Lembke Chooses Hoops Over Beauty Pageant

When the Ocean View girls’ basketball team got an at-large berth for the Southern Section Division III-AA playoffs, Anna Lembke missed out on a different kind of competition.

Lembke, the county’s second-leading scorer, was to be a contestant in the Miss Huntington Beach Pageant on Saturday, but that date conflicted with Ocean View’s first-round playoff game against Fullerton.

Efforts to change the game to Friday, before the boys’ playoff game, were unsuccessful.

“The Fullerton coach didn’t want to change,” Lembke said. “It gave me a little more drive.”

That drive showed itself in 23 points, 14 rebounds, five blocked shots and 10-for-12 shooting in a 56-35 victory.

Lembke, who will attend Pepperdine in the fall, said her “talent” would have involved multimedia and a basketball routine--complete with a hoop--on the stage.

Lembke signed up for the contest a year ago. Though not completely sold on competing at that time, her attitude changed as she learned more about the scholarship pageant, which is part of the Miss America lineage.

“As I went to meetings and practices and dress rehearsals, I realized I really wanted to do it,” she said.

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Top-seeded Capistrano Valley will be short-handed in today’s Southern Section Division I girls’ soccer playoff because starting goalkeeper Haley Kuhn will be ineligible to play in the second-round game against Los Alamitos.

Kuhn, a sophomore transfer from Laguna Beach, received a red card in the final four minutes of the Cougars’ 6-0 first-round victory over Long Beach Wilson on Saturday. Coach Jack Peterson said Kuhn was called for taking down a Wilson player on a breakaway.

Kuhn has recorded 15 shutouts for the Cougars (22-0-4) this season.

Today’s game is scheduled at Laurel Continuation School at 3 p.m. The heavy rain Monday might cause the game to be postponed until Wednesday. A decision will be made by noon today.

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El Dorado’s Jenni Branam was one of three goalkeepers selected to the sixth annual Parade All-America High School girls’ soccer team.

Branam, a junior, was the only player from the Southern Section selected to this year’s team. She recorded 14 shutouts this season, including a 1-0 Division II wild-card victory over Foothill last week. On Saturday, El Dorado (14-5-3) lost in the first round to Santa Margarita, 1-0.

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El Modena wrestling Coach Alan Clinton was almost as pleased with the success of Century League wrestlers as he was with his own team at the Southern Section Division I individual championships Saturday at Moreno Valley Canyon Springs High.

Each of the six league schools had at least one wrestler qualify for this weekend’s Masters’ meet at Fountain Valley High School.

“Nobody else can say that out of Division I,” Clinton said. “We had a good representation of our league, which has always been strong, but now we’ve got a lot of stability in the coaching. The improvement from September to February has been very impressive.”

El Modena and Villa Park qualified three wrestlers for the meet this weekend. Orange had two and Santa Ana Valley, Foothill and Canyon had one each.

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Edison (15-9), which edged Dana Hills, 49-47, in the opening round of the Southern Section Division I-A boys’ basketball playoffs, is expected to have its hands full when it hosts San Bernardino Pacific at 7:30 tonight. Pacific, the second-seeded team in the division, is expected to play a faster tempo than unseeded Edison wants.

‘They’re very athletic and quick,” second-year Charger Coach Corey Kelly said. “They’ll want a quicker game and that can be good or bad for us. We have to play good defense and make good decisions as to when we run and when we [can’t].”

Pacific’s senior center DeMond Huff, one of the top players in the division, had a triple double and three others scored in double figures in the Pirates’ 73-50 victory over Cerritos. Huff scored 14 points, had 14 rebounds and blocked 11 shots.

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For the second consecutive season, Los Alamitos quickly bowed out of the Division I-AA boys’ basketball playoffs.

This time it was a 54-52 loss to Oxnard that did in the Griffins (16-9). Last year Los Alamitos fell to Long Beach Wilson in overtime, 61-51, in the opening round.

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Ten athletes from Orange County are among 130 finalists for the state CIF Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award.

They are Jeff Colton (Garden Grove), Matt DeLellis (Servite), Dylan Gilbert (St. Margaret’s), Suzanne Guy (El Toro), Jeffrey Hick (Laguna Hills), Amy Knebel (Ocean View), Michael Morales (Loara), Morris Morgan (La Habra), Kawiki Tarayao (Corona del Mar) and Kira Whelan (Los Alamitos).

On Thursday, the list will be cut to 46 finalists, from which one male and one female will eventually be chosen as state scholar-athletes of the year.

The scholar-athlete program is open to students who maintain a minimum 3.70 grade-point average, demonstrate superior athletic ability in at least one varsity sport for a minimum of two seasons and have a record of good citizenship.

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When Connelly lost its Division V-AA girls’ basketball game to La Verne Lutheran, 39-36, it left only one known undefeated team in the state--Grass Valley Bear River (29-0), a state Division III team.

Connelly won 18 before losing to Lutheran (11-8).

Correspondents Dan Arritt and Melanie Neff, and staff writers Dave McKibben, Paul McLeod and Mike Terry contributed to this story.