Burgess, Chenowith Get Egg in Their Faces

It was almost a Happy Meal.

Centers Chris Burgess of Woodbridge and Eric Chenowith of Villa Park joined other top boys’ basketball players in Hollywood for Sunday brunch at the announcement of their selections to play for the West team in the McDonald’s All-American Game.

The location: McDonald’s on Sunset and Vine. The menu, according to Villa Park Coach Kevin Reynolds: Egg McMuffins.

Three other players from Southern California are on the West squad. They are twins Jarron and Jason Collins of North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake and Baron Davis of Santa Monica Crossroads.

The McDonald’s game, perhaps the most prestigious of national-class all-star games featuring graduating high school seniors, is scheduled March 29 at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. It will be broadcast on CBS television.

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USC women’s soccer Coach Jim Millinder has mined the county for recruits.

Five county high school players will head to USC next season and another former county player will transfer to USC from Nebraska.

The high school players are: forwards Katie Ticehurst of Mater Dei and Megan Orach of Marina, midfielders Ami Aylor and Susie Mora of Santa Margarita and Andrea Warner of Dana Hills.

Erica DeVitis, an all-county midfielder at Santa Margarita as a senior in 1995, will transfer from Nebraska to USC.

“I think that Orange County [teams] right now are producing the top players out of Southern California. I’ve liked them. I’ve known these kids for a long while,” said Millinder, who was the director of coaching for the Mission Viejo Soccer Club in 1995-96.

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The Southern Section’s new regional format has been greeted with loud grumblings by county girls’ soccer coaches.

“They claim they wanted to do it because of travel time, but to me, that’s the fun of playoffs,” Woodbridge Coach William Bell said.

Woodbridge (15-9-3) defeated Laguna Hills (18-7-1), 2-0, Saturday in the first round of the Division II tournament.

In girls’ soccer, level of play varies by region, depending on the number of club teams in the area. With several strong local clubs, Orange County teams are much more competitive than other areas.

“What bothers me is we’re going to knock each other off,” Bell said.

In Division II, four Orange County teams will play in Region I, second-round games today at 3 p.m.: top-seeded Santa Margarita (15-1-3) at Woodbridge and Brea Olinda (22-3-2) at Mission Viejo (17-5-4).

Mater Dei (16-6-0) was seeded third in Division II and shipped out to Region III, which includes teams from the Inland Empire. The Monarchs, who defeated their first-round opponent, San Bernardino Pacific (15-8-1), 8-0, plays today at Corona Centennial (13-5-1).

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There was sorrow, but also optimism, Friday, even though a young Marina boys’ basketball team was eliminated in its first round Division I-A playoff game by Dana Hills, 65-61.

The Vikings never figured to get this far. After winning a total of 12 games from 1993 to 1996, just about everyone wrote them off.

Even third-year Coach Roger Holmes had doubts. But by rotating eight or nine players, of whom only two were seniors, the Vikings posted a 17-10 record, finished third in the Sunset League and advanced to the playoffs for the first time in five seasons.

“We sat down at the beginning of the season and our dream was, if everything went perfect, for us to have 16 wins,” Holmes said. “If we did that we felt it would be an incredible season.”

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Rosary’s Sarah Belavic, who has 59 assists in her last six games, couldn’t put enough value on her team’s back-and-forth, 66-60 first-round victory Thursday at Costa Mesa. Not only did it ensure a second-round home game against fourth-seeded Harvard-Westlake, “but the win gave us a lot of confidence no matter who we’re playing,” Belavic said. “We have to be really strong going into the next round; a good tough game like tonight gives us a mental toughness.”

A prophet? Rosary (14-12) upset Harvard-Westlake (20-7), also 66-60, on Saturday. Mental toughness? Rosary won with only three fourth-quarter field goals and an 11-of-12 free-throw performance by Romina Bollini over the last eight minutes.

The result? The Royals are in the semifinals for the first time in school history. They will face top-seeded Torrance Bishop Montgomery on Saturday at Servite.

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La Quinta boys’ basketball Coach Craig Snider was not surprised with the Aztecs’ first-round opponent in the Division III-A playoffs was Pacific Coast League champion Estancia, even though La Quinta won the Garden Grove League title.

“With the regional concept put in play, we knew in October that we would open against Estancia,” Snider said. “After all, we are the only two county teams in the division. The only thing we didn’t know was where. We could have been fourth place and they finish first and we would still have played them.”

Estancia won, 53-45.

The division’s eight first-round games included nine league champions, in this case Estancia, opening on the road.

The Estancia victory gave the Eagles a quarterfinal home game against Inglewood Morningside.

Staff writers Martin Henderson and Wendy Witherspoon and correspondent Mike Wojciechowski contributed to this report.