No Turning Back for These Huskies on L.A. Marathon Trail

The high expectations that North Hollywood High baseball Coach George Vranau has for his baseball team have little to do with wins and losses.

On Sunday, every member of the Husky baseball team--along with three junior varsity players and four cross-country runners--will run in the Los Angeles Marathon.

“I expect everybody to finish,” said Vranau, who also will run.

Vranau put together a group of 23 athletes and started training for the marathon in September. They have run 5Ks, 10Ks, a half-marathon and a 30K in the last six months.

“In the beginning a few of the kids had trouble running a mile let alone 26,” Vranau said.

More interesting, however, is not whether the team finishes the marathon but if the ballplayers are able to compete in a baseball game the following day.

“I don’t know how many more games we’ll win this year, but we’ll definitely be the best-conditioned team around,” said Vranau, whose team finished 5-22 last season.

Hi-tech baseball: The Lancaster JetHawks still have not played a game, but they are already on the information superhighway.

Reggie Boswell, 37, a broadcast engineer who lives in Palmdale, has created a home page on the Internet for the JetHawks, a relocated California League baseball team.

Those with Internet access can find the JetHawks page at https://www.jethawks.com. The site, maintained as a hobby by Boswell and his wife, Ronita, contains a schedule, ticket information, pictures of the new ballpark and a forum for fans to electronically chat about the JetHawks.

There are also links to sites for the parent club, the Seattle Mariners, other California League teams and general baseball information.

Boswell, who identifies himself simply as a “baseball fan who is into computers,” created the site last summer after the Riverside Pilots announced plans to move to Lancaster.

He says he spends about an hour a night keeping the site updated. For what, you ask?

Three season tickets.

The spoils of victory: The reward for the Buena High girls’ basketball team’s effort this season is a date with an all-too-familiar foe in this weekend’s Division I-A final game, where in which they will take on Mater Dei for the championship for the third consecutive year, at the Pyramid in Long Beach.

The Bulldogs lost in last season’s final and won the year before.

Stats

The Cal State Northridge baseball team jumped seven places to No. 3 in the latest Collegiate Baseball magazine rankings, the Matadors’ highest ranking. They are ranked No. 12 by Baseball America, up from No. 17.

The Pepperdine baseball team ended a four-game losing streak with a three-game sweep of Washington State last weekend. The Waves (7-8) host USC today before opening West Coast Conference play at home against Loyola Marymount this weekend.

Quotebook

“When I played here, the first two years we didn’t lose a game here. But we have different players now. We don’t have Doug Christie or Dana Jones or Geoff Lear.”

--Pepperdine interim basketball Coach Marty Wilson, after the Waves lost to San Diego, 80-61, Saturday to finish the season 0-7 in West Coast Conference games at Firestone Fieldhouse.

“We’re actually going to have a steal sign this year.”

--Calabasas co-Coach Scott Drootin, whose team has transformed the basis of its offense from power to speed.

Honors

Pepperdine guard Gerald Brown, the leading scorer in the West Coast Conference with an 18.3 average, was named to the all-conference basketball team for the second consecutive season. The 6-foot-3 junior was one of six repeat selections on the 10-player team. Pepperdine sophomore forward Bryan Hill was honorable mention.

San Diego guard Brock Jacobsen, The Times’ Valley player of year last season at Crescenta Valley High, was named WCC freshman of the year.

In women’s basketball, Pepperdine junior center Lisa Siders was named to the All-WCC team, and teammates Jenny Frank and Samantha Rigley, a former Alemany High standout, were selected to the all-freshman team. Frank was named freshman of the year.

Adam Kennedy was selected Western Athletic Conference baseball player of the week after batting .500 in 14 at-bats with a home run, five runs and eight runs batted in last week during a three-game sweep of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Kennedy, a sophomore, is the third Northridge player to earn a conference award in the past three weeks.

Things to Do

The high school baseball season is scheduled to begin today with six games in the San Fernando tournament. A marquee matchup pits host Kennedy, the defending City Section 4-A Division champion and top-ranked regional team by The Times, against Valley Pac-8 Conference champion Poly at 3 p.m.

Contributing: Rob Fernas, Jeff Fletcher, Steve Henson, Michael Lazarus, Paige A. Leech, Lauren Peterson, Tris Wykes.