As in previous years, the Valley region...

As in previous years, the Valley region provided numerous sporting moments to remember in 1997, by a wide-ranging cast of characters.

Here are some of those newsmakers:

Cal State Northridge helped bring in the new year by hiring Jim Fenwick as football coach on Jan. 9.

Fenwick, who developed highly successful programs at Valley and Pierce colleges, guided the Matadors to a 6-6 record in the fall.

The Matadors finished 4-4 in Big Sky Conference play, not exactly what the championship-aspiring Fenwick had in mind.

Golfer Terry-Jo Myers didn’t have lofty expectations going into the Los Angeles Women’s Championship at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale, the first pro event held at the course in 10 years.

But on Feb. 16, Myers, who plays with an incurable bladder disease, accepted the $97,500 winner’s check after finishing at 10-under-par 206 to edge Annika Sorenstam by two shots.

It was only her second victory in 12 years on the LPGA tour.

Twins Jason and Jarron Collins, conversely, were no strangers to winning.

They concluded well-publicized high school basketball careers on March 22 by leading Harvard-Westlake to a second consecutive boys’ Division III state championship.

Each scored 24 points in the Wolverines’ 80-50 victory over San Mateo Hillsdale at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim. Jason later was selected player of the year by Cal-Hi Sports. The twins, both about 6 feet 10, now play at Stanford.

The much-anticipated pro boxing debut of Oxnard’s Fernando Vargas finally came to pass on March 25.

It lasted 56 seconds.

That’s how fast Vargas, a former U.S. Olympian, dusted Mexican journeyman Jorge Morales in a welterweight bout at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center.

It took considerably longer for Bill Kernen, the former Cal State Northridge baseball coach turned playwright, to have one of his works staged off-off-Broadway.

The breakthrough came in March, when Kernen’s “And Other Fairy Tales” had a monthlong run in New York’s upper Eastside. His second, “A Graveyard Symphony,” ran for three weeks in October.

One week in March was all Kristine Quance needed to again feel good about swimming.

Quance, from Northridge, won the women’s 200-meter breaststroke and the 400 individual medley to lead USC to the team title in the NCAA championships at Indiana University.

They were the seventh and eighth NCAA individual titles in four years for Quance, who contemplated quitting swimming after a disappointing Olympics in 1996. She won only one gold medal in Atlanta, on a U.S. relay team.

Fred Cuccia, the football coach at Monroe High, didn’t want to quit but had little choice.

Cuccia, credited with turning around Monroe’s program, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in July 1996, and missed the season. He planned to return for 1997.

But in late April, school Principal Joan Elam told Cuccia he would not be allowed back for health concerns.

Other types of concerns took center court on May 7 at Agoura High when Charger tennis Coach Stewart Limbert tussled with Alexander Jensen, a Norwegian exchange student and player for Royal High during a rowdy match between the schools.

Jensen was suspended from school and dropped from the team. No charges were filed against Limbert.

About the same time, at Antelope Valley High, a rift between touted pitcher Sean Douglass and Coach Ed t’Sas was boiling over.

Douglass, a 6-5 right-hander upset about having to do push-ups the day before games, quit the team on May 8 after wrestling with the decision for days.

The senior was drafted on June 3 by the Baltimore Orioles in the second round with the 73rd pick overall.

Two other standouts from the region were chosen much higher than Douglass.

Right-handed pitcher Jon Garland of Kennedy High was selected 10th overall by the Chicago Cubs and Northridge shortstop Adam Kennedy was picked 20th by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Garland later signed for $1.325 million.

Also drafted was Jeff Weaver, a former Simi Valley High standout who struck out an NCAA tournament-record 21 batters for Fresno State in a 2-1 victory over Texas A&M; in a West Regional game on May 22 at Stanford.

Weaver, a right-hander, was chosen by the Chicago White Sox in the second round.

While the ballplayers celebrated their careers, Melissa Hearlihy was battling to save hers.

After 12 years as girls’ basketball coach at Alemany High, where she guided the Indians to two Southern Section and nine Mission League titles, Hearlihy was fired on June 5.

