that decision for a while.”

*

There’s less controversy at Capistrano Valley, which Friday inducted three-sport star Burt Call into its Hall of Fame.

Call, a quarterback, earned 10 letters in football, baseball and basketball and was a member of nine South Coast League champion teams. He concluded his athletic career after four years of baseball at BYU and is now a coach at Mater Dei.

Also on Friday, San Clemente added five members to its football Hall of Fame. Inducted were former Kansas City Chief and current Missouri State senator Bill Kenney (‘71), former players Geoff Banner (‘80) and Tom Arons (‘76), and coaches Allie Schaff and assistant Tom Eads, who coached in the 1970s and early ‘80s.

*

Former Brethren Christian Principal Hanford Rants, wearing a green booster jacket that bore his name, made an appearance Friday at Artesia High to watch the Warriors’ 42-18 Olympic League loss to Cerritos Valley Christian.

Rants retired in 1988, but he remains active as a consultant to the State CIF in the area of foreign exchange.

“I grant kids athletic eligibility on exchange programs,” Rants said. “I make sure that there is little or no recruitment of seven-foot Belgians.”

*

Long assist: Foothill’s 5-4 overtime victory over El Toro in the semifinals of the Southern California Invitational water polo tournament came after a spectacular end to regulation.

El Toro goalkeeper Greg Stoll had the ball with four seconds left deep in his end of the pool. Since he was putting the ball in play, he couldn’t score, but his hard pass was tipped by Mark Tilton into the goal. Stoll, who had 16 saves in the game, was named the tournament’s outstanding goalkeeper.

*

Tickets for the Vanguard Cup girls’ invitational soccer tournament go on sale Nov. 1. Hosted by El Modena, the Dec. 7-8 tournament features eight top teams from Orange, San Diego, Los Angeles and Contra Costa counties. Among the participants are San Diego University, which has won five consecutive section titles; Danville Monte Vista, the top-ranked team in the North Coast Section, and Van Nuys Grant, a two-time defending L.A. City Section champion.

Local schools participating are led by Marina, which has a 61-game unbeaten streak, as well as Santa Margarita, Mater Dei, Los Alamitos and El Modena.

Three-day tickets, available at participating schools, are $5; single-day tickets are $3.

El Modena Coach Jeff Pearson said this is “the best field ever” for the third-year tournament.

*

With its 40-0 victory Friday, San Clemente has defeated Mission Viejo twice in the past 18 years and takes on Capistrano Valley next week. The Tritons haven’t beaten Capistrano Valley in 17 seasons.

*

Mater Dei Coach Bruce Rollinson had nothing but praise for Dana Hills after his team’s 49-0 victory over the Dolphins.

“Trace Deneke is a committed football coach, and if they’ll be patient with him, and if they get Dana Hills into a division they can compete in, he’ll see success,” Rollinson said. “What impressed me most is they were still playing hard at the end.”

Luis Martinez, Joe Wojciechowski and Times staff writers Martin Beck and Dave McKibben contributed to this story.