Taggart Could Be the Man if Rodman Needs a Body Double

Make no mistake, David Taggart is a huge Dennis Rodman fan and he’s willing to show it in the most-appropriate ways--colored hair, tattoos and body piercing.

“I dig on the dude,” said Taggart, a freshman forward on the Mission College soccer team. “He’s a great athlete and he’s very rebellious.”

Taggart, 23, has about 10 tattoos on his body, and his nose, tongue, ears and a nipple are pierced. He also changes hair color for every game.

The former Saugus High standout said he got his first tattoo in 1990 during a trip to Europe with a youth soccer team. He pierced his own ear in the seventh grade and kept going from there.

“I pierced the nipple myself,” said Taggart, a straight-A student at Mission. “I iced it up pretty good but it still hurt.”

Coach Adolfo Perez doesn’t mind Taggart’s style.

“It adds flair to our team,” Perez said.

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Fond memories: Joel Schaeffer, in his third decade as a Reseda High football coach, remembers the days when the Regents were the enemy and how former Reseda Coach Quintin Quick used to get under his skin.

Schaeffer, who attended Cleveland High, said Quick once gave him a good ragging after he hit a game-winning home run against the Regents.

“As I was rounding third base, [Quick] told the pitcher, ‘I told you not to throw that weenie a curveball,’ ” Schaeffer recalled. “As a kid, I didn’t think there could be a meaner guy on the face of the Earth. But I found out he’s one of the nicest guys I ever met.”

At the recommendation of Schaeffer and others on the Reseda staff, the school has decided to rededicate the baseball field next spring in memory of Quick, who died in August at 74.

Quick was on the coaching staff when Reseda opened in 1955 and headed the varsity baseball and ‘B’ football programs for more than 20 years. He also served as athletic director and softball coach before retiring in 1985.

“He was the original guy with the loud bark and a heart of gold,” Schaeffer said. “He’s the guy everybody came back to ask about.”

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Flipping out: The Cal State Northridge football team’s 34-28 victory over Southern Utah last week is good news for Coach Dave Baldwin, but bad news for Baldwin’s vocal cords.

Baldwin, who felt his team was flat and emotionless for much of the first half of the season, has taken it upon himself to inject life into Matador practices.

One minute he’s standing in front of the team screaming “MATADORS!” like some insane cheerleader, the next he’s running down the sidelines after a pass interception by a Northridge cornerback.

Because Northridge won, he plans to keep acting this way the rest of the season.

Do Matador players think he’s just trying to fire them up, or do they think he’s crazy?

Said cornerback Doug Varner: “Actually, both.”

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Toe to toe: Apparently, Eleazar Hernandez of Moorpark and Ramon Serratos of Glendale can’t quite get the upper foot on each other.

They have split six races this season.

Hernandez, a freshman from Camarillo High, won the Bakersfield, Santa Barbara and Johnie O invitationals.

Serratos, a sophomore transfer from Canyons, won the first two Western State Conference meets and finished ahead of Hernandez in the Golden West Invitational.

They’ll try to break the deadlock Tuesday in the WSC final at Arroyo Verde Park in Ventura.

Quotebook

“I’m sorry, Rob’s not in. He’s out trick-or-treating with a clown, a pumpkin and a Power Ranger.”

--Denise Dearborn, wife of Moorpark High football Coach Rob Dearborn, answering a phone call on Halloween night.

By the Numbers

In the past 15 years, the Glendale College men’s cross-country team has won six Western State Conference championships.

Glendale, Ventura and Cuesta each have won four women’s championships in the same span, and Moorpark has won three.

Things to Do

Kim Mortensen of Thousand Oaks will be shooting for her seventh course record of the season today at the Marmonte League cross-country finals at College Park in Oxnard. The meet starts at 2 p.m.

The U.S men’s water polo team begins its “Road to Atlanta” exhibition series today with an intrasquad scrimmage at Zanuck Swimming Stadium at Harvard-Westlake High.

Rich Corso, who coaches the national team and Harvard, said the exhibition will take place after the Harvard junior varsity match against Loyola scheduled for 2:30 p.m. and before the varsity match, which will decide the Mission League championship.

The inside track to the Western State Conference South Division football title will be at stake when Valley College (8-0, 4-0 in division play), ranked No. 1 in the state and in one national poll, travels to Moorpark (7-1, 4-0 in division play) for a 7 p.m. game Saturday.

The Raiders are ranked 17th in the nation and ninth in the state.

Compiled by Fernando Dominguez. Contributing: Jeff Fletcher, John Ortega, Tris Wykes, Peter Yoon.