Villa Park Baseball Team Moves On to a Bigger Stage

Villa Park has withdrawn from its baseball tournament to enter the National Classic, which had an opening when Daytona Beach (Fla.) Mainland decided not to participate.

Coach Scott Luke said he felt compelled to jump at the opportunity to play in the nationally renowned tournament despite having to abandon the Spartans’ tournament.

The Anaheim Esperanza and Placentia El Dorado junior varsity teams will each play two games in the Villa Park tournament in place of the Spartans. Esperanza and El Dorado are the co-hosts for the National Classic, which begins Monday. “They were going to have to put a JV team in [the National Classic],” Luke said. “It would have affected the integrity of that tournament.”

-- Mike Bresnahan

Gary Sacks, a sophomore at Calabasas High, will be seeded No. 4 in the boys’ 16 singles division at the Easter Bowl/U.S. Tennis Assn. Super National Championships that begin today and run through April 19 at the Riviera Resort and Racquet Club in Palm Springs.

Sacks, the highest-seeded player competing for an area high school, will face Stephen Robertson of Tualatin, Ore., in a first-round match Friday. A first-round loser in the Easter Bowl last year, Sacks is among 23 seeded Southern California players in the tournament. Competition includes 768 players from 43 states participating in boys’ and girls’ 18, 16 and 14 divisions.

Play starts today in the boys’ 14 and girls’ 16 and 14 divisions. The highest-seeded Southland player in girls’ 16 division is Dana Hills freshman Sarah Fansler at No. 5. The girls’ 14 division features a trio of area eighth-graders in top-seeded Alexa Glatch of Newport Beach, second-seeded Maggie Mello of Laguna Beach and third-seeded Logan Hansen of Santa Monica.

Robert Yim, a former Glendale High standout and the top player in the USTA boys’ 18 division in Southern California, is the top-seeded player in the boys’ 18 draw.

-- Lauren Peterson

Michael Poe of Etiwanda, winner of the West region cross-country title in December, has committed to Arkansas.

Poe, who won Division I titles in the Southern Section and state cross-country championships in November, took recruiting trips to Arkansas, Arizona and Arizona State before deciding to attend a school that has won a combined 37 NCAA team titles in men’s cross-country and indoor and outdoor track.

Poe has bests of 4 minutes 12.92 seconds in the 1,600 meters and 9:08.43 in the 3,200 on the track and placed fourth in the latter event in the state championships last June.

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Some runners who excel in cross-country lack the speed to be equally successful on the track, but that hasn’t been the case this year for sophomore Mark Matusak and senior David Torrence of Los Angeles Loyola. The two will run on the Cubs’ 6,400-meter relay team at the Arcadia Invitational on Saturday.

Matusak, who finished third in the state Division I cross-country final in November to lead the Cubs to their first team title, won the 1,600 meters in a meet-record 4 minutes 14.78 seconds on Saturday at the Mission Viejo Trabuco Hills Invitational after finishing second in the 3,200 in 9:04.39 at the Pasadena Games on March 29.

Torrence, who placed eighth in the state Division I cross-country final, was second in the 1,600 in 4:15.62 at Trabuco Hills.

“We all have more confidence than we did the year before,” Matusak said when asked if Loyola’s cross-country success has helped in track. “We know everyone is going to come after us so we just push that much harder in practice to work harder and keep improving.”

-- John Ortega