Worse yet, she wasn’t told why and neither the school nor the archdiocese of Los Angeles would give a reason.

The father of a seldom-used player, however, said he had complained to the school about Hearlihy. After filing a grievance, Hearlihy was reinstated on June 30.

With the high school track season coming to a close and world-class competitions picking up steam, June turned out quite nicely for Justin Fargas and Marion Jones.

Fargas, the Notre Dame High sprinter and football blue-chipper, won the boys’ 100 meters state title with a wind-aided 10.52 seconds at Sacramento City College on June 7. Miguel Fletcher of Alemany finished in second place in 10.60.

It was the first victory in the event for a Valley athlete since Taft’s Quincy Watts won in 1987. Fargas would be heard from again during football season, rushing for 2,816 yards and 35 touchdowns to cap a stellar high school career.

Jones, the former Rio Mesa and Thousand Oaks standout, clocked 10.97 to win the women’s 100 meters at the U.S. track and field championships in Indianapolis on June 13.

She went a considerable step better on Aug. 3 at the world championships in Athens, winning the event in 10.83. On Aug. 22 at the Van Damme Memorial in Brussels, the 21-year-old former North Carolina basketball player clocked 10.76, equaling the women’s third-fastest time ever.

Jones was top-ranked in the world in the 100 and 200 meters, and was selected female athlete of the year by Track & Field News.

The summer heated up things in the region and so did Ian Boys’ intention to transfer from Buena to Simi Valley.

Boys, a 6-7 center, said on July 15 that family financial hardships would force him to attend Simi Valley in the 1997-98 school year and play basketball for the Pioneers.

In September, when Boys enrolled at Simi Valley after moving to the home of a Pioneer player, rival coaches argued that the transfer was motivated purely by basketball. On Oct. 23, the Southern Section denied Boys a hardship waiver to play at Simi Valley.

In a final twist to the soap opera, the section’s executive committee on Nov. 5 overturned the waiver denial, clearing Boys to play.

Speaking of soaps, the instability of the Northridge athletic program finally was too much for men’s volleyball Coach John Price, who in mid-July accepted a severance package from the school.

His 12-year tenure spent building a highly successful program at Northridge ended one month after the university dropped volleyball and three other men’s programs for financial reasons and because of gender-equity demands.

The program recently was reinstated through the 1998-99 school year but too late for Price, now coaching the women’s team at Cal State Bakersfield. In November he was selected NCAA Division II Southwest Region coach of the year.

On June 21, Jason Gore of Valencia won the California Amateur championship at Pebble Beach Golf Links. He played on the U.S. team that claimed the Walker Cup in August.

Visiting Europe is the dream of many adventurous youngsters. Marissa Irvin did it in the summer with a tennis racket in hand.

Irvin competed in the girls’ junior divisions at Wimbledon, the French Open and the Italian Open. Back in America, she won the junior doubles title at the U.S. Open in early September.

The Harvard-Westlake senior captured the Southern Section girls’ singles title on Dec. 5. She had never played high school tennis.

Two weeks before, at Northridge’s North Campus Stadium, quarterback Aaron Flowers wrapped up a remarkable two-year stint with the Matadors.

After passing for 298 yards and three touchdowns on Nov. 22 to lead the Matadors over Northern Arizona, 21-13, Flowers finished with 6,766 yards passing and 54 touchdowns, two of several school career records he established.

Cross-country races yielded some memorable efforts, including Natalie Stein’s surprising victory in a Valley Pac-8 Conference meet on Oct. 8. Stein, a 5-1, 95-pound freshman at North Hollywood, clocked 18:04 over the three-mile course at Pierce College.

On Nov. 29, at the state championships in Fresno, Nordhoff’s Elaine Canchola fought off the effects of a cold to claim her second girls’ Division IV title in three years. A 2-3-4 finish by seniors Victor Ochoa, Matthew Torres and Dusty Herman gave Nordhoff the boys’ Division IV title for the fourth time in five years.

Earlier in the month, Northridge considerably shored up its softball team when shortstop Crystl Bustos announced she would transfer to the school.

Bustos, a former Canyon High standout, was the national junior college player of the year the past two years at Palm Beach Community College.